Super game! Awesome start and awesome end! Energy through out the whole thing and we did great by keeping the puck behind ward’s net the whole time. We forced turnover after turnover in their zone and hit them from every angle. It was a total domination on our end, and a superb homecoming. At this point if you’re wondering which game I was watching, you should consider the benefits of selective memory (it’s the ultimate cure for married life). I’m simply remembering the first ten and the last twenty minutes, and the rest of the game joins Mrs_HLD’s lecture of why I can’t get a 52” LCD screen TV in a vault in an obscure, dark and inaccessible corner of “le old noggin”. I’ve filed them right in-between my mom’s lecture of why I shouldn’t lick cake batter off a mixer still plugged into the wall (for the love of god people don’t do it…accidents happen and those things really hurt!) and my grandmother’s informative speech about how I shouldn’t touch my self in private cause my hair will fall out and I’ll go blind. Needless to say, through out the decades the vault has reached colossal proportions, and it’s been growing exponentially since I’ve gotten married (good thing Mrs_HLD doesn’t read these posts anymore!). Here’s a bit of advice for the young guns that might be headed down this slippery slope and don’t know how to “purge” memories completely. I would like to answer this with a quote from one of the wisest characters on TV: “To beer….the cause of….and solution to…all of life’s problems”
OK getting back on track, it was a tough loss. But like the loss to the Leafs last Saturday (wait a minute…we still haven’t won on a Saturday game this year!) it was a much better team n d a much better loss than what we have been digesting last year. The team worked hard, started off strong and finished strong. We were intense, we were fore checking, our transition game was swift and effective for he most part. Huet played awesome; the D kept most of their chances to the outside, and the offence had chances after chances…after chances. The loss is attributable to the penalties and Ward’s solid performance who did not let us com back in the third. As for the penalties, out of the seven calls there was only one (IMO) hat was a bad call (the so called slashing call on Higgins). The rest were up to the refs judgement, but at least there was something to merit the refs’ attention on those occasions. My problem was not with the calls against us, but the inconsistency of the refs. As it seems to be the case every game, the opposition got away with so much that would have been called on the spot had it been us.
As for the nature of our penalties, with the exception of Smolinski’s hook (what a dumb penalty…) the rest were accidental, inevitable and/or a result of the intensity of the team. I haven’t read the game day thread, so I don’t know how people feel about the penalties, but I neither blame our boys for indiscipline, nor do I blame the refs for calling us. I simply blame the reffs for not calling the opposition for things we get called for on a regular basis.
So to sum up, we played an good game, but lost momentum because of unfortunate circumstances. If the team keeps playing the way it did last night (and the previous games) we will win more often than not) and that’s all one can ask for from a team.
Some notable items from last night’s game was Komisarek showing the world yet again what a smart player he is. He was intense, he was disturbing the big guns of the opposition, but a key value to him (and this is in many parts due to Markov’s influence) is his brains. One example was in the second, when
And I cannot end this post without mentioning Guillaume Latandresse. I know he’s having troubles to begin the season, but at least he was going around hitting the opposition….and not just bumping them on the board. Despite the loss last night, at least I can smile every time I think of
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