Well, Donovan sucked out there defensively....He should have been paired with AMac at minimum, but our D needed AMac to eat up minuted due to the lack of depth. Three blatant gaffes that led to goals by Donovan, one he stood around watching.
Poulin did not look bad.....just not good. The Isles hung him out to dry. Our backcheck was all over the place as if we didn't expect Philly to have anything.
Two ODD goals charged them up. We got energy through a well timed fight but Philly got more opportunity through bad play to take this.
Vinny Lecavalier kills us yet again.
CMac should not have sit....I'd rather they dress him as a defenseman and sat Donovan, but that would have been rough.
Anyone else notice how AFRAID our guys are of going into the slot/crease/middle? We just let them set up a box defense to keep us out. Tavares has NO ONE to pass to unless it's someone behind the net with coverage or on the same/opposite wall far away. We have three guys high on the blueline for him, though, thankfully.....so they can get shots with NO ONE to get rebounds.
So many problems with last night. Donovan the biggest. Not far behind the gameplan. We HAVE TO have a tougher backcheck and some guys with balls enough to jam down the middle! I wanna see PMB and Grabner and JT going THROUGH the middle and Moulson sneaking in and sticking in the goalie's face. We can't expect to win unless we play like 29 other teams are willing to. This silk glove panzie hockey has to END!
Philly is a terrible team, the Islanders should have smoked them yesterday, but they played like crap and the score showed it.
Donovan and Carkner were absolutely awful out there and the forwards didn't help much. But if the Islanders are going to get better, then they must get used to these growing pains from Donovan (and deHaan, Reinhart, Pulock, Pokka, Pedan, Pelech, Mayfield) because I've NEVER seen a defenseman that comes into the league and doesn't struggle in his first season. Except maybe Denis Potvin. Even Kenny Jonsson was terrible in his early Toronto years.
IF, the young core is good enough to compete for cups, then you bring in some strong vets. If they aren't, and you plan to continue to add youth, then it's slow and steady and expect inconsistency and poor results. At times.
Isles are HALF PREGNANT in that regard.
They don't bring in great players (like DET, CHI used to bring in players like Shanahan, Hossa) - instead, they add vets like Regin, Bouchard, Carkner, Martinek (who I like) and then expect the young guys to get better. If you're going to go with youth, go with youth. If you're going to play vets, play GOOD vets.
Losing Visnovsky was obviously going to hurt and it clearly shows. Everyone was already playing 1-2 spots above their expectations - now it's worse.
Donovan reminds me of Bailey, on the ice with Schremp, Comeau, Hilbert, Park, Sim and we wonder why he struggled. Except on defense, it's much much harder.
Remember Viktor Hedman, Tyler Myers, Zack Bogosian, Luke Schenn, Dougie Hamilton and Adam Larsson - some were protected early on, some shined early on, all have looked good and horrible. To expect anything different shows you're just not paying attention.