Post-Game Talk: Gritty Flyers 4 Sad Sack Jets 0

[hockeyarena]

New year......same 2015 Jets.

Half way through the season and they appear to have just given up. Locker room issues again? PLD rumours getting to their heads? I just don't understand this group of hockey players.

Alright! Who nailed someone's girlfriend this time!?

 

[Stumbledore]

Wow, Chicken Little is alive and well on this board.

 

[DRW204]

Be nice to hear from a guy like Paul Maurice for a post game interview. He came up with some great excuses, and had a way of making you feel good about losing. He did have a way with words.

When you lose as much as Maurice, you'd has tons of practice for those interviews.

Sadly the Jets have no one who can replace him atm.

I doubt they would trade him in-season but in the offseason you can sign a much steadier dman for half the cost.

 

[FanForLife]

The PP needs a serious overhaul too , just passing it around on the outside and not moving around to get in better positions isn't really working.

It was working earlier...but I think teams have figured out what they do and have adapted...now Jets have to adapt to those adaptions!! Flyers just sat back and let them zig zag at top passing back and forth. No chasing, like teams used to. Same in Buffalo game. Jets still had a few looks from this, but not like earlier.

 

[surixon]

I think he basically did sit the top two lines. Lowry’s line was out there like every second shift in the back half of the second period.

He did that after the score was 4 nil but up until the game got away they took a regular shift and got a tonn of pp time.

 

[surixon]

Dare I say this - but Bones has to take a look in the mirror for some of the problems we experienced tonight. Playing a five man unit of Ehlers/Scheifele/Wheeler/Stanley/Pionk is simply inviting problems in our end unnecessarily. Every decent team will be sure to capitalize.

Yup that shift to me was the turning point in the game. They were playing fine before that one imo. That shift was just an exercise in absolute futility.

 

[ecolad]

How so?
Should he conclude this forward group cannot defend or at least attempt to?
Stan and Pionk should be safer under the wing of one of our best and most expensive lines - these guys should be driving enough offense to tilt the ice.
Or at least be prepared to help out defensively if they are over whelmed by the Flyers (????)
I don't see any reason why Bones wouldn't expect that unless he's come to the conclusion that this forward group cannot play the systems and game style he's asking them to play, and that they have previously played.

Sorry I didn`t respond last night - went to sleep after watching a frustrating game

I guess my frustration was primarily with putting Stanley and Pionk on the ice as a pairing - period. For a team that really struggles with exiting their zone, why put the players with the worst defensive zone failure rate (more turnovers per breakout attempt) together on one pairing? And if you are foolish enough to do so, why put them behind a set of forwards who themselves show little discipline in basic zone coverage ,or in supporting zone breakouts after puck possession is secured?

But let`s be clear - the coaching problems last night went well beyond this issue. I don`t think Bones prepared our PP for the very disciplined PK that the Flyers used. Holy crap, the Flyers set a simple 4 man diamond defensively , stayed static and refused to challenge anyone playing with the puck on the periphery, and our guys didn`t know what to do. They had absolutely no strategy for attacking or moving the defenders out of position. Combine that with some poor puck management and ...... not much happening.

 

[surixon]

What gets me is how out of sync some of these players are. I'll just focus on some Perfetti plays but you could really insert a number of players here. Over the past few games Cole has made good passes and many simple passes to players close to him to either set up a good look or keep the play going and they all where bobbled and messed up. These are professional athletes and they weren't difficult passes to handle, is the team not mentally in it?

Other cases are in the ozone where Cole on numerous occasions takes the puck low to high and then reverses down low and his linemates aren't at all ready for it. So instead of easily maintaining the cycle we've turned it to 50 50 battles as our players are slow to react and allow the opposition time to recover.

It's simple things like this and having individual players making poor decisions such as Dubois numerous times over the past couple of games cheaply turning it over.

When your top two centers are in a major funk at the same time its going to be hard to win.

It will be interesting to see how the coach handles this as he can't scape goat a rookie or young player as Cole and Snerg have been among our best players lately. It's clearly been our vets (Mark and Dubois fighting it hard) and Wheeler looking like he has nothing left in the tank. Conner and Ehlers haven't been great but they haven't been awful either. On defense outside of JoMo and Snerg our d has been a mess. Schmidt was playing well before Tree came back but has struggled trying to prop him up. Pionk has just been awful in his end all year and Dillion can't prop him up. Dillion is hard to read as he plays well with other players but struggles mightily with Neal. Honestly I think Pionk has to go this summer.

 

[sipowicz]

I'll say one thing about Stanley, he may have been among 6 or 8 players who actually tried. You see Pionk on that one goal? .....he's trying to not be involved in the play. Something stinks.

Stanley hasn’t been great but he’s hardly the problem, the team can’t score now, playing with 4 real top 6 and a anemic bottom 6 is the real problem!

 

[WolfHouse]

Alright! Who nailed someone's girlfriend this time!?

That was my first thought watching the game last night haha

 

[LowLefty]

Sorry I didn`t respond last night - went to sleep after watching a frustrating game

I guess my frustration was primarily with putting Stanley and Pionk on the ice as a pairing - period. For a team that really struggles with exiting their zone, why put the players with the worst defensive zone failure rate (more turnovers per breakout attempt) together on one pairing? And if you are foolish enough to do so, why put them behind a set of forwards who themselves show little discipline in basic zone coverage ,or in supporting zone breakouts after puck possession is secured?

But let`s be clear - the coaching problems last night went well beyond this issue. I don`t think Bones prepared our PP for the very disciplined PK that the Flyers used. Holy crap, the Flyers set a simple 4 man diamond defensively , stayed static and refused to challenge anyone playing with the puck on the periphery, and our guys didn`t know what to do. They had absolutely no strategy for attacking or moving the defenders out of position. Combine that with some poor puck management and ...... not much happening.

Thoughtful response - nice

I agree that Stan and Pionk was a bad idea - no idea why that happened and hopefully there was a lesson learned.
Stan isn't going to be the bright spot on the D most nights - he's a 6/7 player that should be able to hold his own if paired correctly.
It's not like we don't pay attention to pairings - they are important. What's funny is that you'll see a lot of posts pointing out that any pairing with Pionk, has failed. What's interesting is that when Stan is paired with him, he takes most of the blame - odd reasoning IMO. The 6/7 guy shouldn't be taking the blunt of it on a pairing with a $6M dman that has not really played well with anyone. Watching Pionk defend is hard to do - he's out of position most of the time - chasing someone in a corner a mile away from the puck or he's trying to run someone who is not part of the play. Stan get caught puck watching in those situations - usually in front of the net - probably because he's trying to cover too much territory with his partner out of position most of the time, so he parks in front and tries to defend it all from a place where all the pucks are heading - it's a disaster.

As for coaching, we can pick it apart - there are no doubt issues with some of the decision making.
What's hard to explain is that this team can play well under the systems and matchups the coach throws out there if they play the game style that Bones has been preaching since day one. If we want to talk about major issues, I'd consider the over all drive and compete to be the major issue - and that's a tough one to put your finger on without calling out a bunch of high paid players - it was nice to see Bones actually do that.

IMO, this team is not good enough to play the game without dedicating a big pce of that plan to hard work and compete - it's been proven - when we win, we are working hard, the offense is involved at both ends, and our bottom 6 is keeping it very simple with a defensive game - and our d is not over burdened. When we lose, our best forwards are not engaged defensively and our defense is hung to dry. The narrative then shifts to how we can improve our bottom six (as if this would make up for what is going on with the top bunch), and the defense is called out for not playing well when they are abandoned when defending.

I don't believe the strategy, in terms of what the coach has been preaching, has changed. What has changed is how our best forwards are playing. They don't defend at all and we get bogged down in our end. If you spend that much time defending (or defending poorly), you'd expect the offense to look out of sync. It's a carbon copy of where we were LY - scrambling most of the shift on D and coming out of your own end late in the shift, making poor decisions with passing / puck movement that usually result in a turnover.

If we don't fix the work part, especially while defending, I don't see there being a point in evaluating the rest of it - IMO, without the work, the rest doesn't work.

 

[kanadalainen]

Wow, Chicken Little is alive and well on this board.

Some of its quite tasty.

 

[Joe Hallenback]

When your best players suck you are going to lose and they have been sucking for a bout 2 weeks now

 

[WaveRaven]

Boy have we seen this act before. This is when the real hockey starts and they start to struggle. We don't have the right mix. You can have all the skill in the world but that's not the whole picture you need grit and determination too.

I suspect we fall back to a wild card spot and get pummeled in the playoffs.

 

[Howard Chuck]

The camera panning down our bench said it all to me last night. Everyone had that thousand mile stare. No one was talking or watching the play or analyzing their last sequence. They simply sat there staring into space.

There is no way you can hop over the boards and compete when you have that mindset.

I don’t mind losses, but I can’t watch a team that isn’t giving 100% and plays with no emotion. I know that other teams lose, but I’ll bet the Bruins or the Avs don’t lose because they aren’t up for it.

How does a coach fix that general attitude?

 

[Jets 31]

Wow, Chicken Little is alive and well on this board.

The sky isn't falling i agree it's the half ass'd work ethic by our top players that is very frustrating right now. Someone take a puck to the net once in a while, Dubois with his size and ability should be doing this once or twice a game for example. I just don't like our effort lately especially at home.

 

[WolfHouse]

The camera panning down our bench said it all to me last night. Everyone had that thousand mile stare. No one was talking or watching the play or analyzing their last sequence. They simply sat there staring into space.

There is no way you can hop over the boards and compete when you have that mindset.

I don’t mind losses, but I can’t watch a team that isn’t giving 100% and plays with no emotion. I know that other teams lose, but I’ll bet the Bruins or the Avs don’t lose because they aren’t up for it.

How does a coach fix that general attitude?

Maybe PLD took the whole team on a tour of Montreal and now they are all like 'wtf are we doing in cold ass Winnipeg...?'

Bowness was like cmon boys, its not so bad here... I've booked the International Museum of Human Rights for a night so we can all go let our hair down and cut loose. Here's a Giant Tiger coupon for each of you as well!!

 

[Howard Chuck]

Watching some highlights and unfairly picking on one player, but man, 55 was a completely different player a month ago. Fast, tenacious, backchecking…. A real monster. Now he’s a passenger again. You could make these comparisons up and down the lineup.

Again, how do you make these guys compete consistently?

 

[NA Hockey]

Stanley hasn’t been great but he’s hardly the problem, the team can’t score now, playing with 4 real top 6 and a anemic bottom 6 is the real problem!

Well the real problem is your "4 real top 6" have been awful, zero effort, lack of execution, a massive sense of entitlement. They stay out for 2 mins at a time and accomplish nothing on the PP but yet expect to go back out for for the full time on the next PP. 80 is an emotional midget who's mood swings on any given night determine if he actually is a good hockey player or not. 55 has checked out the last few games, little to no effort. 81 trying to do everything himself, is terrible in his own end and only tries when going north. 27 has been trying but he tries to do everything by himself, only passes as a last option and couldn't check a coat. The reason they have been losing is those 4 have been invisible the last 4 games and their effort has been very bad. Blaming the rest of the team is the easy way out when those 4 make all of the money and get all of the ice time.

 

[Channelcat]

That was my first thought watching the game last night haha

Lol. Same here. Glad I wasn't the first to say it.

 

[Jets 31]

The camera panning down our bench said it all to me last night. Everyone had that thousand mile stare. No one was talking or watching the play or analyzing their last sequence. They simply sat there staring into space.

There is no way you can hop over the boards and compete when you have that mindset.

I don’t mind losses, but I can’t watch a team that isn’t giving 100% and plays with no emotion. I know that other teams lose, but I’ll bet the Bruins or the Avs don’t lose because they aren’t up for it.

How does a coach fix that general attitude?

My guess is this was Bowness after the game to all of our stars.

 

[BigZ65]

He did that after the score was 4 nil but up until the game got away they took a regular shift and got a tonn of pp time.

No I'm talking about the rest of the second period after the 2-0 goal and timeout. The top 2 lines barely played. You can't really sit two lines though. They took some shifts but the Lowry line was getting all the starts.

 

[sipowicz]

The camera panning down our bench said it all to me last night. Everyone had that thousand mile stare. No one was talking or watching the play or analyzing their last sequence. They simply sat there staring into space.

There is no way you can hop over the boards and compete when you have that mindset.

I don’t mind losses, but I can’t watch a team that isn’t giving 100% and plays with no emotion. I know that other teams lose, but I’ll bet the Bruins or the Avs don’t lose because they aren’t up for it.

How does a coach fix that general attitude?

Playoffs aren't an incentive for this bunch, play from Oct.-early April and fly off to exotic spots for golf, fishing and everything else with your millionaire lifestyle!

Someone mentioned in another thread how pumped the arena was the first 5 years, well yeah teams we had played with heart, emotion and grit this team does none of that!

 

[Jets 31]

Playoffs aren't an incentive for this bunch, play from Oct.-early April and fly off to exotic spots for golf, fishing and everything else with your millionaire lifestyle!

Someone mentioned in another thread how pumped the arena was the first 5 years, well yeah teams we had played with heart, emotion and grit this team does none of that!

Ya that pack of wolves mentality would really come in handy right now. I don't mind losing if we are working our ass's off, this is not that.

 

[DRW204]

Well the real problem is your "4 real top 6" have been awful, zero effort, lack of execution, a massive sense of entitlement. They stay out for 2 mins at a time and accomplish nothing on the PP but yet expect to go back out for for the full time on the next PP. 80 is an emotional midget who's mood swings on any given night determine if he actually is a good hockey player or not. 55 has checked out the last few games, little to no effort. 81 trying to do everything himself, is terrible in his own end and only tries when going north. 27 has been trying but he tries to do everything by himself, only passes as a last option and couldn't check a coat. The reason they have been losing is those 4 have been invisible the last 4 games and their effort has been very bad. Blaming the rest of the team is the easy way out when those 4 make all of the money and get all of the ice time.

just to piggy-back off this a bit, as it relates to the defense

lots of commentary - and rightfully on stanley - however our vets.... Pionk a 6M turnstile in the defensive-zone, Josh Norrissey? don't think so over the last few weeks. the Stanley criticism is undoubtedly warranted, however, our highly paid vets have been a shell of themselves.