Observations, Part IX

[Pred303]

well let's see if we can actually keep this thing going now. Hope the team feels better than I do today lol

and welcome aboard Panic at the back

Click to read more...

 

[Roman Yoshi]

Since I missed the love fest last thread, Merry belated Christmas to all of you (even the ones I disagree with regularly) from the frozen tundra of Fargo. Can't wait to get back down to 60 degree weather and watching Preds games.

 

[twig]

Since I missed the love fest last thread, Merry belated Christmas to all of you (even the ones I disagree with regularly) from the frozen tundra of Fargo. Can't wait to get back down to 60 degree weather and watching Preds games.

75 today

 

[BigFatCat999]

well let's see if we can actually keep this thing going now. Hope the team feels better than I do today lol

and welcome aboard Panic at the back

Pedialyte, Headache powder, 5hr energy.

Now back to Preds talk.

Do you think the Preds CAN make a trade? Poile is incredibly predictable. Hell, I have an algebraic formula to predict his moves.

 

[Armourboy]

The Preds can make a trade, whether Poile can is a different matter.

Break kind of came at a bad time. Guys were finally starting to get going, hopefully they pick it back up.

 

[Pred303]

one big trade obstacle for right now is how well Colorado and Edmonton have been playing of late. EDM in that terrible Pacific division has this dream when McDavid returns they might actually have a playoff position chance, and then here you have Colorado just behind us and rallying.

So that makes a Nugent-Hopkins and Duchene trade that much more difficult right now. and then you have CLB, that already knows they aren't going to make the playoffs except come a miracle, so they are in no hurry, knowing the longer they wait on Johansson toward the trade deadline the more they can probably get.

trades for these big of a players are never easy to do, it's much more difficult than just people on here saying "Poile pull the switch!" like most seem to want to believe

 

[Scoresberg]

trades for these big of a players are never easy to do, it's much more difficult than just people on here saying "Poile pull the switch!" like most seem to want to believe

Yep, that's true usually these kind of blockbuster trades happen during offseason. However, CBJ is listening offers and considering trading Johansen, no one in their organization has come out and said 'Johansen isn't going anywhere'. And like you said, they don't really have a chance to playoffs and we gotta remember those problems between RyJo and their newly acquired coach. And not to mention their problems with the contract last year. +++ They would have a substitute for RyJo in Jenner. And they really need some defensive help.

So, this might just be our window.

 

[Pred303]

and what if CLB is demanding Jones, Wilson and Fiala for Johansson right now? we simply don't know and will never know. Again CLB has time on their side since they already accept that they aren't going to make the playoffs.

 

[Panic at the Back]

well let's see if we can actually keep this thing going now. Hope the team feels better than I do today lol

and welcome aboard Panic at the back

Thank you.

Kind of bummed in Ohio till tomorrow and son doesn't have TV. Don't have centre ice package...

is there an online radio call available?

 

[Enoch]

Thank you.

Kind of bummed in Ohio till tomorrow and son doesn't have TV. Don't have centre ice package...

is there an online radio call available?

Should be available on the website.

 

[Panic at the Back]

Should be available on the website.

Thanks found it on the Preds app. Very cool.

 

[Armourboy]

Well so much for picking up where we left off.

 

[cleangene63]

Could the preds just send out 4 Dmen, station them at the blue line and have Ribz behind the goal to retrieve missed shots and pass it back them as our new PP?? It's basically the plan now anyway, so can't hurt anything.

 

[Pred303]

I admit, sometimes I curse the day that I crossed the line from a casual fan over to an obsessed hockey fan. it makes no sense really, there are a million other things to do that are enjoyable without the pain and anger that goes along with being a hockey fan. add in that I've probably spent enough money on this team to buy a nice vacation home somewhere, no I take that back, I HAVE spent enough to.

 

[Pred303]

nope, doesn't feel much better this morning. not a ton to say about this one, but a few random observations;

first let's break the goals allowed down;
..1) gaustad, our defensive zone specialist, has the draw stolen from him cleanly. Nystrom, the worst defensive player we have loses his man completely chasing the puck like a peewee player, and rinne gets beat under blocker side arm cleanly on a puck he should have had.
..2)smith takes an offensive zone penalty, which we must lead the league in taking, we fail to clear the puck and Jackman trails his man on the awful rebound rinne leaves right on his stick.
..3)they skate around for 30 seconds on jones, get an open shot from straight on at blueline due to defensive confusion, Jackman lets his man stand untouched in front of rinne for a deflection

...Detroit is such a good passing team. still. tape to tape. fast. catching every pass cleanly. makes them so difficult to forecheck.
..when we can not generate a forecheck we always have difficulty scoring.
...we simply could never generate enough really good scoring chances.
..maz played well, made a couple of difficult stops, but really wasn't challenged very often.
...rinne never really looked settled, but made 4 really good stops to keep us this close.
..Detroit made adjustments against weber on the pp (duh). we didn't. having said that, weber with 3 misses high or wide after all the time we spent setting him up really hurt.
...do we really even have forwards on our pp?
...the real problem with our pp is lack of movement up front. forwards go to their spot and don't move. they should be darting in and out of slot and exchanging places constantly. bad coaching.

...funny how when we struggle now all the blame goes on poile. when we struggled in years past, all the blame went to trotz. in our top 9 forwards, only Wilson, smith really played under trotz. the rest are new. this is their team.
...we are 14-3-3 when we score first. and a pitiful 3-9-3 when we don't. this is one huge difference between last year and this year.
...last year we were very resilient. you never felt we were going to lose when we got behind. this year feels different. of course when your goaltending is weaker and your offense is weaker and your pk is weaker and your 5 on 5 play is much weaker, that's going to happen.

...we are never going to score many goals when gaustad's line gets more time than your third line. of course your third line has to have talent to demand that.
...trailing by a goal with a minute to play and looking up and seeing gaustad and jones out there makes my hockey mind hurt.
...basically the only real offense we generated was the Forsberg line and a couple of chances generated by Wilson.

..watching the replay and hearing our stellar broadcast crew not know what they were seeing (kept thinking the 2nd goal was a bank off boards and not a simple bad rebound) or totally failing to ever put failure responsibility (Nystrom, Jackman, rinne) on any pred sickens me as a hockey guy.

oh well, I remember when we actually had a 2 game winning streak. I liked that much better

 

[MrMariusz]

We really need more net presence, both on and off the PP.
We have guys making great rushes, but they either score directly or plainly give it away because no one bothered to join the rush and occupy sweet spots around the net.

 

[Armourboy]

People are blaming Poile because he is the only factor left that hasn't been changed ( and some of his players). He is also catching more blame because it seems he refuses to do what he needs to to make a move.

I think even the most supportive of us have about run out of patience.

 

[Enoch]

nope, doesn't feel much better this morning. not a ton to say about this one, but a few random observations;

first let's break the goals allowed down;
..1) gaustad, our defensive zone specialist, has the draw stolen from him cleanly. Nystrom, the worst defensive player we have loses his man completely chasing the puck like a peewee player, and rinne gets beat under blocker side arm cleanly on a puck he should have had.

...Detroit is such a good passing team. still. tape to tape. fast. catching every pass cleanly. makes them so difficult to forecheck.

...do we really even have forwards on our pp?
...the real problem with our pp is lack of movement up front. forwards go to their spot and don't move. they should be darting in and out of slot and exchanging places constantly. bad coaching.

...funny how when we struggle now all the blame goes on poile. when we struggled in years past, all the blame went to trotz. in our top 9 forwards, only Wilson, smith really played under trotz. the rest are new. this is their team.

I really felt like these points needed to be highlighted.

Detroit's passing make mistakes happen.

We have never had that type of passing.

I bolded the powerplay portion because you are so right. You can't run the umbrella powerplay and be stationary. It works against you and allows for easy PK and turnover chances.

I've always felt that Poile is a mixed bag. He has very clear attributes, but his flaws are not masked by these attributes. They are just as readily apparent.

This season can be salvaged. This team has talent. We need some of our forwards to breakout or we need to change the forward culture, somehow.

 

[101st_fan]

People are blaming Poile because he is the only factor left that hasn't been changed ( and some of his players). He is also catching more blame because it seems he refuses to do what he needs to to make a move.

I think even the most supportive of us have about run out of patience.

First of all, how is he supposed to make a move during a roster freeze? Secondly, when did it become easy to make a move in the NHL? Third, what move addresses that players that performed last season are not this and that the team is not playing consistent hockey from period to period, much less from game to game?

Steve pointed out the change in our forwards over the past couple seasons with most of our current crop either playing little under Trotz or only under Lavi.

 

[Armourboy]

First of all, how is he supposed to make a move during a roster freeze? Secondly, when did it become easy to make a move in the NHL? Third, what move addresses that players that performed last season are not this and that the team is not playing consistent hockey from period to period, much less from game to game?

Steve pointed out the change in our forwards over the past couple seasons with most of our current crop either playing little under Trotz or only under Lavi.

Obviously we are talking outside of the roster freeze. Poile is the one remaining factor of the organization that is unchanged. When the results are roughly the same he is the only one left to blame.

May not completely agree with it, but I can understand it.

 

[Roman Yoshi]

My enthusiasm for this team is about as high as my enthusiasm for a colonoscopy.

Hope they give me a reason to believe tonight.

 

[Pred303]

well, I'm not confident, nor highly excited for tonight. but it's hockey and there is always the chance we find ourselves beginning any day.

 

[101st_fan]

well, I'm not confident, nor highly excited for tonight. but it's hockey and there is always the chance we find ourselves beginning any day.

One of the next two games will look like the beginning of a turn around ... the other probably looks like the game versus the Wings.This team has no consistency.

 

[101st_fan]

Obviously we are talking outside of the roster freeze. Poile is the one remaining factor of the organization that is unchanged. When the results are roughly the same he is the only one left to blame.

May not completely agree with it, but I can understand it.

The "he is the only one left to blame" line of logic fails to explain why these same players in the top 6 performed well for the first half to 2/3rds of last season under Lavi but then saw a drop in performance.

In the Trotz era, the coach got blamed for "sucking the offense" out of players. This season we are watching almost the entire forward corps underperform compared to last season and historical norms for them. Is it Poile's fault that the team didn't practice 3on3 after the regular season began? Is it Poile making in game decisions concerning ice time? Is it Poile failing to keep the team accountable and playing a team game rather than going out as a series of individuals trying to do it all themselves? Is it Poile selecting the players and style of our second PP unit?

 

[Pred303]

I like lavy and his offensive approach. I also agree it was time for a change from Trotz, if for no other reason than to re-energize the fanbase after a couple of demoralizing playoffs exits, followed by the Suter and Radulov defections and a couple of failed seasons (with weak rosters).

But Lavy and the coaching staff still enjoys sort of a honeymoon period where struggles don't fall on their shoulders. Lavy is more of a general as a head coach, he needs good assistants as his tacticians. His method isn't so much as an on ice tactician but as a motivator and enabler. Which is fine, many great coaches have been that way. But again, his assistants have to be really good. Housley and McCarthy are never directly criticized when the pp and pk struggle. Housley's responsibilities seem to be very high. He basically runs on ice strategy from what I can tell. notice in most time outs it's Housley drawing up plays and who the players gather around (not all the time, but more often than not). Housley and McCarthy seem to run most of the practices from what I've seen. And then we all question goalie coaching during Rinne's struggles.

When they succeed, the coaching staff gets the credit, but when they don't it seems most of the frustration is directed at Poile. Everyone shares in this. Poile never makes a personnel move without input and agreement from his coaches. Poile deserves criticisms and praise both, but so does our coaching staff.

I always hated when fans piled up on Trotz for not being a really good coach. he was and is a great coach. I might not have always agreed with his defense first ideas, but he's a winner who was far more adaptable to the strengths of his team than 99% of the people on here gave him credit for. I always look at how Trotz changed systems completely when we had Kariya, Sully, Arnott, Dumont, Radulov, yet he got no credit from his critics for that (or now with Ovechkin and WSH).

Lavy and our coaches have to step up here as much as Poile, maybe more so. I believe Lavy can, he just needs to do it.