Observations XXVI full ** v. XXVII started

[jumb0]

somehow also managed to ruin the PK as well.

Pretty easy to do when you assign the coach who ran the worst PP in the league to run the PK

 

[Predsanddead24]

Josi on an absolute tear lately and is only 8 points back from Carlson for the NHL lead among defenseman now. He's taking on an even bigger role with Ellis out playing 33 minutes in the Winter Classic and 31 minutes last night. The guy brings it every game and continually steps up every time we need him to. I doubt it will but hopefully people will eventually shut up about him not being captain material.

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

I always wanted to see Josi just absolutely turned loose. This is it. He's killing it. I thought he would.

Now what they still really need to do though is find the right partner for him, so that they can keep on deploying him this way without it hurting us as much. Ellis is just not the right guy. Fabbro... better, but still thinking there ought to be an even better fit. Not in our system right now, however.

 

[Bringer of Jollity]

Josi has gone full-on Karlsson. He's playing great, his numbers are also great, I'm just not convinced it's the best route for us to be the most successful.

 

[Porter Stoutheart]

Josi has gone full-on Karlsson. He's playing great, his numbers are also great, I'm just not convinced it's the best route for us to be the most successful.

That's exactly what I posted on the main boards a few minutes ago. He's getting the 100% green-light treatment that allowed Karlsson to produce so much in the past. But we just don't seem to have a defense-minded RD to complement him in this gameplan. And the forwards don't seem to know what to do with it either. Josi looks great, but somehow we're not getting as much out of that as we should from a whole-team perspective, alas.

 

[Pred303]

so-many "blame" our PP primarily for the majority of our struggles. And here we are 6th in the league in scoring. The primary problem has been and continues to be the PK. We can live with a poor power play because our 5 on 5 scoring has been so strong, but we can't live with a bad PK when we are giving up so many goals. We have lost 9 games this year when we score 3 or more goals NINE. And SIX games when we have scored 4 or more. All of last year we lost ONE game where we scored 4 or more goals and that was 5-4 in OT. And have already lost as many where we score 3 or more as we did all of last year. The PK flat out is failing us, and has cost us at least 5-6 wins this year.

 

[FossilFndr]

303, do you think the problem is personnel on the PK, defensive scheme, defensive execution, just poor clearing, goal-tending or what?

I was planning on posting my penalty compilation etc. in the next couple days since it's 1/2 way though.

 

[drwpreds]

so-many "blame" our PP primarily for the majority of our struggles. And here we are 6th in the league in scoring. The primary problem has been and continues to be the PK. We can live with a poor power play because our 5 on 5 scoring has been so strong, but we can't live with a bad PK when we are giving up so many goals. We have lost 9 games this year when we score 3 or more goals NINE. And SIX games when we have scored 4 or more. All of last year we lost ONE game where we scored 4 or more goals and that was 5-4 in OT. And have already lost as many where we score 3 or more as we did all of last year. The PK flat out is failing us, and has cost us at least 5-6 wins this year.

Yep- and it also goes hand in hand with what I still consider the #1 problem- goaltending. I don't have the numbers handy, but our team save percentage while shorthanded is flat out horrendous, especially Pekka. Part of that no doubt falls on the PK itself, but we are also not getting timely saves.

Even with all of the other issues we have (and there are many)- if we were just getting league average goaltending we would be comfortably in a playoff spot right now.

 

[Predsanddead24]

PK has for sure hurt us big time. One of the craziest things about it is that is that we've generally been ok at PKing but then have had several games of just complete collapse on the penalty kill (Vancouver x2, Penguins Game #2, and Coyotes Game #1). There have been 24 games this year in the league where a team has given up 3+ PP goals against and we are responsible for 4 of those.

Still though part of the struggle with assessing this team is it's hard to pinpont any one factor that has been our demise. We have done poorly as you would expect going 1-6-2 in games where we give up 2+ PP goals against, yet in games where we give up 1 PP goal we're 9-1-0 so we have been able to overcome bad PKing to some extent. Then even weirder in games where we don't give up any PP goals against we're somehow 9-9-4. The PK is bad but it also isn't responsible for us being under .500 in games where it does its job perfectly.

I think its sort of a fool's errand to try and point at any one specific attribute of this team because their are several things you can point to and say if we did that at a league average level we'd have however many more wins and be comfortably in a playoff spot. The PK, goaltending, powerplay, and lack of 5 v 5 production from our top 6 are all things one could point to and make that statement. The reality is its all of those things combined that are our issue and each being poor creates a negative feedback loop of the others being poor.

 

[Pred303]

I don't disagee with either predsanddead or drwpreds here at all. the goaltending and PK are my primary hot button issues for now.

and fossil, as best I can figure watching this mess, it's a lot of areas. We lack good PK depth up front and on the backend. In years past we had 7-8 good PK forwards and at least 4 good PK defensemen. Now we have too many non-pk type guys (Smith, Granlund, Turris, Gramaldi, etc) to have much depth. We play guys like Forsberg and Arvy up front quite a bit and they are both constantly thinking offense and honestly not very dependable defensively. Guys like Watson, Bonino are great pk'ers but have no quickness to recover they need quick forwards to help them. We are caught out of position far too often in the high slot because we are slow and chasing guys at the points. We take too many risks and are too aggressive at times. On the backend we just aren't built to be a good pk team with these personnel. Ellis is great with his tick at the blueline on the PK, but if he gets beat there he's in trouble. Ekholm should be a great PK'er, and while he is our best, he gets caught out of position too often (lot of times his partners fault). Josi is fine as a PK guy but needs a true physical guy to help in front of the net. Last night two of those PK goals were the result of Tinnardi and Irwin leaving guys at the goal mouth because guys were skating free into the slot. And face it, our pk goaltending has been beyond awful by any metric one can use. Especially the eye test. You either play a tight box or an aggressive box and half way thru the season I still don't know exactly which we are trying to do. That's a pure coaching issue. It's all so broken I have no idea how it could be fixed at this point lol.

 

[Marty Party]

So are y'all saying McCarthy has the Midas touch when it comes to last year's PP and this year's PK?

 

[Pred303]

So are y'all saying McCarthy has the Midas touch when it comes to last year's PP and this year's PK?

Mccarthy should be fired tomorrow.

 

[NoNecksCurse]

Mccarthy should be fired tomorrow.

He's fired now

 

[Marty Party]

Soon as I posted that my phone went off about the firing.

 

[FossilFndr]

Much changes since Friday, good

 

[Softball99]

Montgomery?

 

[PredsV82]

He's fired now

Well holy shit.

 

[Adz]

Mccarthy should be fired tomorrow.

You obviously have a lot of pull.

 

[Armourboy]

You obviously have a lot of pull.

I can see it now. Sorry Lavi we got a call from 303 and he says McCarthy has to go.

 

[Armourboy]

You know we have our level of crazy around here at times, but the Preds Facebook page is a whole different level. I'm assuming a whole lot of those people don't know a thing about hockey and just started watching during the cup run.

Those people make OldHickory look sane.

 

[nine_inch_fang]

You know we have our level of crazy around here at times, but the Preds Facebook page is a whole different level. I'm assuming a whole lot of those people don't know a thing about hockey and just started watching during the cup run.

Those people make OldHickory look sane.

Yeah, I'm on those groups (originally to get quick updates) but I ignore them most of the time just for that reason. It's either the cheerleaders that just annoy you because they don't think you should ever criticize the team or the idiot football fans with their "hot takes". Absolutely no actual hockey talk.

 

[FossilFndr]

It's really remarkable that the Preds went 2 decades before firing a head coach. Barry Trotz contract just was not renewed, which to me is very different than being fired.

 

[Predsanddead24]

Another strange Poileism is that he's now fired (if you include Trotz as fired) 3 of the 4 coaches in his career midseason. Even more coincidental all three have come at basically the midpoint of the season. Game 41 for Lavi, game 46 for Terry Murray, and game 47 for Bryan Murray.

 

[Armourboy]

I think it will be Hynes sadly.

Also I now feel better that I think Poile pulled the trigger. Based on what I heard in an interview this morning Poile and Lavi weren't that attached like he was with Trotz. According to them Lavi pretty much kept it you do your job and I'll do mine.

 

[Pred303]

one thing this delay in naming a coach or even an interim coach is that poile is making a pitch to someone right now about a full time coaching job. i'm actually shocked, poile normally has all his i's dotted before he pulls the string on something. let's me know how disgusted he must have been.