travel_dude

Might as well now even bother with Backlund on the PP. Useless.

Holy crap Tkachuk. Can you even reach a pass?

Brad Meier wanted to save the whistle for his last game. Finally made a call. Floodgates open for penalties now.

How many missed nets will we have?

Familiar words... Backlund waived. Perhaps we could use another C with him.

Begin Stage 1. Can't be giving a shutout to anyone named Harry Sateri. I don't care how he pronounces him name. Ex-Leaf, no good.

What, no Backlund to mess it up?

Marky looks shaky to start the game. Made a couple of good saves after that. Not really confident in him yet.

That was a bad shift.

Guess Carpenter is out.

We are like the girl with the Bubble Tea. We're missing the game. WHo did Ruzie replace?

Ya think we could make a simple pass?

Need to begin stage 1.

Hanifin, you need to cover the player's stick, not just skate with him.

We want Michaela back. George is responsible for the lacj of emotion in the Dome.

Oh great, we get to face the goalie plicked from waivers from the Leafs. Well, at least we clinched the playoffs with the Oilers getting a win. I hope that they can get back to the winning ways. The last few games have not been great. The defensive play is Oiler-esque.

1-0 Oilers after 2. They should be able to hold a lead for another Mike Smith awesome shutout. Looks like they found their starter. A regulation loss to the Oilers meand Vegas can't pass us in the standings.

Just don't play down to them. The Yotes are a decent team decimated by the season. Summon the Cowbell. Get the X beside the team name. Put a dagger in the hopes of teams with desires to unseat us. Indidual records don't matter anymore. The accolades will come with the wins. You put yourself in a position to win the games and the top guys will get their points. That's how we did it all season.

^^^^ I really wonder about the lines. I don't see any real time to work on new combos. Backlund has really dropped off, not the usual defensive accumen, not scoring. If we return to Mange and Toffee with him, we may not see any better results. Tkachuk has been bad for a few games, even when he's scoring. It's almost like he scores to take the heat off his otherwise crappy game. Maybe I am a bit hard on the player. You may have something about reuniting the original MMA line. That puts Toffee on the top line. Maybe have Toffee head to the net instead of Lindy. The 3rd line needs a bit of work, with Dube going to the middle and Jarn to RW. I am willing to give a bit of time to a Bread on top line though. Just consider who plays best with Matty and Backlund. No need to use Toffee there, you can use a LW instead.

There have been games that the Oilers should have been up for. A matchup with the Flames on HNIC. They were anything but up for that game. We shall see if they do today. Mike Smith coming off a shutout against a (struggling) playoff bound team. My memories of his play after a shutout always seemed to signal a huge loss, but they might go back to Kostco. I don't know thye really have the starting goalie defined yet for the eventual playoffs. Three teams battling for 2 Pacific top 3 spots. Five teams battling for 2 WC spots. It's anyone's game still, this late. An EDM loss puts their playoffs hopes in jeopardy, but i not critical at this point. A LA win puts more pressure on them and Vegas. Dallas plays SJS and Nash plays STL tomorrow. A CGY win tonight puts a dagger in someone; LA cant's get ahead of us, VGK can only get equal points if they win 7 and only be ahead of us if we win no more and they win all as RW. Crazy times.

Well, we need a regulation win to stay about Vegas and clinch. We can clinch with a single point, which ensure we stay above LA in a tie. Need 2 wins and 2 EDM losses to clinch the Pacific. Or 4 wins. I'm not too keen to face Vegas in the opening round.

If individual players are just hoping to increase their stats, they sure took a funny approach to getting it. Tkachuk sure doesn't look like a guy with 92 points. I wouldn't say that Gaudreau was that bad, but I didn't see a lot of positives from the top line. Not exactly sure how we got away from Mangiapane up there, but the combination of Matty on the top line and Mange/Toffee with Backlund sure looked bad. Not a lot of practice left, so the players need to get out of their system whatever has creeped in the last couple of games. I don't know if this is accurate or not, but it seemed like one player from each unit (D or F) was trying things that they are not comfortable with. Tkachuk - he's making blind passes Backlund - forgetting his defensive assignments Jarnkrok - not seeing a lot of what made him good, maybe he just needs to move to wing Lucic - the only thing more obvious than his headhunting was his poor play with the puck Zaddy - too many times he could make a simple play and he tries something else This is by no means the only problems, it's just what I saw while I was watching intently. Kinda stopped watching all the details after they "lost it". This is obviously the culmination of issues that have been in parts of previous games. Tkachuk had scored 3 goals in a game he was playing crappy in. The D seemed a little out of sorts at times. The F were not worrying about the D-zone.

Lucic penalty set up the failure.

Clinch delayed by another day it seems.

Laying an egg doesn't always mean you aren't up for it. Poor play does you in more than lack of desire. The effort was there and every dumb mistake ended up a mistake. Even trying to cover up the mistake created a second one. It's one thing to be scored on on a 2 on 1, but when you don't cover the 2nd attempt it's worse.