GDT: 2/21 Winnipeg Jets @ Carolina Checkers

[Lazyking]

[/B]

Aside from Semin & Tlusty, I thought Drayson Bowman was the best player on the ice. Love that kid...his points will come.

I don't see it man.. yeah, he's working but his only move is to shoot it off the wing and that's not gonna beat NHL goalies (except Ward )

 

[Novacane]

I thought Wallace played another good game. He needs to be back next season.

 

[Identity404]

I don't see it man.. yeah, he's working but his only move is to shoot it off the wing and that's not gonna beat NHL goalies (except Ward )

It probably always works in practice so he keeps going back to it during the game.

 

[Lazyking]

I thought Wallace played another good game. He needs to be back next season.

Me too.. He hits and grinds.. does his job and actually, doesn't make this team just soft like they've been the past few years..

 

[Watershed]

Noodle seems to be doing alright. He has some good grind shifts when he is out there.

 

[CanesAvs16]

LOL, that was beyond soft

I'll take it though

Hey Aquinn001 on Ice... you took my avatar. Not cool man, not cool.

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[CanesAvs16]

So just got home from the game. My thoughts:

LaRose could be traded tomorrow and I think we would not be worse for wear
Wallace is good, loved his hitting tonight
JStaal was great, best player of the game IMO
Semin is amazing
E Staal needs to keep his attitude in check (but to his credit the refs were ********** horrible in the faceoff circles tonight)
Bowman looked good on the second line. I'll be okay giving him time to develop there, however, I personally prefer him on the third line (I think his style of play fits there better).
Corvo sucked. That flopping on the ice during the last goal, I wanted to kill him.
Murphy showed great promise tonight. He needs to gain about 20 pounds, he looked like a 15 year old next to everyone else on the ice.

Again, a personal preference I guess, Nash was alright, however, not impressive. Jordan, not impressive.

Cam, there are no words for what I just paid for and witnessed.

A lot of these are personal observations (I'm still fuming about most parts of the game, so a little bias may be showing). I understand we are plagued with injuries, but I just don't agree with our current lineup. Oh well, there is always Saturday's game I guess....

 

[Ole Gil]

Bowman/Wallace/Nodl all played great. As long as needing to score a goal never comes up, they belong on the big club forever and ever.

The frustrating part of this game was the defense was good enough to win. Probably good enough to win 3-1. I think their surprising reasonable level of competence makes Cam's stinker ten times as painful.

Excited to see Murphy's encore. Tentative to start, but looks like he was starting to do some of the stuff we're excited to see him do later in the game. Defensive stick work seemed really good. Frantisek Kaberle'esque?

edit: What was happening in the faceoff circles? Both sides seemed ready to drop the gloves with the linesmen. Jumbotron caught a spectacular eyeroll from one of the peg players. Would like to have heard some analysis on that nonsense.

 

[Boats Ahoes]

Hey Aquinn001 on Ice... you took my avatar. Not cool man, not cool.

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Take orders from someone with <200 posts? Tell your disappointment to suck it!

Lol seriously, I had no idea. Avatar change incoming

 

[Wolfpuck]

Cam Ward with the weak sauce tonight.

Ellis vs the Lightning?

 

[tomdundo]

My observations:

I have nothing to say about the first period. I had class until 7:15 and literally walked inside PNC right as the first period concluded.

Semin and Tlusty looked good from what I saw. Eric looked like garbage.

Murphy played far better than I expected in the two periods I saw out of him. He ended up playing the second most minutes on the team behind Faulk. Jordan played about 8 minutes. Murphy played almost 24.

Great work by Sanguinetti to block that shot on the 5-on-3.

Ward played the second goal terribly. I'm not really sure about the third goal, it was the opposite end of the rink and I couldn't really tell what was going on through the traffic. Haven't watched a replay besides what they showed on the jumbotron. Fourth goal...what the hell, Joe? Cam certainly could have saved that one, but Joe shouldn't have completely wiped out on that in the first place.

There were a few good hits that I noticed. A couple by Wallace, and one by Nodl of all people.

I hate the PNC-goers that sit around me. They are all super obnoxious, and believe they know everything. Michal Jordan is a French-Canadian name. As soon as the puck touches the blue paint, it's offsides. Every time a player falls, it's because he was tripped.


Also, what was with the linesmen throwing out Eric (and other players, seemed to be Eric most often to me) every third faceoff?

 

[Swag Surf Aho]

Just got back from the game as well and came out impressed besides Ward's play. He made a couple good rebound saves, and then the rest of it was just cake. As far as Wallace goes, the dude shows no scoring touch whatsoever. He was fed a beauty from Westgarth, but muffed the pass. He also had a nice breakaway, but shot wide. Corvo shows once again why he sucks.

I was most impressed by Murphy, can't say that I should be though. He recovered pretty quickly on his one defensive gaff near the end of the game and the shot went wide. Other than that, he broke up 5 or 6 scoring chances and was pretty good offensively as well, I loved it when he zoomed past the WPG skaters for the scoring chance he created. Expect a lot of that from this season. He needs to remain on the team imo. He was clearly the 2nd best defenseman on the team tonight aside from Faulk, although that's really not saying much.

BTW, that Semin pass was amazing!

 

[Vagrant]

Perhaps the only goal that was scored tonight by the Thrash was the one that ended it. Just.... inexplicably bad. Ellis until he posts a stinker. Seriously. The season is too short to not ride a hot hand. Look at Anaheim with the Fasth/Hiller situation. No reason to not have a competition in net because salary dictates you shouldn't have one. Meritocracy at the goaltender position needs to start now. Whoever earns the net keeps it.

 

[Novacane]

I've preached this in multiple threads, but I'll do it here too. The ******** during faceoffs needs to stop. Especially on icings. Icings are supposed to be lineup ---> drop puck. Not wait ---> stall ---> lineup ---> have the linesman give a speech ---> fake drop the puck ---> throw someone out ---> lecture the new faceoff man ---> fake drop puck again ---> back away from the dot and give the new faceoff man a stern look ---> finally drop the puck after 30 seconds. Seriously, it makes me livid. What is the point of icings when this happens? Icings aren't the time for linesmen to be on their fakedrop pedestals.

And another thing I noticed was the linesmen had no qualms about throwing any Canes out, but if they felt a Jet screwed up he'd say something to him and still let the Jet take the faceoff. I'm not saying it is black and white discrimination (couldn't find a better phrase), just very very annoying and predictable.

 

[nobuddy]

Ellis must start Saturday, but I'm we also desperately need Pitkanen to play that game as well. Stamkos, MSL, Conacher, Malone, VL4, Purcell and Co. against THAT defense is not going to be pretty.

 

[WinterHawk]

I thought the team looked great- especially given the injuries. With solid goaltending, that was a 3-1 if not 3-0 win. Remarkable considering...

Semin, JStaal, Wallace, Tlusty were all great. Murphy shows a lot of promise. I liked Bowman's game, but didn't even notice Nash in the third period. Other than the obvious one, there were a couple times I wasn't sure exactly where Corvo was going or why, but the guy does seem much improved. And thank god for Faulk!

There was a lot of speed, good chances on net, and some great hits. Keep that up and the points will come.

It was a bad time for Ward to have this kind of night, but I wouldn't be too quick to run him out of town and embrace Ellis as the new saviour. We've only seen 3 (?) full games from him, after all. I agree with increasing his share of the work load, and with giving him the next 2-3 games to help Ward shake this off (and he will shake this off).

 

[Vagrant]

I've preached this in multiple threads, but I'll do it here too. The ******** during faceoffs needs to stop. Especially on icings. Icings are supposed to be lineup ---> drop puck. Not wait ---> stall ---> lineup ---> have the linesman give a speech ---> fake drop the puck ---> throw someone out ---> lecture the new faceoff man ---> fake drop puck again ---> back away from the dot and give the new faceoff man a stern look ---> finally drop the puck after 30 seconds. Seriously, it makes me livid. What is the point of icings when this happens? Icings aren't the time for linesmen to be on their fakedrop pedestals.

And another thing I noticed was the linesmen had no qualms about throwing any Canes out, but if they felt a Jet screwed up he'd say something to him and still let the Jet take the faceoff. I'm not saying it is black and white discrimination (couldn't find a better phrase), just very very annoying and predictable.

I feel like linesmen throwing guys out is a pretty new phenomenon. At least as quickly as they do it now. It seems like prior to the last lockout, guys were given every chance to try to take a fair draw before the linesman deemed him unwilling to play fair and tossed him. Now it seems like every draw that is taken, somebody gets tossed from it. I agree entirely that the self-important pump fake drops by the linesmen needs to go. I think that lining up a guy to get intentionally tossed on an icing play to earn 10 more seconds of rest for your players needs to be a penalty. If sending the puck over the glass is delay of game, what is that nonsense?

You literally have one job, puck dropper. Drop the damn puck.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Who cares who was on the roster. The D played well in front of Ward tonight and Ward alone lost us the game. I can't remember that ever happening before.

I wasn't trying to justify Ward's game. Just responding to Novacane's comment about being angry, which was later clarified so there's nothing much more to say on the subject.

I said this a few days ago, but I've written off anything that happens before we get some key players back. We are literally icing an AHL-quality defense at this point. We have one complete forward line. We're not going to win with this roster, so personally I'm not tying my emotions up in whether we lose because of this or that guy having an off night. Yeah, it's time for Ellis to have a turn. Not worth getting up in arms about it at this point.

 

[donkshow]

No chance Murphy plays more than his 5 games I assume, right?

 

[WinterHawk]

I was most impressed by Murphy... He needs to remain on the team imo.

Sadly, an emergency recall from junior has to be returned to junior once his position can be filled. Once Pitkanen is back, Murphy goes back to Kitchener.

At least Muller played him! Maurice probaby would've given him no more than 8 mins. If you're gonna recall him, give him serious minutes and some exposure.

 

[Novacane]

Just realized Murphy played 23:51.

 

[Vagrant]

The organization is more afraid of Michal Jordan then they are of just about any player I have ever seen them call up to play "significant" minutes. I wasn't surprised a bit that Murphy came straight up from Juniors and supplanted him.

 

[tomdundo]

Just realized Murphy played 23:51.

And Jordan played less than 8.

 

[Novacane]

I feel like linesmen throwing guys out is a pretty new phenomenon. At least as quickly as they do it now. It seems like prior to the last lockout, guys were given every chance to try to take a fair draw before the linesman deemed him unwilling to play fair and tossed him. Now it seems like every draw that is taken, somebody gets tossed from it. I agree entirely that the self-important pump fake drops by the linesmen needs to go. I think that lining up a guy to get intentionally tossed on an icing play to earn 10 more seconds of rest for your players needs to be a penalty. If sending the puck over the glass is delay of game, what is that nonsense?

You literally have one job, puck dropper. Drop the damn puck.

Yep. I guess the only reason I can come up with for the rash of toss-outs post lockout is some desire to create more penalties from throwing two guys out on the same team. There's no other explanation. And I agree with the delay of game idea too. Case in point was Komarov a week ago. A few long shifts followed by icings, so he gets orders to pretend he doesn't know who's taking the faceoff (Grabovski was on the ice) then comes swooping in and doesn't even attempt to win the faceoff. Intentionally just swipes over the dot before the linesman was hunched over. What was that other than an obvious stall for time? The NHL needs to change the rules to take this **** out, or we'll be seeing it every game. It's turning into a major pet peeve of mine.

 

[tarheelhockey]

I personally thought he played very tentative and didn't join the rush as much as a player like him should. Also his passes were not crisp for a NHL player...lots were in guys skates or out of reach. First game though, so some jitters are to be expected.

I saw those things as well. His reluctance to jump into the rush was actually a positive, I thought -- especially when contrasted against Sanguinetti's cluster**** of a hockey sense that causes him to just jump every play at the half-wall. Murphy actually looked like he was using his head out there... maybe over thinking it just slightly, out of an abundance of caution, but I am 100% ok with that from a small defenseman who doesn't need reckless pinches to get his points.

The passing is an issue, I agree. He's got to be sharper. NHL defenses are quick to the puck, so he better start putting more mustard on those passes or he'll be a turnover machine.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what this kid can do. He was a lot of fun to watch.