I believe you are BOTH right. It's not like the team isn't working, they are. Even Tanguay is skating pretty hard...he's taking stupid penalties because he thinks that putting his stick in the mid-section of the opposing player is doing something when it usually results in a penalty. Instead of skating harder and taking the guy out, he's making a bad play. But at the same time, it's not like he's disinterested and not trying.
I do agree with TV that it's annoying to always read complaints from others that 'so and so is lazy' or that the team is playing 'lazy' when it's not always accurate. They could be playing better or smarter but there haven't been many games this year where I was unhappy with their overall effort.
In my opinion, Av-merican has the correct answer below:
I believe this is accurate. There was a shift very late in the game last night where ,I believe it was Grigorenko who forechecked really hard against a panther in his own zone, took the man out and got the puck...and I was like....YEAH! Where the hell has THAT been all year?? The Avs as a team are WAY too content to just give the puck to the other team and let them come at us. It's insanely EASY for other teams to break the puck out against us...we're essentially waiting for it to happen. THIS is a huge part of what is wrong with this club.
If Roy wants to put Everberg on the Duchene line, Skille on the Mack line and Comeau with Soderberg, those guys will need to forecheck like Grigorenko did to put some frikkin' pressure on the other team for a change. Otherwise, they're just going north-south the whole game and not doing a hell of a lot.
I'm not saying the Avs players are lazy and they're not skating hard. I'm saying their compete level is not good enough. Other teams are out-competing them.
On the first penalty Tanguay tried to defend using his stick and he got a penalty because of it which lead to a PP goal for Florida instead of moving his feet and using his body to defend. That's not competing hard enough in your own D-zone.
The first goal Florida scored was also because Mitchell didn't confront the Florida player at the blue line and prevent him from entering the D-zone. Instead he backed off and let him enter the D-zone without putting up a fight. The guy skated in and got a good shot off and scored and nobody even touched him. That's not competing hard enough.
The Avs had a couple power plays early and rather than fight for position in front of the net in order to screen the goalie and get shots on net and battle for a rebound they decided to pass the puck around the perimeter for over a minute without a shot on net. They did this twice. Rycroft showed the video during intermission and highlighted this in slow motion. In interviews before the game Roy said this is exactly what he DIDN'T want to see so it's not like it was strategy handed down by the coaching staff.
There are many, many, many situations like this over the first 8 games that are becoming a significant barrier to success. Hell, even one of the Florida players said in an interview after the game that the Avs are more or less easy to play against right now (I'm paraphrasing).
I think the Avs players want to win, I think they believe they are working hard, however there are lots of moments so far this season where the other teams are simply out-competing them. Yeah, part of it might be lack of confidence and part of it may be indecisiveness because of new players on the team but at some point they have to show up and out-compete their opponents for a full 60 minutes to get back on track. Once they do this a few times their confidence will come back and good things will start to happen.
This isn't some new concept I've come up with. This is a very old belief, specially in hockey, where the best way to get out of a slump is to simply work harder than your opponent and give them no opportunity to beat you.
