A couple thoughts I was discussing with coworkers and friends during the series and in the time since. It hurt too much to just go off in the immediate aftermath and needed time to settle and then see if the feelings are still the same... they are so here are a few thoughts...
1) since it is the Anderson thread, I will start with opinion / conspiracy theory... whatever is involved in his continuing treatment for clots has changed Freddy’s feeling / sensation in his extremities. He was never super agile but down the stretch and especially in the playoffs where he played so many games in a row, he had soooo many balance issues and coordination issues where he fell and couldn't figure out how to untangle his limbs or get his limbs to work so he could bounce back to his feet. It's almost like he couldn't feel his feet at times… or be able to tell where the puck was at times. He has always been a super calm goalie that relies on stuff hitting him as much as him actively reacting to make a save. But during the playoffs in both the isles and ranger series, he had way too many instances of not being able to make his limbs / nerves rapid fire to move when he wanted to…. or be able to tell where a puck is and then make his body move to cover it. Don’t know if this will recover over time or if this is the new normal and a long term issue that we just have to deal with moving forward…. But if it continues, it is a disqualifying thing for him to carry the load and be the primary goalie without rotation.
2) the jury is still out whether Pyotr is ready to be a successful #1 goalie for our team in the playoffs... but between the two, this is a Swayman overtaking Ullmark kind of moment and Rod can not continue to lean on Freddie like he did this playoffs. The Pyotr era must start next season. I don't think Rod will go back to the same well and trust Anderson this much again. I think he can now talk to Anderson and show he was loyal to the bitter end with Freddie and played him more than he should have. Sucks for this year. I expect they will rotate like they did in the regular season and, assuming Piotr is playing as well next playoffs as he was this regular season, I expect them to start with Pyotr as the #1 starter…. Now whether they do the same thing like this year just with Pyotr being the goalie getting all the starts or if they rotate even in the playoffs with Pyotr getting the majority of starts as the preferred #1A, will see….. but even Rod has basically admitted the failure with his very light criticism of Freddie in the media…. Brindy is a loyal guy but even he sees the writing on the way in hindsight…
3) I think the biggest thing that killed our playoffs was Waddell and management trying to moneypuck their way into trying to fit Jarvis bonuses this season at the expense of getting a proven veteran defensive dman to be the #7/#8 dman. If they had given Buffalo a 4th rounder for Erik Johnson instead of Philly, I think we are still playing and the Rangers are eliminated. Losing Pesce was a much bigger loss to overcome than they planned for as we simply didn’t have a backup…. We can debate if the minor league guy we got from the Pens in the Guentzel trade was supposed to be the Pesce backup… but we just did not cover ourselves against an injury in the playoffs for the type of dman Pesce is…. How we could repeat the same mistake of not having depth to protect against injury after it killed us last year is a failure of management…losing Pesce and having to fill his spot with TDA completely screwed up our entire d corp makeup and how we play the game…. In allllll aspects of how we play the game. We just didn’t have interchangeable dmen where we could put them together in any combination and expect similar play. Making Skjei have to play sheltered minutes as the 3rd pairing with TDA and forcing orlov/Chatfield to be the primary shutdown d pairing killed our penalty kill... we got to see what the team looks like with Chatfield being forced to be the #4 dman without really playing a whole season at those minutes….. we didn’t really play games like that this year to kind of trial it out… we should have played this way in some easier regular season games and made Sjkei / Pesce the 3rd pair so we could have Orlov/Chatty practice for that kind of scenario…. Or we just should have had more depth with a Pesce like defensive dman sitting in the press box post trade deadline.. TDA is never going to be a match to replace Pesce and his role on this team. Our cheat code this past season was having orlov / Chatty playing as 3rd pairing and taking advantage of all the match-up issues that created to our advantage…It's not the same when they now have to play as the second pair every game in a super high pressure playoff series. It pushed slavin / burns to play more as well in some roles they didn't have to all season. Add in losing one of our primary pk forwards in fast and everyone got shifted around into roles on the defense that was a mess in a short window in high stress playoffs... threw everything off and we see our 90% #1 pk in the regular season be the worst of any playoff team. Losing Pesce was way more of a killer than I ever would have thought…. Simply because we just didn’t have a replacement for his style of play and the type of player he is…. Waddell had plenty of cap room left to get that extra depth…. We blew it and it really hurt us in these playoffs…
In spite of the upheaval on the d pairings and changing roles, we still were super close and could have still got it done. But we were more fragile than I thought we would be….the back-breaking and demoralizing softies Freddie gave up made the team just completely implode…….It was the Winnipeg game all over where the team just fell apart in the third period of game 6 and lost their heads…. If we could have just finished one of the 4 primo chances to score that 4th goal and make it 4-1 instead of 3-1, the softie Freddie gave up might not have mattered… I think we would have killed their will to try and come back in game 6…. As soon as we missed those 4 discussed chances and the 5th one of shesterkin totally bobbling the puck but none of our forecheckers being there to make him pay for that really shaky situation, you saw the inevitability of it coming from a million miles away. As soon as that awful Freddie softie went in, I turned the volume down and stopped watching closely. Said to my son well that's it, we are going to lose this now. It's coming. Might take to the end of the period or overtime again, but you can see it on the players faces, it all just changed. I don’t know how you acquire that specific quality…. But we don’t have the overall level of superstar of player that we can expect that when the situation arises, that player will finish the chance when it happens and not miss 4 in a row of them… but that’s the difference in the game and series.. we had them on the ropes to put game 6 away and were the better team, but we juuuust couldn’t put away that prime chance to make it 4-1…. Their goalie made the saves when he needed to, and our goalie gave up softies that helped the spiral into blowing the game in the third period…
