msrulo
Registered User
Niskanen -3 tonight with 17 mins of ice time, I guess Trotz is waking up to how bad he and Green is.
Niskanen -3 tonight with 17 mins of ice time, I guess Trotz is waking up to how bad he and Green is.
Career potential based on fan expectation is not the same as an on-ice threat recognized around the league. Kuz may or may not be that #2 guy one day. It will probably be a while before we find out, based on how things are going.
Niskanen did set up Ovie nicely in the closing minutes. That was a quality pass.
Also, the Tampa goals tonight weren't the facepalm variety, after ridiculous turnovers. Two of them slid through from the point. Generally, our D looked pretty good to me.
reposting from last gdt:
Ovie - Backstrom - Kuznetzov
Mojo - Burakovsky - Wilson
Chimera - Fehr - Ward
OBrien - Latta - Brouwer
When Laich comes back:
Ovie - Backstrom - Kuznetzov
Mojo - Burakovsky - Wilson
Chimera - Fehr - Ward
Latta - Laich - Brouwer
I assume Latta can play wing. If not, shuffle a bit in the bottom 6. That top 6 is where this is all heading. I know Laich and Brouwer are supposedly the Toxic Twins but it's the 4th line. They'll be playing 8 minutes against the mascot and two mites with the flu.
....
There's still a way to go from a crispness standpoint. I'm not sure I love their work ethic (or at least how it's directed). They generally outwork teams in their choppy way but it has a sort of aimlessness or stupidity to it. They need to work smarter and purge the glide that remains in their game. There's still not nearly enough stop and start in their game relative to most any other NHL contest. It's maybe the most weirdly defining attribute they have.
Niskanen -3 tonight with 17 mins of ice time, I guess Trotz is waking up to how bad he and Green is.
Listening on the radio, and they seem to think the goals have just been really nice deflections
Battle of Goalies. This was one of Bishop's better games this season and Holtby was not bad.
It was actually one of his worst for the first two periods he played horribly. He was spectacular in the third period when tb needed it.
Holtby played great. That last goal was a seeing eye shot and there is literally nothing he could have done on the other three goals. He made at least 6 10 bell saves in the first couple of periods that would have blown the game open for tb if he hadn't.
It was a great and intense game to watch. Caps PP makes it look so easy for the high slot shot.
Laich is so much better at LW than center, and Latta is the exact opposite. Why would you do that with line 4? Beyond that your "When Laich come back" is similar to mine with Brouwer/Wilson switching.
I love Wily but he hasn't looked very swift so far and he didn't in the Hershey game I watched either. Kind of looks a little bit to me like he did LAST pre-season. He's got to get it going if he wants to be a scoring line winger.
Alzner was worse than Niskanen. I put the first goal on Niskanen loafing back but otherwise he was alright. Some of it's the system itself with Alzner and tying up sticks because the D are often told to front the screener instead of tie them up, banking on the D to block the lane. I never liked that approach.D looked pretty shabby to me. Too many deflections from 5 feet and in. You can't let people stand in front of or beside your goaltender and let them get a stick on shots from the point on a regular basis. It's inevitable they're going to get there from time to time but you've got to at least try and take their stick away. Tonight we witness a high volume of shots getting through that were redirected by tampa forwards.
That was the top thing said about Ovechkin's game last year, no? He's hustling on the backcheck now but he still regularly looks clueless on the forecheck. Just fundamentally careless. I don't know what the answer is...blow it up? It's complacency.I think this is dead on.... I am not sure its learning a new system, either. Its been this way for some time.
It's impressive that you could even articulate it. I think the word glide hits home.
If we continue in our aimless and stupid choppy way, I want to see BMac address it. At this point I think we need to assume Trotz is smart enough to be able to get the most of his players. If not now, it will likely be never. Consult with BMac towards addressing a glider. It will make curing the glide from many others a lot easier. Start moving on from a rather static complacentchecking cashingcore of the past 4 years. Our problems have been deeper than solely coaching.
Trotz on Holtby said:“He made some good saves, but the goals were a little bit easy,” Trotz said. We’ve got to have those. There was one that was tipped. There’s nothing you can do about that, those high tips. The other ones, he’s got to have those.”
they all suck. niskanen had a bad night. Green again was on for 2 goals for and zero goals against. awful game for 52
Niskanen and Alzner had a poor night. Thier coverage in their own zone was pretty abysmal IMO and last I checked simply standing in the relative vicinity of your man and watching uncontested redirects is not how you play defense.
Green on the other hand was on the ice for 3 Caps goals, 2 ES and 1 PP, and none against so yeah just another krap game for him.
listening to trotz. hot goalie beat them. bad goaltending lost it. sounds like he thru holtby under the bus pretty strong.
This one's on the netminder. I think I posted at the start of this thread that I wondered how long a leash BT would have for goalies since he's 100% merit based in his lines. A good start by Peters tonight and another bad one by Holtby and I think we'll find out.
How long should be Holtby's leash? I mean, Trotz is giving him the opportunity to stamp his name as the starter for this team, but dude hasn't done anything yet to prove he can do it. If this continues, he's gonna have to check out what Peters has, right?
I got that out of it also. But its a lot different then when Oats did it. It seemed like Oats had not clue and was just passing blame. While Trotz looks at the game and just calls it as he sees it.