Notes :
Like some have suggested, that penalty to Dzingel gave the momentum away. Sens looked like the better team 5 on 5 but the Flyers were able to build momentum with their dangerous PP
We need better goaltending and better team defense. People tend to focus on D-men but team defense is a commitment from all 5 skaters on the ice. Stupid penalties, lack of attention to details, softness at defending... all things that are avoidable. Sens beat themselves last night (outside of that stupid momentum changer penalty to Dzingel)
That being said, at ES :
SF/SA : 21-21
CF/CA : 43-43
SCF/SCA : 23-22
HDSCF/HDSCA : 10-8
All strengths :
SF/SA : 35-45
CF/CA : 64-71
SCF/SCA : 33-32
HDSCF/HDSCA : 19-14
It suggests that despite losing the score, shots count and even the corsi battle, the Sens still had the better scoring chances. They could have won that game with better goaltending and more attention to details on the defensive side of the puck.
Speaking of goaltending, our goalies have been outplayed 3 times in 4 games so far (I'll keep track of it this season)
Lajoie has consistently looked like our best defenceman in this first week and a bit of the season, IMO.
It's him and Chabot in the top tier... and DeMelo with the shocker of all shockers looking like a real 2nd pairing D so far... and them whoo boy, it gets real bad.
I thought Ceci had a really strong game. Funny how he looks much more competent playing "only" 19:33 and with a good partner (Lajoie). Like Micklebot mentioned, at Even Strength, he had the 3rd best CF% on the team, 5th best SF%, 5th best SCF% and 7th best HDSCF%
Boro and Wideman have been really bad so far this season. DeMelo did well but as you can see tonight, a really bad penalty and a really bad pinch that created a goal against (the 3rd one). I think he'd be fine on the 3rd pair but might be another guy played outside of his capacities.
Ideally :
1st pair : Chabot, Casper the ghost.
2nd pair : Lajoie, Ceci
3rd pair : DeMelo, Wideman, Harpur, Borowiecki
If we could get a top pairing RHD, then we might have a decent defense. Wish we had the willingness to spend money. If you're going to trade EK, Subban would have been perfect. But no, we had to "rebuild"
There's no excuse to not have at least one decent vet D on this team with the current money they're spending. It would go such a long way.
Losing EK is one thing, but not getting one real top-4 guy with experience to patch things up well, that's plain stupid.
We'll never know but San Jose could have been offering Braun in the Karlsson return, but Melnyk didn't "like it"
We need to stop putting bbby Ryan out there when we need a goal. He’s simply not that guy for us.
Even though the sample size makes it so hard to talk about anything really, among the 12 Sens forwards (not counting Carey and McCormick who barely played) Ryan is :
- 6th in TOI/GP
- 5th in Pts/60 at ES
- 4th in primary Pts/60 at ES
- 6th in Individual Expected Goals For per 60
- 7th in SF/60
- 5th in GF/60
- 7th in xGF/60
Not a spectacular start of the season by any means but Ryan hasn't been the worst, nothing indicates that he has been a blackhole offensively like you seem to suggest. Duchene and Stone have been even less effective.
The Formenton-Tierney-Ryan line is really bad though, probably the worst combination the coaching staff could come up with outside of including any of Pyatt, Paajarvi and unfortunately White.
As for the game last night against the Flyers, Natural Stat trick reveals that Ryan (ES) was on the ice for 7 SCF and 7 SCA, but 5 HDSCF and 2 HDSCA and another 2 high danger chances and 2 regular scoring chances on the PP (where Ryan was the most effective last night)
His game will never be perfect and he will never play the way that some people would like because he is a pure skill/finesse guy, which is hard to play in this league nowadays. You need speed, strength, aggressiveness, etc so pure finesse guys like Ryan and Spezza will be way less effective.