The good news… this ends the longest road trip of the year. The bad news… this team needs a serious confidence boost. The last three minutes of this 2-1 loss screamed that to me. We couldn’t move the puck up the ice. We could barely move the puck to the red line. The team is frazzled and THINKING. Most athletes at any level would tell you that they do their best when they aren’t thinking. We aren’t just thinking, it seems our guys are each thinking different things.
We did play better tonight, but a win would have felt very nice. For me finishing the roadie 2-2-1 would have felt much better than 1-3-1.
Steve Mason played a better game, but got burned on the now widely reported weakness. He has been pathetic on behind the net plays this year. This is certainly going to be on the mind of any opponent we have. Mase absolutely needs to figure this out or he get burned time and time again. These are the woes of the sophomore year.
Looking at the box score, Jan Hejda had less than 17 minutes of ice time(which actually played him #6 out of our 6 dmen). He has been trending around 24 minutes. He was in the box during the PK two times, but I wonder if he was nursing something tonight.
The passing from Tyutin and Commodore were terrible tonight. Part of our woes is due to the lack of high quality defensive play. It is not realistic to think you’ll get the best from all your guys, all the time. Right now, nobody is going at their best.
The two guys that did stand out to me were Rick Nash and Jakub Voracek. I thought they did play strong games and made very strong offensive zone moves tonight. Voracek continues to impress me with his board play. We need more goals out of him though. A nod to Huselius who keeps putting the puck in the net. That’s his job. He’s been pretty good since returning from injury.
We need a big confidence boost. We need a couple guys to step up in a big way. We need 5 on 5 offense. We were dominating 5 on 5 last year, we need to get some of that back. The powerplay has saved us all year long. We’d be in the WC cellar if we had a powerplay like last year.
Mancrush of the Night: I’ll give the nod the Juice, although I’d prefer to leave it blank. He skated well and kept his scoring streak alive. He hit the double digit plateau tonight. He had 21 all of last year. He could easily hit 30 for us this year.
Whipping Boy: Fedor Tyutin. I like Tyuts, but we need a lot more from him. We need him to be a #2, but he has played more like a #5. I know he expects a lot more out of himself, but his passing tonight was not good and he had more than a couple bad turnovers.
So do we really ask “Who won the CBJ/Ott trade”….. on a CBJ broadcast….. and believe that it is accurate? I found this amusing television.
Hit the Comment. Favorite Thanksgiving Side Dish. Go!