As to the game, we looked bad for long stretches. I'm so tired of us trying to back off the Dallas D by flying our zone on what should be easy breakouts. There were way too many turnovers where our D had no passing options anywhere on camera even though they were below our faceoff dots. This led to the D trying to curl back and buy time/space, panicked D to D passes and turnovers. Our D share some blame for poor decisionmaking, but the 'stretch the neutral zone' philosophy was putting way too much pressure on them. Our forwards were doing a better job getting down low for a 10 foot breakout pass in the 3rd and suddenly we were able to connect passes. Part of that is a decrease in forechecking by Dallas, but giving our D 10 foot pass options instead of 50 foot options is huge. We're not going to beat this team if we're so concerned with Dallas' offensive D men that we force our D to break out 2 vs 2 all game.
I didn't see a lack of effort, heart, will, etc. I thought we got out-coached and were losing 1 on 1 battles because we were starting most of them behind the 8 ball and in a bad spot. We were skating, but we were starting every race out-positioned.
I'd swap Perron and Thomas for game 5. Perron was incredibly lucky not to get called for that slash and I think he would have been had Bishop not flopped earlier in the series. Other than his shot off the post, I though Perron was fairly invisible for long stretches and Thomas' offensive play the last 2 games merits more time. He looks dangerous every time he has the puck in the offensive zone and I want to see him get more 5 on 5 minutes with a more skilled line mate. On the flip side of that coin, I think Perron is a good replacement on that 3rd line stylistically.
For as bad as we looked for 70% of the night, that game wasn't out of reach. Perron had Bishop beat when he hit the post and ROR's bank attempt was damn close to being in. I feel surprisingly good about game 5 tomorrow considering how poorly we played last night.