News Article: Pekka Rebirth and five things about the Preds at the first quarter mark

[drwpreds]

The defense the last 2 games, especially, has been good, they've only had a few mistakes, but they're all ending up in the back of the net.

I know we didn't give up many shots, but I just can't say the defense was good last night- no way. Not a lot of shots, but some unbelievably bad breakdowns- we are dang lucky they didn't have 6 or 7 goals.

 

[triggrman]

Minnesota had way more breakdowns of the same type.

 

[Armourboy]

Your D is going to give up chances every game, even the best teams that have ever existed haven't gone mistake free. The job of the goalie is to stop or at least limit the mistakes to some degree. Peks isn't limiting very many mistakes at all right now, and in some cases is creating his own ( not being able to catch the puck against the Wild ).

You can blame the D all you want, but at some point your goalie has stop something more than a lob shot from the blue line.

 

[Pred303]

sometime people 'fall' for the comments made by the coaching staff and announcers made defending their goaltender's performance when they blame a specific groups failures for goals allowed and not the goalie. you hear the 'nothing could have been done about this or that goal' very often. many times they are admittedly correct.

but, some of the times that is said is simply to try to protect the goalies confidence and not blame an individual but a group instead. the goalie position is a fragile position. it feels like the fate of the game is always on his shoulders and it is. confidence is critical to a tender. it's a position where millisecond decisions make the difference between success and failure. and confidence or doubt is often what provides that. therefore, a coach will almost always avoid calling out a goalie individually, whether he 'should have had it', or not.

on every goal allowed normally 2-3 things happened by others that allowed the shot to be made in the first place. happens every single play. it's easy (and smart) to deflect blame onto a group and try to protect your goalies confidence, which is what you almost always see done, correctly or not.

be a discerning fan. see through coach/announcer speak on some stuff.

 

[Pred303]

aaand of course we get saros tonight, don't think lavy didn't see exactly what most of us saw, no matter what was said in public.