First off, I feel the pain. That out of the way...
Was just checking out the standings. Pittsburgh has lost their last five games, and Tampa their last four...both considered Cup contenders, right? Every team has winning and losing streaks...the trick is to have longer winning streaks than losing streaks.
Goal tending - no team gets far, especially in the playoffs, short of lights out goal tending. F'rinstance, who was Quick's back up when LA won their two cups? Who carried the Knights on his back to the cup final? Would our team have made the finals without Bobby Lou? And where's Schneider today? How's hockey life for Carrie Price these days? We've got one of those goal tenders in Markstrom...but who had him picked for that when they sent Lack packing? And he's only about 6 years Demko's senior...who has so far played about 30 games in the bigs.
This is a young team! One of our super stars is 21, and the other is 20...and the 22 year old phenom with a wrist shot from hell is sidelined with a fairly serious injury. Our captain is 24, but still not as young as was the best player ever to don the C on a Nucks jersey. Who is going to argue that Miller and Tuffoli aren't a couple of the best trades made by any team in the last year?
Point being, we're getting there! But the learning curve in this sport is steep as hell! And of those who know the sport, very few would argue that Green isn't the right man for the job of getting them there.
What really grinds me is watching our young stars get crosschecked, pitchforked, and mugged while refs look the other way, and then call some of the most marginal crap imaginable. At times kinda reminds me a bit too much of pro wrestling. What we don't have on this team is a Kevin Bieksa or the like, who goes junkyard dog when crap like that happens.
Sutter has been good since his return. He went to the ice in the 3rd and took a desperation swing at the puck...which any player would have done...and the other guy tripped over it. Whatever. Sometimes it's just a matter of the Hockey Gods digging their collective heel into the back of a team, and nothing's going to deny them. They had a good game going, were dominant...and then, despite all of it, the ice tipped against them. Unowhat happens, and often enough it happens in streaks.
The blame game is easy, anyone can do it.
Imagine how Boston fans felt about a week ago, eh?