whew. finally could sleep decently after a hockey game again.
liked our jump. liked our effort. liked our defensive effort those first two periods. liked rinne especially in the third. liked the new kids game. liked the final score.
only criticisms I really had were our lack of traffic to the net till the third and the overall lack of finish, but without Wilson and Neal both of those were sort of expected. right now we're a perimeter team with small players on the ice. the team we iced last night can't beat a team with size and a good goalie very often. we have to have those two guys back. a few other thoughts the morning after;
..Beck and Cullen. strange to think they have become our leading scorers the last 10 or so games. but they have been.
..bourque, jarnkrok and santorelli got the vast bulk of our scoring chances. part of the reason we had no finish. bourque and jarnkrok both get chance after chance after chance open in the low slot. and never finish. give them credit for getting into a scoring position, but jeezus guys you have to actually score every now and then.
..we had several guys who played hard, just not very well.
..smith gets more chances than anyone in our top 6. that's through all out effort. he fluffs at least 2-3 good scoring chances every game, but again that's because of effort that got him those chances.
..smith our leading goal scorer again. he was 5th on the team about 3 weeks ago. shows our top end slump.
..somehow we have to reignite Forsberg and Ribeiro. without them producing at a high level, this is basically last year's team. and more than anything else why we've been in such a funk. neither was very good last night again.
..Jones-Franson were the weakest pair on the ice for us. both played poorly. franson early, jones randomly throughout. too many careless passes and giveaways. good teams would have made us pay for a couple of those.
about a 6 game winning streak could work miracles right now. seems and is unlikely. but it's hockey, anything is always possible.