GDT: #20 ⋅ SEA @ ANA ⋅ 7:00 PM PST

[JAHV]

How'd McTavish look? Still as inconsequential as always this season?

Yeah, except this time with the excuse that he was just "getting back up to game speed." A number of mishandled pucks, some opportunities wasted when he waited too long to shoot and had the puck poked away, but no dumb minor penalties! Progress!

I like McTavish a lot when he's going well, but he seems clearly to have taken a step back this season.

 

[Ducks DVM]

Enforcers prevent shoulder to shoulder body checks?


having a Reaves, Deslauriers, or Johnston prevents clean shoulder to shoulder hits?

They are supposed to extract a penalty for taking out a star player with an illegal hit (doesn’t matter if it’s shoulder to shoulder when the player wasn’t eligible to be hit), and they’re certainly supposed to prevent the meathead from running around trying to lay more hits in the next period. Neither occurred.

Failing that - hit someone. Anyone. Stop passing up hits on their defensemen.

 

[Ducks DVM]

Is that a bright side? That even the sharks can score that many and we can’t even bother to score 3 after our star player gets taken out?

The bright side is that the team we play Friday got torched.

 

[robbieboy3686]

The bright side is that the team we play Friday got torched.

So they end up pissed off and play their A+ game against us on Friday?

 

[JAHV]

They are supposed to extract a penalty for taking out a star player with an illegal hit (doesn’t matter if it’s shoulder to shoulder when the player wasn’t eligible to be hit), and they’re certainly supposed to prevent the meathead from running around trying to lay more hits in the next period. Neither occurred.

Failing that - hit someone. Anyone. Stop passing up hits on their defensemen.

This was the thing that annoyed me most about Johnston. I get that people want revenge, but to me, that's counter-productive in a close a game if it's done wrong. Gudas laid a great open-ice hit after Carlsson got hurt - THAT'S the way it should be done. Your mileage may vary.

Johnston repeatedly passed up opportunities to crunch their defensemen on the forecheck. There was one play - I forget if it was the end of the second period or the beginning of the third - when the Ducks dumped the puck into the corner (of course!). They cut to the camera in that corner at ice level (which I hate, incidentally, but I digress) and you could see the Kraken d-man come and pick the puck up. Then Johnston comes into the frame skating toward the d-man and I thought, "Oh man, Ross is going to level this guy." But then the d-man shot the puck along the boards and Johnston (despite that guy still being eligible to be hit because the puck had just left his stick) just peeled off, skated behind the net, and chased the play, never touching the guy.

It was so deflating. What the heck is he even in the lineup for if not to punish defenders and put the fear of God into them? Or create turnovers by separating them from the puck? Or piss them off so that they go after him and take a dumb penalty?

 

[McDonald19]

They are supposed to extract a penalty for taking out a star player with an illegal hit (doesn’t matter if it’s shoulder to shoulder when the player wasn’t eligible to be hit), and they’re certainly supposed to prevent the meathead from running around trying to lay more hits in the next period. Neither occurred.

Failing that - hit someone. Anyone. Stop passing up hits on their defensemen.

I agree with initiating more hits, but I don’t think Ross played much after the incident in a close game. Hopefully the incident will be addressed early tomorrow, and not just with Ross hugging Oleksiak.

 

[FlyingV09]

I don’t understand how you guys think that hit on Leo was so dirty. A touch late MAYBE. It wasn’t a blindside. It wasn’t a hit to the head.

He went into the net. That’s why he got hurt. Gudas went after Kartye after the hit. Zegras took a stupid slashing penalty. What else do you want?

 

[Ducks DVM]

I don’t understand how you guys think that hit on Leo was so dirty. A touch late MAYBE. It wasn’t a blindside. It wasn’t a hit to the head.

He went into the net. That’s why he got hurt. Gudas went after Kartye after the hit. Zegras took a stupid slashing penalty. What else do you want?

It’s dirty because of the location. Sending someone into the goalpost is similar to sending someone into the boards. At that distance, they don’t have the ability to protect themselves. If that happened at mid-ice, it’s a standard 2 minutes.

But it didn’t.

 

[All Mighty]

I don’t understand how you guys think that hit on Leo was so dirty. A touch late MAYBE. It wasn’t a blindside. It wasn’t a hit to the head.

He went into the net. That’s why he got hurt. Gudas went after Kartye after the hit. Zegras took a stupid slashing penalty. What else do you want?

The location of the hit matters, too. Like when someone gets checked near the boards. I definitely don’t think it was worthy of a suspension or anything, but I also wouldn’t say it was totally clean.

 

[Ducks DVM]

This was the thing that annoyed me most about Johnston. I get that people want revenge, but to me, that's counter-productive in a close a game if it's done wrong. Gudas laid a great open-ice hit after Carlsson got hurt - THAT'S the way it should be done. Your mileage may vary.

Johnston repeatedly passed up opportunities to crunch their defensemen on the forecheck. There was one play - I forget if it was the end of the second period or the beginning of the third - when the Ducks dumped the puck into the corner (of course!). They cut to the camera in that corner at ice level (which I hate, incidentally, but I digress) and you could see the Kraken d-man come and pick the puck up. Then Johnston comes into the frame skating toward the d-man and I thought, "Oh man, Ross is going to level this guy." But then the d-man shot the puck along the boards and Johnston (despite that guy still being eligible to be hit because the puck had just left his stick) just peeled off, skated behind the net, and chased the play, never touching the guy.

It was so deflating. What the heck is he even in the lineup for if not to punish defenders and put the fear of God into them? Or create turnovers by separating them from the puck? Or piss them off so that they go after him and take a dumb penalty?

I know exactly what okay you’re talking about, because I yelled out “hit someone already, stop with the drive-byes”.

Frustrating.

Perhaps Cronin has told him to stop, but that seems to be against what he says he wants.

 

[Hockey Duckie]

The hit on Carlsson, imo, appears to be a guy finishing his check. What made things astronomically worse was where on the ice Carlsson was hit. If the hit occurred three feet away laterally, then the net isn't there and Carlsson slides to the end boards. The net post exacerbated everything, which includes the back of Carlsson's head onto the ice.

Anaheim's response afterwards, I agree with everyone on the board citing we were muted. In the previous game, against Buffalo, we were matching physicality with the Sabres. Where did that go in this game after seeing one of your teammates gets knocked out of the game? Johnston is supposed to rile the team up if they're playing muted.

Our team travels up to face the same Seattle team in two days time. It's one of those rare instances of back-to-back game sets against the same team to give that playoff feeling. After Carlsson got knocked out, it didn't feel like a playoff series. Is the team going to continue to be muted facing the same team in the very next game?

---

The interview gives us the answer.

another masterclass from Cronin the Cronie..

I agree with someone who commented in the video.. what will it TAKE for him to get fired?

We don't have someone on the team to drag it back away from muteness. Our veteran forwards are meh about taking the reins. Our youths are still learning the reins. On defense, Gudas can only do so much. I guess this is what happens when the coach is forcing its players to be "yes men" and take away their personalities.

I suppose this is where Johnston's role comes into play and somehow induces more energy into the team as well as the crowd, since we were playing at home. We didn't get that. We did get the loss, though.

 

[JonathnTaylorTavares]

Leo was looking down at his hand and trying to move it. Wind knocked out of him + broken finger?

 

[FlyingV09]

It’s dirty because of the location. Sending someone into the goalpost is similar to sending someone into the boards. At that distance, they don’t have the ability to protect themselves. If that happened at mid-ice, it’s a standard 2 minutes.

But it didn’t.

The location of the hit matters, too. Like when someone gets checked near the boards. I definitely don’t think it was worthy of a suspension or anything, but I also wouldn’t say it was totally clean.

So what's the call on that, then? The interference call was a reach, IMO. You hit a guy dangerously into the boards, its boarding. What do you call a clean hit into the post? I don't understand what the ref is supposed to call there.