Only positive is that there was no crowd there to boo them off the ice. Or maybe that's a negative. Clearly a brutal performance all the way around. Right now we are probably the worst team in the League. Again, after 6 years of Benning, this is what we got.
Good
Thought Horvat and Boeseer started well but both faded and by the third had descended to the same level of the rest and where pretty mediocre
Bad
Myers seemed intent on spending most of the game in the box. That hit looked predatory to me and should get a nasty suspension. Some decent play by Myers, at times, but also got horribly out of position at times chasing after the play in the offensive zone. Guess he wanted to produce some offense but, in the end, just contributed to the general chaos. Myers is not the type of player you can expect to carry a poor defensive partner
Schmidt - got played to death the night before and looked totally out of gas. Made some terrible passes and turned over the puck around his net. Play has really started to fall off
Rafferty - play around his net is absolutely unacceptable.
Hughes - again on his ass much of the game. Sometimes trying to do too much and forcing the play. Montreal ran him out of the play deep in his end consistently the last two games. I guess a positive is that any high salary demands on his part are fading.
Gaudette - just terrible. Should never take faceoffs in his end. In this game he and his line started icing the puck and forcing Gaudette into defensive faceoffs - most of which led to great chances on us. Clueless in most aspects of the game and mostly just senseless and futile running around. Why they put any reliance in him as their third line center remains inexplicable.
Roussel - did he play? Is a chance he can still contribute something but not with Gaudette as his center. Gaudette will always make his wingers look worse than they are but Roussel to start doing something. Was again bad on the PK and hopefully team can find someone to replace him there . Might think about using MacEwen instead of Roussel
Pettersson - another zombie like effort. Could make a case he was the worse forward in this game
Demko - obviously a lot had to do with defensive breakdowns but he got he got aired out pretty much. Should have stopped some of the goals. Keeping him over Markstrom might go down as one of the most colossal mistakes in Canuck history. We'll see
Others
Pearson - needs to do more
Joulevi - little better. Losing inside position too much especially late in the game. Seemed to get around the ice a little better. Probably get to see a lot of him moving ahead which means he will get a full look. However, count me as not hopeful.
Hoglander - like the spurts of speed he showed. I don't think he is entirely ready and would be very unexpected that he should be. Yet you can have some legitimate long term belief in this player.
Chatfield looked decent up to the time of his injury. He had long term injuries in Utica (mostly to the shoulder I believe and the injury seemed to be a after a hit to the shoulder - that is not good news)
With likely Chatfield and Myers likely out we probably see Benn and Brisebois next game. This, in all probability, will be very ugly.
If games like this can't rid of Benning I don't have any hope for the franchise. It is always the same in sports. No matter the situation the good organizations do well and the bad ones don't. We have a poor owner who permits someone like Benning to keep his job. He wouldn't have hired Benning to begin with and certainly should have moved him out after the huge gaffes he has repeatedly made.
On Green I would say : Good players make good coaches and bad players make bad coaches. I doubt Scotty Bowman could do much with the bunch Benning has assembled. I think changing the coach will do nothing to change things. It's the kind easy quick fix answer when the real solution is the laborious and lengthy process of building a team.
