i feel funny taking us off-topic and talking about hockey here as the board's on a heater here.
just wanted to throw out a couple of things i saw/heard mentioned. i've tried to keep up with the commentary but not sure if others have mentioned them.
first, i felt like i saw a different tactic by our D on dump-ins. we seemed to be gliding toward pucks, shielding the first forechecker in an attempt i assume to allow the rest of the team to get back and provide support, instead of trying to quickly retrieve and make a play, which was killing us earlier in the series,
we seem to be ok with a board battle if necessary and were winning a lot of those scrums. we lost some but even when we did, we were in better position defensively than we were when we were turning the puck over in those situations earlier in the series. when we won, though, we came out quicker and cleaner and that fed our own forecheck, which, ahem, can be effective.
the other thing is that i felt chuckie was much better. hard to say he's 100% but there was def a big jump in his play. he's got more pop in his stride. maurice said post-game that he felt chuckie was "back". we'll see but that's an encouraging and unexpected turn of events. he also talked about keeping verhaeghe away from chuckie when he wasn't at full speed as carter needs guys who can keep up with him to be effective.
i think we have a recipe now. a couple of bounces and a tweak or two and the boys now know what it looks like to play their game against this very good leafs team. it'll be interesting to see what the leafs come back with.
The best part is that dumbass is still under contract for the next three years.
