Eric Sachs
Registered User
- Jan 31, 2007
- 18,643
- 1
It also depends on the shifts leading up to the penalty. Not defending Pete on that draw. It was boneheaded. Not going to make blanket statements about his decision making either though.
Pete almost always has zajac take those draws too. Was there some reason he couldn't put him out there? If not I guess he honestly figured there was so little time left nothing could happen. Bad move either way.
Zajac had one shift on the PK the entire game.. in the 3rd period. Henrique and Elias had two each.
And the shift prior to the penalty was Henrique's line. Zajac was on the bench. To Pete's defense, Gionta hadn't played since three minutes earlier when he was on the ice for the 1st PP goal Philly scored. Maybe he thought it worked so well last time and he was well rested.. let's try again?
There's one reason I can think of. The draw itself was Pejorative Slured.. no reasoning to defend that at all. Throughout the game, maybe they wanted to limit the TOI they gave to their top 3 lines on the PK so they can play more on ES. That, to me.. is an acceptable (yet wrong, especially after it didn't work the first two times) decision. Not sure why you have Salvador still getting 18 minutes TOI at ES though.