One day after Game 1, some general thoughts:
- we all seem to agree that many of our wingers were unnoticeable or unengaged: Giroux, Tkachuk, Batherson among them. I wonder if this is a system problem or due to individual performances / babies?
- defensemen skating with the puck out of the zone, slowing the game down when needed: we didn't see enough of this. We saw instead some quick passing, which sometimes worked, especially in the first period, not so much the rest of the way. Is this a system decision, or was Chabot bad? Wish we had another D on our 3rd line who could do this, we used to have one...
- 4th line: as many predicted Gaudette is not a fit there. I didn't watch pre-season, so I can only rely on HFers observation than Jenik may be a better fit. I thought Cousins was good, and Gregor had his good moments where his speed shined. But I imagine next game they might just replace Gaudette with MacEwen.