This game felt strangely important to the team.
A lot of guys were playing for their NHL existence on our side (Studnicka, Dries, Aman, Di Giuseppe, Joshua, Kravstov, Burroughs). Then we have 2 rookies on D and a NHL rookie in Kuzmenko who is feeling the hard love. Then we have NHL vets getting challenged by the coach at season's end.
With all that, I felt the team poked the bear (good) and then struggled to fight back (bad).
We have a real problem with physical teams and its not just that we get overpowered - we get flustered, over-aggressive and we lose our positioning all over the ice. We lose our composure and discipline when physically challenged.
Today, we didnt so much lose the physical battle as we lost our heads.
Goal 1 - puck put in deep. McWard is first to go to the boards putting his check to the ice freeing the puck.
Bear follows but doesn't play puck allowing his man to chip it back behind goal, past McWard with a play to feed infront on the far side.
Dries manages to be there positionally but is mentally floating and loses his man - the eventual trigger man and rebound guy - in the slot.
McWard retreats to the netfront and probably should have cleared the man Dries lost instead of spinning to play the puck in his feet but it's a tough complaint at that point in the play.
Goal 2 - the team is starting to press. Kuzmenko mishandled the puck to turn it over, then does a very weak fly-by back-check on the puck carrier along the boards allowing that player lift the puck into our zone for a potential 2v2.
Myers tries to swat the puck back to the blueline but only gets it to the 2nd forward. From here Myers goes panic hero mode and tries to step up on the new puck carrier with his previous check now wide to his side.
Bear was adjusting to step up on the 2nd forward but is in no position to shutdown the forward on the far side of Myers. He swaps course to obstruct a centering pass and Myers manages to affect F2 enough that a crosscrease pass isn't attempted...
Because back behind the play the forwards went for a line change. I wonder if a coach got upset with the Kuzmenko effort and yelled for a change which screwed us. Otherwise, Kravstov pulled a JT Miller walk to the bench as the low forward on the play.
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Hard to demand too much with the half Grinder lineup right now but I like it as a coaching tactic to make guys play more like a Di Giuseppe or a Joshua to round their game. It will be nice to see Mikeyhev level guys in those spots next season.
Kravstov destroyed any good will he had built up with that atrocity of a game. I felt he was notably soft and dumb in his he would check, giving up the wrong turn or angle to the opposition at times. I'm ready to shoot him into the sun. I don't see how you move the team forward in the manner needed while trying to reel up this anchor.
Hirose was excellent again in one of our hardest played games of the year.
McWard handled himself well I thought. No elite upside here but far from a stiff.
I'm ready to move on from Bear and keep Burroughs. One felt scrambly. The other was one of our most notable players physically who bore the brunt of standing up for the team along the boards.
Our forwards could not figure out how to handle the Kings breakout which was putting the puck to a sagging forward at their defensive halfwall behind our 1st layer of forecheckers and then forcing our 2nd layer to chase horizontally to pressure. It broke our pressure time and again. I'm curious is this is a typical feature of the Kings breakout or an adjustment a veteran team can make to opposing system play like ours.
Management really seems ready for a new year.
