Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Habs vs.Caps - The Road Trip From Hell Continues Edition

Notes on the third:

-Unbelieveable, the number of penalties. Just unbelieveable.

-We can talk about bad luck, but the old adage about making your own luck is really true. When guys like Gomez are dragging their asses, nobody's making any luck.

-Eller shows some nice flashes, but the rookie mistakes are painful.

-RDS is showing some interesting sequences of veterans making stupid decisions. Instead of making the simple play, they're passing into traffic and getting picked off.

-Spacek looked like Serge Savard on Chimera. Too bad it only happens once a month.

-When a team hasn't scored on the PP all night, the coach should never pull the goalie. All he's doing is padding the other team's stats.

-I HATE getting shut out. Worse, my new Patrick Roy sweater has a losing record.


Notes on the second:

-Once again the Habs are spending half the game on the PK. Discipline has got to be better.

-Cammalleri's playing like ass, but he didn't deserve a pass in the face.

-It would be nice if Plekanec could play all sixty minutes.

-Gomez is just terrible. He's as bad as year-old eggnog.

-I hope when Wisniewski's in the lineup Picard never plays again.

-Speaking of affirmative action, what's the point of Lapierre this year?

-Typical. Finally exerting some pressure and then a TMM penalty. The dumbest penalty possible to take.

-Maybe a bit too harsh on Picard earlier. He made a pretty defensive play on Ovechkin. He's still not consistent enough to be an everyday NHL D though.

-Price is coming around. A couple of nice stops helped him regain equilibrium. Too bad none of the millions of dollars of talent in front of him can score.

-Gill handles the puck with the concentration of a drunk guy trying to walk a straight line.

-Habs are getting killed by a guy named Beagle. Poetic justice for a team playing like a bunch of dogs.


Notes on the first:

-Well, the PP at least looks like it's sick of losing.

-Price wants this one, just to prove he's as good as Jaro.

-Gomez is playing Christmas hockey...like a turkey. Actually, he's doing more watching the puck than playing with it tonight.

-The Caps aren't looking as angry as they should be after last spring.

-It's nice to hear Kostitsyn's name not immediately followed by "ay yi yi" on RDS.

-You know what's funny? In some games you can almost feel a rhythm to the penalty calls. It's like the refs feel they should be doing something, so they call something after a lull.

-Price didn't look fabulous on the first goal, again. He seems to be having some concentration issues similar to those he experienced last season. I think it's a combination of fatigue and weak defensive plays like the one Weber made right before the Caps scored.

-Wisniewski can't get here fast enough. Great trade.

-Oh, crap. The last-minute goal again. This team is just falling apart. Subban made yet another dumbass play to cause that one. Now, if recent history is any indication, the game is over.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Once we give up the first goal, it's safe to turn the game off.

Yeah, that's great we traded for a defenseman, too bad we have zero players capable of scoring a goal.

Maybe we should skate 6 goalies on the ice, we'd have the same results.

I'm so sick of watching a team with the worst offense in the NHL. Excruciating boring hockey. Horrendous.

Anonymous said...

Am I the only one who whant to see Martin go? I mean he's a great defensive coach with good strategy but... Cammalleri on pk???? spacek on the ice?? just to remember the bad sequence started with Subban in the stand, why... I think Subban help Price took a role in the room and now that he benched at every mistake, Price look shaky, weird coincidence. Anyway, I just hate Martin's style of coaching, l always tought he had no feeling for the game, and every game proving me rigth. Nice blog by the way.

Anonymous said...

The Habs exert zero pressure and are sooo easy to shut out. This team has no push, no passion, no desire. It's sad to watch. I'm scared to think what the high powered Lightning will do to the Habs PK. If they take eight penalties in Tampa it'll be a lot worse than 3-0.

Don't look now but here come the Sens and the 'Canes.

Anonymous said...

Feel sorry for the Islander fans. The team gets on a roll and the owner dumps salary and gets nothing in return. Also feel sorry for Wisniewski. He gets traded to the only team he's scored on this year, so no more goals for him this season.

Anonymous said...

Hey? What happened to the shiny new bandwagon? It was parked here just a few weeks ago all painted up with banners.

Teams are full of people. Sometimes we forget that young men are ...wait for it...young. They get mentally tired and physically sore. The too many men penalty showed the team's attitute. Coasting to the bench, then screaming at the ref when you are called. Want to bet they weren't warned earlier?

The truth of it is you can win the Cup playing this way. A little luck, some bad bounces for the opponents, a couple contenders knocked out by the others, you get hot, you have a chance. A lot of teams play this way. They usually have a couple star players though. The ones who always come up big, motivate the team...that sort of thing.

If the players don't buy in though...well it can lead to a lot of disgruntled fans. Anyway scoring wins games. That is the thing the Habs are lamentable at and have been for 18 years.

Anonymous said...

The bottom line is this team is mediocre. They have the ability and talent to compete but not dominate.

They need to be identifying a player who can score goals( and who has some size). Even when they were winning I could see the warning signs. They barely score 2.5 goals a game. And the coaching staffs mishandling of Subban made me think they were overanalyzing things. His bench and all the hand wringing was overhyped. He was playign decent hockey and didnt need to sit for 3 games.

One of the HIO bloggers questioned if Subbans confidence was that fragile perhaps he was not the player we thought he was.

Well I answer that by saying the whole NHL game is about confidence( momentum). Which is why we see Crosby on a superb streak, why Ovechkin is having a hard time finishing, pleks is in a funk and why Carrey price had none last year. I think they upset the apple cart.

They have to be multidimensional to go anywhere this year. That and have Price stand on his head. They are 0 for when they are behind.

Go out and get someone who has pure hands and let him play that game notwithstanding any defensive deficiencies he may have. The kitty bar the door thing is ok when they are winning but the pop gun offense is frustrating when they are mired like this.