Remember how a large group of people filled their diapers about Pettersson and how we 'have to get rid of him' because of his slump?
Remember how a not insignificant portion of those same people dreamt of dealing him for Tkachuk because he's such a leader ('cuz he punchez stuff').
I like the Senators in general, but they are very prone to playing like an entitled, petulant, bully team with zero details. It must be ludicrously easy for a team with maturity and a system it trusts to decimate them piece by piece and watch them tantrum and ruin themselves and it feels like it's them taking on Tkachuk's persona.
Now, I'm not arguing he doesn't care. Nor am I arguing that he'll never figure it out. I suspect he'll get out of there, or they'll mature as a team and he'll have a J.T. Miller arc. But what he was showing wasn't really leadership, it was more like a bully having a tantrum.
As others have stated, the Senators were helped by the refs in a couple of significant ways.
I don't mind Hughes getting a double minor for that play because, while unintentional, that's how a guy gets really hurt. I could even live with a 5 minute major. But a game misconduct for a shove from a guy who never does anything cruel seemed outlandish. I also think the context needs to be considered. A ref calling it that way in the heat of the moment, fair enough. But on replay? Seriously?
Go back and look at the replay and look for the following:
Skates are sharp. When you want to change direction, or stop, before you do that in order to get your skates in a different direction (e.g. if you want to move to your left, and then to your right) there's a moment where you need to do something called 'Unweighting".
I will illustrate it like this.
You are skating forward along the boards with your blades like this:
_____
_____
You want to do a quick stop to change direction and get your skates in this direction:
| |
| |
But to get there, first your skates have to go in this direction:
/. /
/ /.
So the whole time where your skates are diagonal (i.e. not horizontal or vertical) you are 'unweighted' which means that your weight moves up into your upper body and isn't dug in, because if you dug in your skates would dig into the ice and you'd do a sudden really sharp turn and fall over.
While you are in this 'unweighted' position, and it's just a brief moment for a good player, then even a big guy can get pushed over really easily.
I learned this from a former NHLer who trained me as a teen. I skated in on him during a drill and he kept just reaching out and barely touching my shoulder and I would completely spin out. I couldn't understand why until he explained it to me.
Getting back to Norris and Hughes. In the replay, you can see the timing is the problem. Norris is starting to turn his skates to pivot back to go left again, and that's when he gets shoved while unweighting.
So, again, the outcome could conceivably be catastrophic so even though there is little Hughes could do differently, give him a big penalty so D will err on the side of caution with hits from behind. But a game misconduct? Seriously?
Then you had the stuff with Stutzle and Hoglander which was more whiny baby tantrum shit that the refs rewarded them for.
And then the absolute fiasco with Soucy getting decked twice without the puck which led to their 2nd goal.
So all of that goes right for the Sens AT HOME. And they still look like a tantruming team with terrible details. They kind of look like us when things stopped working under Boudreau. Talented, but catastrophically allergic to details or team play.
Love what Petey, DeBrusk, and Sherwood are doing. They and our top pairing are leading the charge and the foot soldiers are following. Even the loss to the Rangers was a great sign.
I see people freaking out about the D personnel like that won't be figured out (and like Willander isn't coming long-term), and about quibbles like Hoglander's contract etc.
People should be kneeling and kissing the ring of our braintrust after what we have seen of pro-scouting for a decade.
Two straight years they have conjured big, tenacious, hitting, incredible forechecking, top/middle six players out of NOTHING in Sherwood and Joshua. This is turning straw into gold. Every single team would give their eye teeth to find one of those and we have found two.
But they maybe were wrong on Forbort and Desharnais so let's pillory them, right?
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I think this road stretch has a good chance to galvanize this team.
This game without every star except Petey gets the players to dig in, play desperate, and remember they are essential to this team.
This road trip, while missing 6, 9, and 35 is adversity, but not impossible as the teams we face aren't great, but it's still a challenging trip.
Further, if those three had 6 month injuries you would be likely to see the team sag and lose hope.
But knowing that the cavalry is coming? I think there's a good chance the team ends up pointing to this trip as the period where we got our mojo back.
