sampollock
Registered User
Reactions of fans are emotionalThis place is ridiculous.
but this team is so young just enjoy the 1st round
Reactions of fans are emotionalThis place is ridiculous.
As one wise man once said: simply because you can eat doesn’t mean you can cook.I hate when this argument gets brought up for coaches or other personal. Mario Tremblay won a cup, it didn’t make him a good coach here.
I get that, it's just a bit of a shame. Struble-Xhekaj incidentally performed better at 5 on 5 than any pairing that involved Savard in terms of xGF% during the season. Surprisingly, Hutson-Xhekaj was also rather solid.There are cards MSL is not using like replacing Struble for X. Removing Savard is not a card in his deck. I’m sure it’s never even been a fleeting thought in MSL’s mind.
i guess many of the fans are also young....not young in age but young in playoff experience....thus have not much experience with the ebs and flows/ups and downs of a series.Reactions of fans are emotional
but this team is so young just enjoy the 1st round
Paunchious Palate, the Roman governor?As one wise man once said: simply because you can eat doesn’t mean you can cook.
you have to have 4 really good lines and 3 top solid d men, not all scoring d men but solid in their zonei guess many of the fans are also young....not young in age but young in playoff experience....thus have not much experience with the ebs and flows/ups and downs of a series.
I think I'll start liking posts with the Figs and Hens emojis until they are removed lolAnd why no Habs in the Habs board?
What happened to your favorite, « Arbot »?you have to have 4 really good lines and 3 top solid d men, not all scoring d men but solid in their zone
habs are working towards that goal
As for Savard showing he's able to kill penalties - maybe when he was younger, but he's a demonstrably worse PKer than Xhekaj is in terms of xGA/60. He's also not good in transition anymore, what he's done over his career is frankly meaningless when he can't do those things now.
Which is why our xGA/60 on the PK is higher when he's out there than when he's not.
I think Savard went to block Ovi's shot and it deflected off his shin and went in.I mean what good did Savard do on Ovechkin's side last game exactly? Matheson got dogwalked by Nashville as well, should we take him out of the lineup? (Yes, but that's a different point).
Montreal's PK this year performing so well, in my opinion, is more a reflection of the forwards and goaltending than it is the defense. If just Dobeš had let in as many goals as expected on the PK, we'd be middle of the pack, let alone if Montembeault or Primeau had.
A GM has more to pick from than 2 guys.........I really though Hughes would have made it happen by getting a guy to help the team. I also understand where Suzuki was coming from in that he didn't want anyone to leave simply for picks.......................so at that point if I am GM I get them some help. My thought process was he would get them help........he didn't and here we are.
Can Newhook become a 2nd line C at this point? Unlikely.....
That said, as mentioned before we are simply playing with house money...........
Easiest switch would be hein for Demi.
Demi, Armia and Evans can be a pretty good exploitation line.
Then hope Hein can work opportunities for laine and hope newhook has a Paul Byron type of revelation when it comes to finishing.
Small tweak that I think we should do
I keep having to remind myself that MTL is playing of Game 2 of their NHL playoff series tonight
After the last 3 years.. just.. wasn't expecting this so soon I guess lol
Would be loads of fun to split this and get back to MTL 1-1 obviously
Good luck boys!
In 2010 Washington had us down 3-1. Halak replaced Price Habs turned series around.
Well in that case, there is no cult for Xhekaj either. I can think of quite a few posters off the top of my head that will fight tooth & nail to justify whatever Marty is up to. So much so that now posters are arguing that Arber's physicality, toughness, intimidation does absolutely nothing to impact results of a hockey game, which I find absolutely absurd. That just screams bad faith to me. There is no reason to stoop that low and pretend that wouldn't make a positive difference on the ice.There's not a single person I've seen defending his every move. There's a large number of people absolutely caking their pants that a 7th defenseman isn't playing tonight and acting like the insertion of him would be some golden trump card that would flip the series on its head and guarantee the Habs winning but Marty just refuses to play it because he hates toughness and Xhekaj personally. It's completely ridiculous.
His handling of Xhekaj down the stretch was warranted. He was a walking turnover and gave up multiple goals trying to headhunt. That's not a reliable player to be playing. There was only one situation on a back to back that he could have got him into and probably should have.. That's pretty much it.
Criticism isn't warranted on which 7th D he puts in the line-up. It's far more warranted on going back to the same forward lines as last game where only the top line got any traction or did anything. Not about dressing Arber Xhekaj vs Jayden Struble.
I'm getting annoyed that every second post is crying about Arber Xhekaj not playing in a game when he hasn't been a reliable NHL defenseman for quite some time.
The problem is the bottom 2 lines have very defined defensive responsibilities and they take every draw that's in our end. You don't really want to expose anyone on the 2nd line to that. They are handcuffed and just have to hope the 2nd line starts to tread water.I'm surprised the lines and defense pairings remain the same. Not because of Xhekaj, but because that 2nd line is virtually unplayable. 10-1 against at 5-5 scoring chances last game. Newhook 2-8 in the faceoff dot. Can't expect Demidov to have success when his line never has the puck and can't get it back.
Maybe Demidov was, at least partially, responsible for these numbers...I'm surprised the lines and defense pairings remain the same. Not because of Xhekaj, but because that 2nd line is virtually unplayable. 10-1 against at 5-5 scoring chances last game. Newhook 2-8 in the faceoff dot. Can't expect Demidov to have success when his line never has the puck and can't get it back.