Your Hockey and Humor Headquarters from Predators Country
| Game Recaps | |
| Next Viewing Party | |
| Next Victim | |
Game Recaps
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
12/18 - Preds v. Mild
OBSERVATIONS FROM BOX 2by pred303guy
(courtesy of the Nashville Predators message boards)
...in highly technical hockey terminology, this was what is known as a "truly horrific loss."
too bitter a pill to talk about this one tonight. maybe tomorrow.
-- *next morning* --
a few general observations;
...the zanon pinch attempt to hold in the puck with us protecting a one goal lead in the third was simply bad hockey and a risk that cann't be taken in that situation and can't be intelligently defended, because there is no defense.
...but while you cann't defend the attempt in that situation last night, the primary reason we get caught like that so often, is that we are having sooo much trouble generating any even strength offense with our forwards night after night. about the only way we can hope to score these last 10 odd games is for a defenseman to take a risk and jump into the play in some fashion. this means our defensemen get burned too often trying to help out offensively. it's interrelated most times with the struggles we've having scoring goals.
...so many times you see teams give up goals after a flurry in their own offensive end where they just miss scoring.. in the excitement of wild chances and almost goals, teams and players tend to lose focus of the overall game situation, and in the heat of a wild offensive flurry too often 'forget' the situation and take risks they shouldn't. exactly what happened on the bad 2nd goal we allowed. forwards all caught in deep, despite us knowing we need that third man high, because we are oh so close to scoring. defenseman gets caught up in the heat of the moment.
...nothing more dangerous than when you're protecting a one goal lead than to get a frantic scoring attempt yourself.
...smithson with a very stupid penalty. a frustration penalty that could have itself cost us the game.
...dumont with either a lazy play or simply being very slow not getting out to a puck to tip it out of the defensive end right before the last goal. zids, arnott, zanon with horrible coverage down deep. lots to blame here (and right now i prefer to not think about it).
...bonk with a bad penalty to even put them on the powerplay to begin with. a lazy penalty. you cann't take lazy penalties trying to protect 2 goal leads to a team like minny. you simply knew the way they could get back into that game was on their pp. and while it wasn't technically a pp goal (1 second after the penalty expired). well it really was of course.
...this ability to score pp goals against us has always been why we couldn't protect leads against the wild. (three times in the last two years now)
...nothing more dangerous than the few seconds right after a pk expires. teams get caught either relaxing for a split second because they killed it. or they get caught tired because they couldn't change. or they get caught trying to adjust to whose man is whose as the guy joins the team out of the box. this is what happened to us out front last night on the first goal. bonk/smithson/ortmeyer confused as to who's doing what.
...a Z-pattern play, is virtually unstoppable if the people are open and the passes are made crisply. anytime a pointman can make a pass straight to a guy down low on the far side of the crease, you know things have broken down horribly. you also know that your pk forwards have been the ones that failed you not blocking that passing lane (which cann't be open). once the pass gets thru, the chaos it creates trying to dive back across to cover always opens the backdoor.
...ellis played a good game, with some great saves. he left some dangerous rebounds, but those weren't the ones that hurt him. he got caught totally out of net once, and hamhuis saved him somehow. not being overly critical when you say that on the 2 on 1 he didn't play it perfectly. got caught slightly off the left post cheating back just a few inches because of the two on one when he has to play the shooter all the way and let zidlicky worry about the pass across. cann't blame him at all on either of the other two.
...one of the things you hate to see when a goalie 'controversy' springs up among the fanbase, is that most fans tend to choose "sides" favoring one goalie or the other. as arguments progress between fans about who you had prefer to see starting, harsh things are said by both sides. then what you tend to see more and more of is one side and then the other saying "see i told you so, this is why i was right and you were an idiot" every flipping game from then on. it tends to break apart a fanbase.
we're unfortunately seeing this right now, where it almost appears each side wants to see the other side fail, simply so they can be shown to be "right" - which is, of course, sheer stupidity - when it really should only be about team success.
normally you look forward to playing immediately after a disappointing loss, so you can simply move on and forget what happened.
not sure if i look forward to tonight.
which is simply a sign that last night's loss had to be one of the top 5 most disappointing losses in the regular season in this team's history.
Posted by Section 303 at 10:20 AM
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.
Hope you enjoy his regular contributions.
Previous Posts
Archives
