What an awesome game to watch. So much skill. We had no answer for their top line, they had no answer for Lethera and Tank. That move on Tank's second goal was unreal. I watched it about 10 times and just kept laughing.
Couple of thoughts:
Steen might not be scoring, and I also don't really care for him on the PP point, but man is he still an effective hockey player. Just makes great reads, and plays great defense. Had at least 3-4 times this game where his backchecking sprung the rush.
Oshie looks like crap. It's not even a little like crap, it's super crap. However, he did make the potentially game-saving play on that Seguin rebound that was just sitting in front of our net with Elliott swimming. Glad to still see the hustle.
I was actually impressed a bit with Berglund tonight. That's really the type of play we need from him on a game by game basis. Just get tenacious on the puck, and make the simple play. Shoot when you have a lane, look to go pass-off-pads. Make a pass and get to the net, then work hard to retrieve. Get back on D and move your man out of the way. Really don't need/want him to do anything fancy, because that's when he makes the bad play. He plays like that every game, points will come, his shot is too good not to go in some of the time.
Elliott gave up his first softie of the year on the third goal, but he also made some absolutely incredible saves. Benn and Seguin should have had at least one more each.
I really liked Gunnarson. I think his speed is going to be a huge asset for us once he's shaken off the rust a bit. He looked faster then Jay-Bo at times, and he also seems to play a simple, yet high-IQ type of game.
AP. He FINALLY made a play tonight that looked like vintage AP, where he had the puck in our corner of the D-zone, had two forecheckers closing in on him, and beat both of them with a nice little pass into the middle to Schwartz to spring the rush. That's the type of play I remember him making all the time a couple of years ago. However, he hasn't looked like the guy we all thought was a surefire Norris contender from 11-12, frankly in quite some time. I remember talking about him that year, and saying to all my friends here (I live in Chicago) that he was going to the Hall of Fame if he kept improving. He hasn't. In fact, I'm wondering if getting Jay-Bo has had a bit of a negative impact on him. (Bear with me, I'm having some fun with reasonable speculation here in an attempt to figure out why AP hasn't looked Norris in awhile)
Two reasons: 1) Jay-Bo is all about not missing time. I think he allows himself to stay on the peripheral at times, especially in the offensive zone, so as not to take unnecessary hits. He especially doesn't try to over-exert himself in a way that could put him in any type of a bad situation, even if that means eating the puck in an unfavorable place in the defensive zone, but a place he's comfortable that he's not going to get hit/hurt. I'm not calling him soft per se, but more like, he doesn't take -any- chances to put himself in a vulnerable position. You see it a lot on dump-ins, he will take a more outside looping route to the puck, generally putting the offensive player on his outside hip and getting to the puck a lot slower then he could if he took a better angle, and when he arrives at the puck, he doesn't have any options other then to push the puck forward away from the defender, or -try- and reverse it, but all the while knowing the puck will most likely hit the forechecker and that forechecker will gain the puck. He doesn't, however, put himself in a position to have a forechecker get a hit on him, especially from an angle. I think this makes AP-Jay-Bo a bit predictable, and allows the F2 to get in on AP a lot faster then maybe otherwise, because the percentage is high that the puck is coming right to AP. I also wonder if this penchant for not taking chances has rubbed off on AP, and he has stopped putting himself in positions where he's uncomfortable getting hit, as he now believes that getting through the season healthy is more important then being the best player he can be.
2) The other reason I wonder if Jay-Bo isn't so great with AP is that when you look at most of the other top Dmen, they aren't usually playing with a partner at the level of Jay-Bo. This actually allows them to be "The Man" a little bit more. We saw it with AP when he was with Cola, but once he got Jay-Bo, it seems like that's when his play started regressing. You look around the league though, and really, with the exception of maybe Keith-Seabrook, most Norris contenders aren't playing with people as talented as Jay-Bo. I think Keith runs that pairing though, and AP being younger sort of deferred to Jay-Bo when they got matched up.
The only other things I can think of is that his knee injury knocked him off the pedestal of HOF to usually really good, which doesn't really make sense to me, or Hitch just gives him latitude b/c of his contract, or his TOI, or whatever. I really don't know at this point. All I do know is that the guy I used to love to watch dominate without ever having to play one minute in the offensive zone, and a guy I really believed could one day go into the HOF, has fallen far, far off that pedestal.