Post-Game Talk: Jets beat the Jerks in OT 4-3

[heilongjetsfan]

Really happy for Harkins... he showed stuff that Toninato can't. Hope he gets to run with that 4th line spot for a bit.

I'm disappointed that
a) he was scratched so many games after his start in the A.
b) he did what he did in this game and came out with only 6 minutes of ice time.

I really think he's a real NHLer, but he's had the tweener treatment for so long.

 

[voyageur]

Gus played about 5 minutes against Pittsburgh and probably about 2 of those minutes were short-handed so I wouldn't take too much information from that. He's just as smart as Lowry defensively with more offensive upside. He's lacking the same physicality though. Fun note nobody on Pittsburgh played fewer than 10 minutes.

Eyssimont ideally would be a 4th liner but I'd feel comfortable moving him up the lineup in case of injury. He brings everything Fjallby does but with better hands and skill.

Gustafsson is starting to look comfortable in both zones. Defensively he's a textbook player, great anticipation, uses his frame well to win puck battles. Offensively it's starting to come together. He's making sneaky good passes with the puck of late. I love his play on the 2nd goal. Not only does he win the battle with Svetchnikov, who is an elite player, but he has the awareness to know where Harkins is, and instead of tracking the puck, creates separation with a couple of good strides to get in a breakaway position. I'm hoping that Bowness starts to get him up to the 10 minute mark as the season progresses.

I wouldn't say he is better offensively than Lowry yet. Lowry looked real good early in the year, putting a lot of pucks on Morgan Barron's stick for quality shots. Also Appleton. He's playing with a couple of defensive players who have no real offensive scoring ability, when Gustafsson was playing with those guys he wasn't scoring either. Or looking dangerous offensively.

If the team stays healthy for a stretch, there's going to be some interesting decisions to be made when Barron comes back. Who would go down in his place? I know the easy answer is Toninato, but he's not going to say a peep sitting in the pressbox, he's probably aware that he'll never get a one way NHL contract again, and be thankful that his contract puts him in a good financial place to raise a new family.

If Harkins and Eyssimont get to 10 games or stick around 30 days, which is conceivable, both would have to go through waivers again, once other players come back, and I think that might be a factor, where one gets sent down before that mark, only to be an option for callup again. That said I think there's a chance Eyssimont could manoeuvre past Maenalanen, who is waiver eligible, with more games. His first game on the checking line lasted as long as one ill advised pass up the middle, that led to a Pittsburgh scoring chance. Demoted the next shift. I do seem him as an option for the top line, if he just plays his game, which is effective and disruptive. My own guess is that Harkins stays with the Jets for the remainder of the year, if he keeps putting in solid efforts.

 

[AlphaLackey]

There's been a lot of great hockey minds giving a lot of actual athletic insight into the game, so I feel compelled to chip in now too

I have caught wind that the Canes commentators were talking about pulling the goalie for.. 'momentum' and shit.

Do you know why you pull the goalie late in a trailing game?

Because your chances of winning are so bleak that you'd happily (even strength) trade two goals against for one goal for, because that's such a huge edge that it far overcompensates for the opportunity cost of trying to tie it up without.

That's it.

BTW I know that stuns a lot of people, but yeah, empty net goals against/for ratio is really only about 2:1 at the NHL level.

The ratio gets adjusted if you're already on the power play, bla bla bla.

And yes, this explains why they just give up and don't pull the goalie when down by six goals: because the 2:1 ratio doesn't help enough to turn your one-in-a-million into a 1.001-in-a-million. At that point, yes, you CAN consider the optics.

 

[Zhamnov5GoalGame]

I thought I saw Samberg and Schmidt together for a shift, and thought that it was a way to get Dillon and Heinola together to have a more balanced pairing. Samberg and Heinola played a lot together in the AHL, including them swapping sides om breakouts to add another layer to it. I don't know if I would break that up yet.

Heinola and Dillon had one shift together - a neutral zone start. Only 50 seconds. Results were good (2-1 CF, 2-0 HDCF) but it's a ridiculously small sample so who knows.

I could be wrong but I thought the mix and match pairs were a result of some extended special teams. Heinola hadn't been on the ice for a while (Samberg got some PK time). Morrisey, Pionk & Schmidt had just had some PP time so they threw Dillon out with Heinola. That was my take. We had gone from short handed to on the PP to a 5 on 3, this likely lined up with 5 on 5 shifts before that not involving Ville so it was a way to get him back in the game. Maybe?