Game Recaps

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

12/15 - Preds @ Colorado CandyPants

...it's painful to watch isn't it?. another game, where we dominate virtually every aspect of the entire game. except for where it counts.

not much can be said to critisize honestly, any criticism is more frustration than actual fact. we played hard for 60 minutes, outshot and outchanced them badly every period. we outhit them, we had fewer giveaways. we didn't give up. we won the faceoff battle.. we pushed to the last second. we didn't get bad goaltending. we didn't play badly in the defensive zone.. had at least 5 times the amount of scoring chances they did. we played disciplined, especially after the first. we held them to only 16 shots and severely limited chances. the penalty kill was absolutely fantastic. even the powerplay generated a couple of scoring chances. thought we left everything on the ice.

and yet we lose another one.

frustrating.

maddening in fact.

comes down to simply not enough offensive skills to finish chances to be candid. we simply don't have the scoring depth and we're getting zilch from the people that we do have that can score (dumont, arnott, bonk, legwand, radulov). this inability to score, grossly magnifies every single mistake both in the defensive zone and in net, which in turn makes us overanalyze every single little failing on that end.. when the problem is not really there, but on the other end of the ice..

you simply want to throw up your hands. but the games simply keep on coming, so you have to keep playing and hoping for the same effort but different results until we either get more help (sully or a trade).

even if arnott, legwand, rads now somehow magically all get hot and we win 5 of 6, this type of streak demonstrates that we simply don't really have enough talent up front over an 82 game stretch.. new fans say things like "we beat detroit and ottawa, this means we have enough talent". but honestly, that's just hockey. the best teams lose 25-30 times, while the worst win 30 every year, so don't think that way..

but, believe it or not, it's not as bad as it looks right now (well ok, it's pretty bad, but). doing a simple schedule analysis a couple of weeks ago, you knew this was a mighty tough stretch of games we had here right up until christmas. the schedule will get better, the puck will start finding the back of the net more often.

just have to hope we aren't too buried by the time christmas gets here.

and, by the way, here's a little explaination for what's happening to us and why we're really not winning more:

our record when we score:
6 goals.. 1-0
5 goals.. 3-0
4 goals.. 6-1
3 goals.. 4-2
2 goals.. 0-1-2
1 goal... 0-8
0 goals.. 0-2

so we're 14-3 when we manage to score 3 goals or more. and 0-11-2 when we don't. obviously to have scored 2 goals or less 13 times in 30 games is far too many. 3 becomes our magic number. find a way to score 3 goals, and we almost always win.

Pred303guy writes some of the most succinct and bright observations about each of the Predators games. His nickname is "The Professor" for his keen insights and recall of details from each game. He's also fair-minded. He loves the Predators, but he calls 'em like he sees 'em.

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Previous Posts

• 12/13 - Preds v. Avalanche

• 12/10 - Preds v. Dead Things

• 12/8 - Preds v. the Quacks

• 12/6 - Preds v. Van-HOOVER

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