Observations IV

[101st_fan]

It's reaching the point where I'm not wondering how this team is going to do things right but how they'll screw up a game. All of the players are saying the right things when a camera is in their face ... simplify the game, smart puck decisions, blah blah blah ... then try to get cute with the puck rather have the words and deeds match. Luckily our fourth line isn't talented enough to even know how to attempt a cute play so they cycle, try to create mayhem in front of the net, and see if that gets something done.

6:18 of 5on3 play so far this season ... one freaking goal generated (1 for 7). Last season's squad generated five goals on 6:55 of 5on3 time.

I have a hard time getting upset with Stalberg for his play in the OT because my disappointment lies in the fact the game didn't end as a regulation win. The ability to give up a lead, then eek out a win is gone ... we used all that mojo earlier in the season.

 

[jwhouk]

And if you assume a W over Buffalo, that means we would have to go 0-9-1 in the other 10

Not happening...

...You weren't here for 2003. It can happen.

 

[Pred303]

call me sadistic, but rewatched the 'highlights' of this one again this morning. saw an interesting graffic on our scoring by defensemen.

that we led the league in goals, assists, points by our defensemen. but more disturbing, and a continued indictment of our forward corps, is that we led the league in percentage of our goals scored by defensemen. some might think this is a positive, and it is for our d-men, but it's more a negative on our forwards in my mind. of course it all ties directly to the fact we have about 6 forwards and 6 fillers we're icing every night and underscores more our lack of true depth among our forwards.

 

[nomorekids]

I don't think we played as poorly as we have in some other recent games, it simply comes down to, once again, two backbreaking, unscreened shots over Rinne's shoulder.

I watched the end on TV, and they showed faces on the bench...it wasn't frustration, disappointment, just...deflation. Lifeless.

 

[Pred303]

the most surprising thing about those two shots were they both beat rinne cleanly glove side, his supposed strength. some say wilson deflected the tieing goal, but watching and rewatching, i didn't see it like that.

 

[Drake744]

The longer this slump lasts, the longer we won't be able to differentiate between us losing because we played a sh***y game and us losing despite playing pretty well. Everytime we lose everyone is just completely going into "this team sucks" mode, when we don't really "suck" every game.

 

[darth5]

I was at this one with work friends from out of town new to the game. I was hoarse from explaining things all game to them. And totally disgusted with the collapse. Wilson's ill-advised drop pass just about killed me, I KNEW that would end up in the back of the net, and destroy any momentum the team had. Just wow. They are discovering new ways to lose. Lots of these bandwagon fans can abandon ship just as fast as they jumped on. Personally, not invested in that, but it is good for the team's bottom line.

 

[Pred303]

one thing i will say, is Terry might be old, and repeditive, and not the sharpest tool in the shed. But he's the only guy assosiated with our broadcast crew that has the guts to say anything critical about the team. Frankenstu makes me want to shoot someone when he goes on and on about some simple frigging hockey play and calls it a 'great job' by so and so. then we get to watch him butcher some replay, "stop it right there guys", and show some wonderful play where we actually finally cleared a puck and everyone involed made a "smart", "great" play. in fairness to him, since his actual hockey highlight was actually ever just clearing the puck out of the defensive zone and it was a 'great' play to actually chip it in deep, his viewpoint as to what actual good hockey is is limited to what normal 4th line grinders are asked to do every shift.

when you're winning most every night you can usually dismiss or just laugh at the stupidity of it all. but when you have the worst record in the league over the last 15 games, have scored the fewest goals in the league in the last 8 games (14) while giving up 3 goals per game, and have a 5 game home losing streak, and every other play was a 'realy smart play', well one's patience with stupidity and concussioned lawyers hockey idiocy runs out.

 

[tampa pred]

I was at this one with work friends from out of town new to the game. I was hoarse from explaining things all game to them. And totally disgusted with the collapse. Wilson's ill-advised drop pass just about killed me, I KNEW that would end up in the back of the net, and destroy any momentum the team had. Just wow. They are discovering new ways to lose. Lots of these bandwagon fans can abandon ship just as fast as they jumped on. Personally, not invested in that, but it is good for the team's bottom line.

I'd have to watch it again, but it looked to me like the puck got knocked off Wilson's stick (not an intentional drop pass). The Santorelli and Fisher both skate over and by the puck leaving all three in the offensive zone while the puck is going the other way. Terrible play all around, but I don't think that Wilson was trying to drop pass it.

 

[Pred303]

I'd have to watch it again, but it looked to me like the puck got knocked off Wilson's stick (not an intentional drop pass). The Santorelli and Fisher both skate over and by the puck leaving all three in the offensive zone while the puck is going the other way. Terrible play all around, but I don't think that Wilson was trying to drop pass it.

that's what i thought watching it live too tampa, that the puck was knocked off his stick. but watched it on replay and it was a clearly intentioned, poorly executed drop pass all the way.

 

[tampa pred]

I'm not ready to give up on this team; there is still time to get it going again before the playoffs. The last 5 games haven't really been that bad. Let's take a closer look:

2-2-1

Win over Phoenix- OK, this one isn't that big of an accomplishment, and the guys really didn't play well, but Pekka only gave up 1 after playing horribly the previous 2 weeks.

Lose to the Sharks- Pekka gives up 1. Team doesn't score. At least it looks like Pekka has pulled out of his slump.

Win over LA- Best game in a loooonnnnggg time.

Loss to Anaheim- Pekka looked like an All Star again in the 1st. The guys totally dominated in the 2nd. The best team in the NHL who happens to have 15 come from behind wins turned the tables on us in the 3rd when we ran out of gas in the second game of a back-to-back. Disappointing, but nothing to be ashamed of.

OT Loss to Minnesota- Pretty even tight checking game. They scored, we came back to take the lead, they scored to tie it then win in OT. Minnesota has been the best team in the NHL since the All Star break. Again, while disappointing, the result shouldn't be devastating.

Take away the 6 game skid, and 2-2-1 doesn't really seem that bad. It would be a blip on the radar of what has been a fantastic season. The 6 game skid happened, and while we certainly can't ignore it, the team has to forget about it and get past it. Feeling like you are a terrible team is self-fulfilling. Time to put the big boy pants on and move on.

Here is another reason to not get to worked up about the recent skid. If the standing stay the same as today and St Louis wins the division, they will get to play Minnesota (the hottest team in the NHL with a goalie who is on fire) in the 1st round. While hanging a division champion banner in the rafters would be great, I'd rather play Chicago without Kane in the 1st round than having to face Minnesota.

 

[MrJoshua]

I think my optimism has more to do with not wanting to be annoyed and pissed off every time someone mentions hockey than anything else...

 

[David Singleton]

that's what i thought watching it live too tampa, that the puck was knocked off his stick. but watched it on replay and it was a clearly intentioned, poorly executed drop pass all the way.

I couldn't tell if it was a drop pass or if he just lost it and over-skated it.

With the teams now playing the Preds so tight on the puck, everyone is treating the puck like a hot potato and can't, or won't, keep it on their stick.

I'm also a bit tired of allowing these unchallenged point shots. Lately, they are either beating Rinne or giving up a rebound that gets deposited behind him.

That second MN goal started with 4 Preds in the defensive zone with one MN forward breaking in with no challenge whatsoever. Killed me.

Movement during the 5 on 3 was completely nonexistent. There was no effort by MN to cover for a shot by Riberio as they knew he would not attempt the shot and they only needed to cover the pass through the slot. Their fate was essentially sealed by their piss-poor play and inability to convert that opportunity.

Team is playing like complete crap right now and will not last 5 games against any first round opponent with their current play.

 

[glenngineer]

Grimson said this on the broadcast and many have echoed this sentiment that Wilson needs to do a better job with the puck at the blue line. What pisses me off is that two of our guys over skate the puck and or don't take a body on the Wild player. The puck enters the zone and as David stated, no one challenges the player with the puck. We have 5 guys in the defensive zone and no one covering the guy coming off the bench into our zone. While Wilson may or may not have made a mistake, there is plenty of blame to go around. It's not as if he turned the puck over right in front of our net, it was at the other end of the ice and we had plenty of chances to make the right play or cover their players yet the entire team failed on this sequence of events. Steve, you have always said a goal is usually the result of 3 bad plays by a team. This situation had more than three unfortunately.

 

[Pred303]

yeah my biggest gripe against wilson wasn't really the turnover itself. as you say it was in the offensive zone and we got back and had them outnumbered when they did enter the zone. my real gripe is that wilson overreacted to his turnover and skated down trying to help get the puck back, and in doing so got away from his area of responsibility and let the guy who was his man skate off the bench, into the zone wide open... as you note, this goal allowed had multiple mistakes leading up to it, 1)wilson's poorly done drop pass, (2 i can excuse fisher skating by and missing but trying to get to the free puck, 3) i have less excuse for santorelli after fisher doing the exact same thing, 4)wilson not picking up his man and letting him walk in for a shot, 5)rinne getting beaten cleanly glove side on an unscreened shot

but when a mistake in coverage is made that leads directly to a goal, an 'analyst' should point out what and who failed to the average fan. analyze for god's sake.

 

[handtrick]

one thing i will say, is Terry might be old, and repeditive, and not the sharpest tool in the shed. But he's the only guy assosiated with our broadcast crew that has the guts to say anything critical about the team. Frankenstu makes me want to shoot someone when he goes on and on about some simple frigging hockey play and calls it a 'great job' by so and so. then we get to watch him butcher some replay, "stop it right there guys", and show some wonderful play where we actually finally cleared a puck and everyone involed made a "smart", "great" play. in fairness to him, since his actual hockey highlight was actually ever just clearing the puck out of the defensive zone and it was a 'great' play to actually chip it in deep, his viewpoint as to what actual good hockey is is limited to what normal 4th line grinders are asked to do every shift.

when you're winning most every night you can usually dismiss or just laugh at the stupidity of it all. but when you have the worst record in the league over the last 15 games, have scored the fewest goals in the league in the last 8 games (14) while giving up 3 goals per game, and have a 5 game home losing streak, and every other play was a 'realy smart play', well one's patience with stupidity and concussioned lawyers hockey idiocy runs out.

^
May be the best post of all time

 

[jntarheels]

yeah my biggest gripe against wilson wasn't really the turnover itself. as you say it was in the offensive zone and we got back and had them outnumbered when they did enter the zone. my real gripe is that wilson overreacted to his turnover and skated down trying to help get the puck back, and in doing so got away from his area of responsibility and let the guy who was his man skate off the bench, into the zone wide open... as you note, this goal allowed had multiple mistakes leading up to it, 1)wilson's poorly done drop pass, (2 i can excuse fisher skating by and missing but trying to get to the free puck, 3) i have less excuse for santorelli after fisher doing the exact same thing, 4)wilson not picking up his man and letting him walk in for a shot, 5)rinne getting beaten cleanly glove side on an unscreened shot

but when a mistake in coverage is made that leads directly to a goal, an 'analyst' should point out what and who failed to the average fan. analyze for god's sake.

I watched the highlight reel earlier after reading some comments in here about the tying goal and this is exactly what happened. The turnover by Wilson was bad, but his worse mistake was on the ensuing defense when he chased the puck carrier into the zone, when the guy was already well covered and allowed his area to be left wide open for a trailer to come in and snipe one.

Unfortunately for us, similar sequences have happened to us far too often on this slump we are in. We need to correct that in a hurry.

 

[deanwormer]

man I sure am glad we got all that rest and practice time. obviously it really helped our forwards. sometimes I hate this game.

So, it wasn't just me sitting there thinking - man, when Viktor Stahlberg is your best F, things are...... not quite good?

 

[deanwormer]

Hate to say it, but over the past 15 games I have seen Arnott express more emotion than Weber has. I know Weber's style is to speak softly but carry a big rocket, but at what point does speaking softly become just white noise.

I want Weber to break sticks on the bench. I want someone to do something it doesn't even have to be him. Show me some emotion. When we get push back in the third period we fold easier than a house of cards.

Last night's loss hurt more than all the other losses combined. Losing on the road I can deal with. Giving up a lead at home in the third period against your biggest rival just sucks the wind out of my lungs.

Well, at least we got a little bit of physical Shea tonight, at least everytime $uter's boyfriend came down the ice. Parise is darn lucky there were 3 officials to step in right at the end cause after he swung that stick and hit Shea; I don't think anything else could have kept him from the Zetterberg-treatment. Sure, small consolation, but.....

 

[Pred303]

most of us agree that we started playing bad hckey 15 games ago, in the Feb 17th loss to NYI 5-2.

in those 15 games, we have scored 2 or less 12 times. only 1 or been shutout 5 times. one time we exploded for 5 goals against COL (by the way our last home win which was on Feb 24th, almost a month ago). two other times we scored 3 goals, and lost both games 4-3.

15 games. 29 goals scored. 1.93 goals per game. lowest in the league in the past 15 games. i don't think people really stop to think how poorly our forwards have truly been for a month now.

 

[ILikeItILoveIt]

Peeps, we have to figure out how to enjoy this thing. We're headed for the playoffs. Once the puck drops for Game #1, none of this will matter. NONE OF IT.

We will probably play Chicago in Round 1. A good match up for us except they have a history of winning and therefore have confidence in most situations. We are fragile, for good reason. We've had lousy outcomes to games we should have won.

If we beat the Hawks in Round 1, this Board will look like it did in 2012 when we beat the Wings in Round 1.

As we've seen, winning streaks seem unstoppable, until they stop. Losing streaks seem inevitable, until they aren't.

The Hockey Gods are punishing us, and we're not getting rewarded. We outplayed the Wild last night. Maybe Ollie is a High Priest of the Hockey Gods and we didn't know it.

Rinne was AVERAGE last night. Rinne playing Average = Preds Lose most of the time. He hasn't been totally right since he got hurt. I'm betting we hear after the season that he's still hurting. I suspect 3 or 4 others are hiding injuries as well. Not an excuse. Everybody plays hurt. You just never know in this league who's playing at 70% max due to injury.

I say we just fast-forward to the Playoffs and focus on one game at a time in a series. Think of the pent-up hot streaks we have on this team: Filip, Fisher, Willie, Neal, Weber, Franson, Rinne, Jones, etc. We've underperformed on and off for 15 games. We have 10 games to figure it out, then it's Best-of-7 and everyone is even.

We can do this. Don't fall prey to the same overemphasis we put on the first 61 games. We are good but not that good. In fact, nobody is that good. We were on a legit 122 point trend. The conference will be won with 110. We're not bad right now, we're just getting bad results. We are one or two saves, or one or two corrected miscues from being 4-1 in our last 5. Instead we're 2-2-1.

As Pred fans, think what we've bled in the past to just make the playoffs. No matter how we got in, getting in was the key. Now we're going to get in, but because we're slumping in, we're treating it like THE total predictor for the playoffs. It is not. If it was, we would have beaten the Coyotes in Round 2 of 2012. We were the better team with huge mojo. How would you like to be the BJs or the Leafs or the Sharks or the Coyotes or the Oilers or the Stars ........... You get it. Their fans would give their left ... wing to be us.

It's the same guys that dazzled for 61 games. They will dazzle again, led by Rinne playing good some nights and great the rest of the nights. I choose to believe that no matter what my eyes see right now.

In 1973, NY Mets Reliever Tug McGraw (dad of Tim) used to pound his glove on his leg as he walked off the mound to end an inning chanting their rally cry that year: "Ya Gotta Believe". They ended the regular season with a 82-79 record, won the National League pennant, and lost to the A's in 7 games. With his son chomping at the bit to sing out ILIILI more often, lets adopt that slogan and have some fun down the stretch.

After all, what's the alternative? To predict doom, retreat from the pain, and then get some perverse satisfaction out of saying "see, I told ya what would happen". Lets "believe" and if we're going to go down, lets go down in flames!!!

 

[FossilFndr]

Peeps, we have to figure out how to enjoy this thing. We're headed for the playoffs. Once the puck drops for Game #1, none of this will matter. NONE OF IT. ..............

Lets "believe" and if we're going to go down, lets go down in flames!!!

Already posted the video recently so just a mention of Bluto's speech in Animal House. Still feels like its' over after this last month but...

Bluto: Over? Did you say “over� Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

 

[mwvermillion]

one thing i will say, is Terry might be old, and repeditive, and not the sharpest tool in the shed. But he's the only guy assosiated with our broadcast crew that has the guts to say anything critical about the team. Frankenstu makes me want to shoot someone when he goes on and on about some simple frigging hockey play and calls it a 'great job' by so and so. then we get to watch him butcher some replay, "stop it right there guys", and show some wonderful play where we actually finally cleared a puck and everyone involed made a "smart", "great" play. in fairness to him, since his actual hockey highlight was actually ever just clearing the puck out of the defensive zone and it was a 'great' play to actually chip it in deep, his viewpoint as to what actual good hockey is is limited to what normal 4th line grinders are asked to do every shift.

when you're winning most every night you can usually dismiss or just laugh at the stupidity of it all. but when you have the worst record in the league over the last 15 games, have scored the fewest goals in the league in the last 8 games (14) while giving up 3 goals per game, and have a 5 game home losing streak, and every other play was a 'realy smart play', well one's patience with stupidity and concussioned lawyers hockey idiocy runs out.

Listen to the radio broadcast. Brent Peterson has no patience for weak play.

 

[Pred303]

lol ilikeit. once playoffs start, whether we're the 3rd or 8th seed it will be a different season to me.

but. i admit. i will never forget or forgive the disappointments and lost promises of this regular season.

 

[Pred303]

Listen to the radio broadcast. Brent Peterson has no patience for weak play.

i agree mw. the radio crew is difficult to listen to, but peterson will say what he thinks and call players out.