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Everything posted by MikeyD
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We could have had a forecheck with the players you mentioned. Guys like Motte, did he not bring anything to the team? Motte was one of the few reasons we even got to game 7. Don't tell me that depth players can't affect a series. When you're in the playoffs, anything is on the table. You do what you need to do to win. If that means changing your goalie, changing your line ups, do it. Save the nice gestures for the regular season where you have time to correct mistakes and to fiddle around. Brian Burke always preaches this and he's right. There's no time for niceties when you're competing for the cup. If OJ and Rafferty cost us a series, what would have happened? Everybody would come together and go, "Well, they're young and this is a mistake a young player would make with such little experience!"? That's the worst that situation gets. They have careers ahead of them to correct things. I don't understand when you have one poster saying, "Vegas' forecheck was too good and we couldn't get the puck up" and then go on saying that good puck moving defensemen would have no impact or go on saying that, "hey that team's forecheck was too good, but slotting good forecheckers into our lineup would have no affect". You guys all have this losing mentality that this team can't compete. I don't expect the Canucks to win against Vegas. I think Vegas has the better team. But you might as well bring a gun to a gun fight, not a cardboard paper roll and pretend it's a giant sword. This team is good enough to compete with Vegas. This team shouldn't have beaten the Blues either but our top end skill played like top end skill and we got a bit lucky. Our top talent was stronger than theirs. That's it.
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You could have said the same thing about St. Louis though. Had we played the same way we did against St. Louis we would have been out a long time ago. St. Louis was the better end to end team, they had a better forecheck, etc. but at least our team still played proper hockey. Sure, there were games where they outcompeted us and goaltending won us a couple against them. 5 on 5 we were outclassed. We still had chances though. I agree, high shot count doesn't mean that they're getting good scoring chances. Now what is often a better measurement of that is shot maps/shot locations. If you bothered to look at those, you'd see just how poorly Las Vegas shot the puck. Their execution was anus. The complete butthole. It's not like we took away all of their chances in the slot, we just lucked out and they missed all of their chances from the slot or put it into Demko's logo. They still had chances galore. In game 7, halfway through the game they had 42 missed shots. 42! I just fundamentally to my core believe that surrendering to another team because they're good is what a coach in the NHL should ever do. It's the NHL. It's not NHL vs CHL. It's the NHL. A league that's highly regarded to have the closest groups of teams where a last placed team can beat a first placed on any given night. And we decided because our team wasn't good enough and that because Vegas forechecked so well, that allowing them to play offense on us like it was a practice for 55 minutes 3 games in a row is a strategy that somehow leads to success. How anybody defends this blows my mind. Why anybody would want to see their team play that way blows my mind. To have a National Hockey League coach allow his team to play that way, blows my mind. If I were a GM and I constructed a team, trying to win as many games as possible and I saw my coach basically throwing out life vests to his team and say, "Just focus on trying to not let them score on us", I'd fire him on the spot. Does nobody understand how talented this team is? You don't think guys like Petey, Bo, Hughes, Boeser, Miller or Toffoli can pull a rabbit out of a hat and score every once and a while? Had Vegas actually been somewhat capable of hitting the net, those games would have been absolute blowouts. And because they couldn't hit the broad side of a barn we have people on this forum praising the coaching as if he did the best he could do. Blows my mind.
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My suggestion is if he was worried about gas to infuse fresh legs into the series. By playing a "please don't score on me" style of game, you're surrendering the team to luck. They won't grow figuring how to not lose, they will grow failing to win. A good team will never play the way Travis had them playing, so why even bother teaching them bad habits? Throw some fresh legs in there. We had capable guys in Mac, Graovac, Bailey and Rafferty and OJ. He basically surrendered to the hockey gods and prayed for wins. If you're gonna do that, why not at least let some of your young talent gain something out of it and compete the way you should. I expected him to say that the team ran out of gas and that partway through games he didn't think they had the energy to forecheck or something reasonable to his coaching ability being extra difficult. He basically set his team up for failure.
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I'm not sure we can hedge bets on Podz being top 6 quite yet. Good chance, yes. Top 9, absolutely guaranteed. Top 6 though is tough. Getting 50 points out of him is definitely possible with his potential, but he lacks IQ in certain areas of the game and plays a large part of his game like a bull in a china shop. If he can learn to slow the game down to a readable pace in certain areas we can start getting more optimistic. Everything else I agree with. Will be interesting to get the know on the Marky contract negotiations.
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Me too. Reminds me a bit of a Makar-lite. Not as good raw talent wise, but the same kind of mind for offense.
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Didn't care much about the way Green answered the last question. A great question about the last 3 games and he dodged it pretty significantly. Enough info in there to pretty much confirm my original thoughts and that was that he was just trying to survive Vegas. Not a great mentality, in my opinion.
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You're gonna love Rafferty and eventually Rathbone. Rafferty is NHL ready, Rathbone just needs to get his timing down offensively (gained through experience). Rathbone has the tools, he's just very risky offensively. Sometimes overly committed to that part of the game. But seeing as most of our forwards are responsible defensively it could work out really well. Also OJ's puck moving skills will hopefully be a great addition. I just wonder how he will be defensively.
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I think Green was a big reason as to why we lost. I truly believe we had the talent to out-play the Knights, especially because they lacked execution and we had elite goaltending. In some ways I tip my hat to Green for pulling out 7 games against Vegas, but it was clear as day that game 7 was going to go the way it did and due to his decision-making, we needed another miracle to pull out another win. Vegas transitionally offense is a great team, they have a great forecheck and they play well as a unit. We needed quick puck movement. In some games, we saw this and we had games like in games 3 and 4 where we actually had a lot of odd-man rushes. Now, with that said, did our team know what the hell to do on one? Absolutely not. But that falls on coaching. It seemed as if every entry (including and ESPECIALLY on our powerplay) lacked any kind of shape to it. Constantly you'd see 3 guys all skating in the same line every single rush. In the past 5 games I counted 3 intelligent attacks on our odd man rushes. That's awful. But let's not pretend we don't have puck moving defensemen. We do. But what we don't have is the balls to play them over slow movers like Edler or Fanta (who actually had a decent series defensively against Vegas, just offensively he didn't add anything). I think a lot of people are going to be surprised by talent like Rafferty next year (I will be pissed if he isn't given his rightful shot at the NHL) or even guys like Rathbone (who is still raw, but he can add to a team similarly to a young Krug). Vegas was overcommitting halfway through the series because they saw holes on puck movement and they constantly attacked that weakness. Green adjusted and played an extremely defensive system built on counter attacks. Problem with that is that he also didn't want his team playing a possession game. Possession wins games. The sooner coach realizes this, the better we'll be. This team has more than enough talent to be an elite possession team, we see it in probably 1/3 of the games we play. When we stop with the short line changing game, this team controls the game as good as the best of them. We saw it in games with the Blues, we saw it in game 4 on Minny. Green lost his swagger. He went from, "We are going out there to beat the other team, screw experience" to, "Well, hopefully we can just survive this team". You could see his confidence against the Blues and after game 2 in Vegas he had completely lost it. Had this team composed the same game plan against the Blues in game 6 as we did against Vegas we would have stood a much better chance at winning. Game 7 was an absolute lock to be a loss. You can't have that small of a % in possession and not be gassed. SUPER rookie mistake. I called it after the first period in game 4 because we've seen it all year that Green will resort to these tactics against certain teams. Now you can make the argument that it was the team, and that they just didn't play the right way. The reason I don't believe this, is because never at one point did Green utilize a time out to get his team back on track. Had I seen that style of play (the constant chip and changes with no forecheck), I would have been going full Tortz on them. You don't win games by staying fresh, you win games by having the puck on your stick. You gain the energy by not having to defend. You put in the work early so you don't have to put in twice the amount of work later. The only thing that wasn't predictable in this series is Demko's performance and his ability to steal what should have been 3 hockey games. Now you can claim Green's defensive structure prevented hemorrhaging and we could have been absolutely blown out, but I would have much preferred to see the team try to play the right way you need to win at a cup level and finding the errors in their mistakes than to play a style that unequivocally will never win you a cup. Now we can also make the argument that the team just didn't have anything left in the tank. To an extent, I absolutely agree with this. But why weren't there any changes made? The guys that we needed to keep in (the Petey's and the Quinn's of the team) weren't an issue for the gas tank. They played good enough to win and carry the team to the next round. What we didn't have the gas for was... our bottom six? Okay, so that's accurate. You had guys like Sutter, Roussel, Jake, etc. not being on their game. Alternatively you had no shows in guys like Pearson. Now this is my second biggest gripe (aside from teaching the team to play the right way) of Travis Green: he refuses to change up the lineup until it's out of complete desperation. We have guys that can be difference makers that aren't in our lineup. We have size (which many analysts said is where we got destroyed) in guys like Mac, Graovac, Bailey, we have speed in guys like Mac and Bailey, we have depth guys capable of scoring in guys like Mac, Graovac and Bailey and Rafferty. Guys like Eriksson, Sutter, Roussel and Pearson should have never played the amount of games that they were given. This team still had gas in the tank, you saw it after the Canucks got scored on. This team is constantly stuck on defensive guys who bring nothing else to the table. Now hey, if you're a defensive guy and you're doing it to an elite caliber I'll keep you in the lineup all day long. Guys like Motte is who you need in the lineup. I've been preaching his name since the moment we got him. Those guys win you hockey games. The guys that don't who are great defensively in their own end, but don't put in the work defensively (ie: the forecheck) in the offensive end. Guys like Sutter will keep the puck out of your net in your own end, but they're not gonna go retrieve a puck in the offensive end. Going 50% isn't gonna win you hockey games, and the fact that we constantly keep over-utilizing them is the reason why this team is so mind-numbingly inconsistent. We become consistent when those depth defensive guys put in their work in the offensive zone, but Travis Green isn't pushing that style of play on them often and it shows. Anybody recognize that when Sutter was being offensive, the team was doing great? And when he wasn't, the team wasn't? Can't be sending in one guy with no help. Can't be sending in no guys and awaiting another wave. You gotta do something about it.
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Hate to burst your bubble but OJ isn't going to be the type of player you're dreaming about. He lacks IQ defensively and he doesn't have the go to play that way. He's an efficiency type of guy, the less the better. Guys like Tanev are a gift because they have elite defensive IQ and can anticipate plays. He's an Edler type defender but doesn't have his physicality (yet anyways). Both players aren't quick to move their feet, but they do possess good passing ability. OJ is a better puck mover than both Edler and Tanev, but defensively he's not close to Tanev even remotely and Edler's defense is wildly inconsistent so I'd say he's much closer to Eddie that way. OJ still needs a lot of work. However he did look great in the game against Minny but he wasn't forced into many bad situations. Having watched him in over half of his AHL games this past season, I can tell you that without him being a top pick in the draft, the kid hasn't done anything to earn his status as being the guy we need yet. Hopefully he proves me wrong, but he's a #4 guy on defense for me at the moment potential wise. Realistically I see him as a #5-6 for a couple more years.
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Definitely still a bit raw but he is still doing a lot of the little things right, and in some aspects, even better in comparison to last year. He's better off the puck, not putting himself into bad situations quite as much and he's still a hound and still will try taking it to the net. Looks more promising than last year but small sample size. Again, we should all lower our expectations. The kid won't be ultra dynamic offensively and put up a PPG pace, but he definitely will make for a hell of a third liner off the get go hopefully (which would be a huge hole we need filled on this team). I liked this pick from the get go, and the anticipation is killing me haha. Really wish he was given big minutes to see how he allocates his energy though. Edit: not a ppg pace from the get-go, just to be clear. He has the potential to get there, but he's lacking some IQ traits to be a consistent PPG kind of guy without a great cast around him. With guys like Petey, he could definitely get that way due to Petey's elite playmaking ability but on a second line with Bo I would never anticipate that happening from the start. He's great off the puck as he's always open to receiving the pass to make a play but with a smaller rink and tighter checking a lot of his raw talent will be mitigated by good defense. Open space is where this kid shines, but it's tough to come by in the NHL.
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Is anybody worried we instilled a loser's mentality this series? The team basically rolled over and nearly died and were using their final breaths to pray to Demko to save the team. They didn't even try to forecheck/score/hit/have offensive zone pressure for over half a series. I don't know what we could possibly learn from losing that way. Maybe looking at Vegas and how they managed to make their own team lay down and give up like that?