hockey is a strange game. we didn't really generate much 5 on 5 in the offensive zone, and yet we score 5 goals.
..amazing how many odd man rushes we created last night against their defense.
..just off the top of my head, we had the ekholm to smith breakaway, the fiala-smith fiala goal, the fiala to josi stop, the forsberg to sissons stop, the forsberg breakaway. 3 of our goals.
..smith and fiala have looked awesome these past 10 games. part turris, part confidence.
..the last 30 minutes it looked like a chinese firedrill in our defensive zone.
..Boston very good up front.
..our inability to clear the puck once the other team goes all in offensively kills us.
..trying to quantify some of our late troubles closing out a game.
1)we rely on our d-men a lot to jump into the play and help create our offense. when we have to switch to protect the lead mode they have to stay back and we have trouble generating o zone time
2)defensively the lack of size of several of our forwards means that our best offensive forwards cann't clear the puck when opposing dmen pinch down the boards constantly
3)the best defensive fowards we have with size (watson,sissons) are really our weakest offensive players. yet we are forced to give them more and more ice time in crunch time to fight along the boards to try to clear the puck. so the offense tends to die late.
4)we take entirely too many penalties late in most games trying to play defense.
5)our empty net troubles relate to those same forwards (watson, sissons, bonino) getting much of our late time.
..fiala is gaining confidence nightly. what a shot on that goal.
..smith. he just has the knack to create scoring chances. if he shoots 17% he will score 30 something. so streaky though.
..bonino has real offensive instincts around the net. not really seeing any in open ice or playmaking so far. he looks great in close though.
..our PP home streak came to an end quietly.
..on the PK goal allowed watson chased a man across from his left point position to the right point. sissons simply didn't get tot he right spot in the switch.
..rinne with a good 3 goal allowed game honestly facing 40 shots. hated the chara bouncing puck goal. rinne simply didn't get in front of it, like a shortstop making an error.
..another disappointing game from aberg even lined with forsberg.
..how did gaudreau score those 3 playoff goals in 8 games again?
..really like turris, but his scoring is benefiting from fiala and smith getting so hot as much as they are benefitting from him.
..really cussed irwin when we were leading 4-1 and he got caught carrying the puck in deep with us having 4 men down low.
..great little tap play from ekholm to spring smith on that breakin. that was a huge goal.
..josi with a perfect pass to spring forsberg. had to really thread the needle.
..unusal for us to pot 5 goals and not have more points from our d-men.
..amazing how quickly we caught STL after trailing them by 7 points and them with a game in hand two weeks ago.
It wasn't everything we wanted it to be as far as how it looked. But it was another big, important win.
