travel_dude

The 1st period of the BOA game was a case study. We didn't get that 2nd goal which would have crushed them. Did we stop hitting at some point in the 1st? The goals against had breakdowns in coverage, so they need to fix that. I'm not sure there was much wrong in the GWG, other than he should not have gotten a clean shot away. Maybe he got too open too quickly. Considering the talent, I don't get the lack of scoring. Smith had it far too easy. Please fix the PP while you are at it. The pace sucks on the initial setup. Painful to watch against Ottawa. Liked the 1st PP against EDM.

I don't even read too much into practice #1. Other than watching the team play a few games with some of those players in the lineup, I wouldn't expect him to have a good handle on where a player lines up. This would initially be a Huska call, and it's up to the players to change opinions. May even take a couple of games to tweak the lineup to be a Sutter preferred one.

We shall see if they can fix the execution issues. The term style says to me that they were missing a key element in the transition or whatever you want to call it. Passive is a style. Allowing the teams to gain the zone is a style I guess. Can we become a team that makes it tough to play in CGY? I haven't seen it. The line matching is one area I would like to see improve on home ice. No reason to start your 4th line against a top line, assuming last change, unless you have a lot of trust in them.

And there it is, Eric Francis reporting on how much of a taskmaster he thinks the new bench boss will be. And how much the team deserves it. And how much this will be coach picking out the "slackers" if they happen to be benched. EF has his opinions about players and will use anything to prop them up. I'm sure he will start going on about Gaudreau not fitting in the coach's plans. How he will be traded the end of this season at the latest. I think that Sutter will have an opinion of what he wants to see, but this has to be balanced against the types of players we have. Lazy backcheck or soft passes bad, effort on offense good. Tkachuk needs to finish his shifts as much as anyone.

That's a little weird. Bennett played in the final minutes of the last game against Ottawa. Signal trade rumors I guess. 😄 I get that Nordstrom is out and Backlund out for family, but Bennett missing is strange.

Sutter seems to be in favor of having depth down the middle. With Lindholm, Monahan, Backlund, Ryan and Bennett available, I wonder if he looks at the RW depth and goes back to a more balanced top 6. We've seen may two games that the old 3M and Gaterade lines were left intact. We haven't been scoring a lot 5v5. Does Sutter look at Backlund and feel he is being wasted at even strength? Is center depth the prime motive if it's not getting the job done? Is Bennett a C or a LW? If we make no changes to who the C's are, I would like to see a change to the lineup to balance them out a bit more. Tkachuk-Monahan-Dube Gaudreau-Lindholm-Leivo Lucic-Backlund-Mangiapane Bennett-Ryan-Ritchie If Sutter prefers a better wing complement, then I could see them returning to previous deplayments. Mangiapane-Backlund-Tkachuk Gaudreau-Monahan-Lindholm Lucic-Bennett-Dube Leivo-Ryan-Ritchie Maybe swap Ryan and Bennett to balance out the RHS's. Who knows. Sticking with what we have may not be the best approach.

I do hope they use the prospects a bit better in the Sutter era. Nothing worse than calling up a player like Phillips and sitting him. I believe we had instances where we were down a top 9 player and all we did was insert a guy like Rinaldo on the 4th line and bump up players. This year it's a bit harder to tell, since our 3rd line is 2/3 top 6 players. Norstrom out - sure it makes some sense to play Rinaldo, but 2-4 minutes in a B2B game doesn't make sense to me. Might as well run a 7th D and use him both on D and as a F.

He's a tanker, so just ignore him.

The only way that the draft will be anything more than last year is if we miss the playoffs and somehow win the lotto. Epic draft in a non-epic draft year. We may end up with a mid-teens pick even if we get in the playoffs, or somewhere between 8th and 14th. Just so many bad teams, many sit below 500 as we speak.

I'm interested to see how Dutter deals with the team. There are issues with compete level, line design and PP execution. 1) Compete level - why does this continue to be an issue? They look ready to go, but something happens when the puck drops. It's not a long season and playing a game to win seems like a no-brainer. What are they so tentative in playing? 2) Line design - good that you can switch up the lines mid game to get a spark. Why were the lines set up that way in the first place? 3) PP execution - The PP was pretty stale last night and had dropped off the map in being effective. One PP goal where they seemed to do things right, but was never used for the other 7 tries? There was one PP where Ras skated it out and couldn't even bump it back. He skated across the ice, kept looking back and barely got the pass back to Gaudreau. The play ended up being a dump in at that. Seriously? This PP needs a big overhaul. Whether Markstrom was the best choice for a start after being off for weeks and playing the night before is anyone's guess. He wasn't the reason we lost, but at the same time the team might have played differently in front of Rittich. I hope that Dutter manages the starts a bit better than the way they were previously. As for the decision to start Rinaldo, I wonder if that was a Sutter thing or it was a belief we would need to have a fight in this game. He ended up with just over 2 minutes of ice time. That's a luxury a team on a B2B can't afford. The 4th line was on for the opening goal, playing against the top line. We had last change. How does that happen?

This was a long term move, so one season is not the goal. I think the 66 points is a moving target. Every streak either way by each team has an impact. Not as many 3 point games this year it seems. Really the important thing is you play to keep pace with the teams directly in front of you. We play MTL and EDM and TO over the next few weeks. The results from that have a big bearing on the season. The one thing I consider a plus is Sutter teams do not give up. So, until we hit that point, we are still in this thing

It's safe to say it was due to McD's impact on thre goals, but we lost it due to poor coverage on 3 goals. 1st - Nessy got turned the wrong way, allowinf McD's pass out. Lindholm did nothing to block Pooly coming in. Valimaki puck watching opposite side of crease. 2nd - Backlund let Yam go and Lucic was behind him. 3rd - double coverage and McD still gets a shot off. Yam was wide open but out of the play. It was a wll played 1st period where they didn't score other than one goal. The PP set up was superb, but they abandoned it to return to usual set up. I didn't like the way they sat back in the 2nd and allowed the Oilers to gain momentum. Very little spark. Huska spoke of missed details, and that is so true of this team. I'm not a fan of the defensive deployment right now. Gio-Ras is not a 1st pairing. They each could be part of one, but not together. We settle on Hanifin-Tanev, but both are 1st pair capable. Split em up and build 3 pairs.

Ruzicka held off the scoresheet for ince. Had gone a bunch of games in a row with 3 points per game. Galchenyuk is in the AHL because the Leafs want him to develop his game without worrying about his spot in the lineup. Makes sense I guess.

Supposedly, he has talked extensively with Sutter, including Zoom calls. If anything, they might have discussed the lineup. Projected lineup has Nesterov in over Kylington, which is different from the suggestion there would be no lineup changes. Neal is back to the 4th line. Bear is out. We will have out hands full, so I'm interested to see if Huska uses the OTT game as a model. The 1st of the B2B Oiler games was uninspired at best. Seemed like that was the 1st game where Tkachuk was neutered.

I'm interested to see the team's response to both the coaching change and the "win" in Ottawa. They played well enough to win the 1st period, but let up a bit. They weren't perfect by any stretch, but they did some things that they had stopped doing. Tonight is a test against a touchy opponent. They need to get into Mike's kitchen to get him off his game. It's going to be difficult with the reffing looking to reward Oilers diving. With any luck, the lineup puts the Oilers in a hole by using Neal with McDavid.

At some point you may actually agree with a move or a pick or a decision. Let's hope you are also close to that. Never mind.

I don't know exactly where he would fit, but he seems to be an awesome playmaker. Would be fun to see him with a skilled line. Maybe on the RW if Backlund? Too much respinsibility? Lucic would have his back.

I am thinking more of a defensive team that transitions better. Part of the problem has been getting to transition. When we did it fresh, we did it very well. Gaudreau used to get multiple breakaways in a game. Last year, couldn't convert. This year he was a lot more deadly, but those chances dried up.

I think Monahan was actually getting more frustrated. He might actually get some specifics on what he needs to be doing. Was Toffoli a great defensive player playing with Carter? Nope. But Carter benefitted from playing in LA, even at his age. Bennett remains to be seen. He can win faceoffs. He can also be lazy coming back or motor like a buzzsaw. Where Bennett can benefit the most is by not trying to be the guy to waltz through the entire team himself. Use your wingers or be the winger. Maybe Bennett can also work on his shots. Lots of power but no accuracy or he telegraphs too much. Rinaldo and Stone will only be in the lineup if they can produce for an entire game and not bleed chances. Perhaps, we see Phillips getting called up. Small guy with heart.

These two points. I noticed a few passes last night that seems to match the first point. The second point may have been against a weak team, but it seemed like we were doing that more regularly last night.

Have to think the ink was drying when he did the interview.

TBH, I think last night's lineup is about the best we can dress at this point. It wasn't a textbook game, and there were still some nagging issues, but go with what worked over some minor change that could be worse. The Oilers are reeling and we found a little confidence in our lines last night. We are coming off a win and facing a much tougher opponent. It's a BOA game. Whether the players say it or not, they will be trying to attack early instead of playing the waiting game with EDM. You know EDM is going to come out of the gate fast. Can't count on Murray being in nets, but you overrun the D to get the best chances. Sitting back only works if you do what Toronto did.

It could shake out that way, but I'm not holding my breath. I think there will be a lot of work that Kylington has to go through to be an everyday D-man. He's got the wheels. He knows how to defend. He can hit. He can generate offense. Where he fails is in making decisions quickly. He doesn't always read the situation correctly. I don't give him too much grief for the pinch he made, other than making the stick sweep instead of getting back. He made a decision then panicked. I think he could have recovered and disrupted the play after a short time. He was on his off side, so he had to be a bit more careful with the pinch. Again, I'm not saying he did anything different than most of the D-men would once per game. Just that he needs to fix those to gain more trust. He had very little in the past, so I hope they work on it and not use it as a reason to bench a player.

I suspect the players knew there was friction. It looked a bit like they were off the chain, but I would not say they played different than what I would expect coming off a bad loss. They showed a killer instinct in the 1st and 3rd. That has been lacking, almost like we played to get ahead and stopped with a 2-3 goal lead.

As much as fans were calling for his head, it was more a mistake to give him the role this summer after an uneven debut. Props for getting the team to the playoffs, but it was really evident he was in over his head.