Montreal is great at selling calls. Any Bs fan can tell you that.
Typical NHL fashion the refs are always looking for a way to even things up after we had the first few PPs of the game.
There were some highly suspicious "pity/even up" calls made last night. I didn't see why Obrien situation led to us being short handed. Him and Prush dropped the gloves at the exact same time. I think they gave OBrien a "charging"(???) penalty?? If so that made no sense.
The Ovie "slash" was Plekanec at his finest. Toward the end of the 2nd Montreal clearly was stirring stuff up. Prust hit Orpik WAY after the whistle and then one of their guys repeatedly punched Carlson in the face with gloves on and then took his gloves off.
Now we ended up with a PP but it easily should have been a 5 on 3 there.
Its SOP for NHL refs. Always call penalties on the team thats leading or had more PPs earlier in the game. I don't believe it to be a discipline issue. At least not last night.
I didn't see anything I thought was a bad call. Tacky, maybe, but those are the kinds of little things you can't do, simply because they might be called and don't actually get you anything. The scrums, standing up for each other, etc., I'm all for. The little crap slashes on the way to the bench will hurt you.
We're not going to trade Ward at the deadline unless we are well out of the playoff picture. We got him specifically FOR the playoffs.
We need Wilson's presence in the lineup. Ovechkin and Backstrom aren't getting younger. We got Orpik to win now (and I think we all caught a good glimpse as to why last night).
Wilson is an undisputable upgrade over the kid Obrien.
Latta/Kuznetsov/Wilson sounds pretty darn good.
Kuznetsov was good last night. So were MJ and Burakovsky..the two guys ahead of him in the possible slots he can fill.
He looks real good with Burakovsky on the PP and looked dangerous in OT. We have a real deep team across the board this year.
Good problems to have.
I agree, though I don't see Latta going on the left. I think that spot will be occupied full time by Chris Brown or maybe Kuznetsov should they decide to slide him to the wing for a game or so. But having the luxury of three of Kuznetsov, Laich, Brown, Wilson, and Latta as your fourth line is pretty nice. Either Kuznetsov or Laich can fill the 3C spot as well. That means (when everyone is healthy) a quality player isn't in the lineup most nights. I see that as a good thing, because especially in the bottom six in this Trotz system, guys are going to need days off. At full health, that lets Trotz rest a bottom six player every game. Keep 'em all up and let Volpatti be the permanent bench warmer.
And that fourth line with three of Kuznetsov, Laich, Brown, Wilson, and Latta will get minutes, which will let the top lines play at higher tempo. The effects go through the entire lineup.