Post-Game Talk: Game #25: Blackhawks 2, Canucks 1 - Six goals? Nah, one goal will do fine...

[Virtanen2Horvat]

What a disappointment I come back home to see that we are back to the 1 goal scoring drought. If this keeps up who cares I prefer to go with a draft pick in the 1-10 section. This year is a weak draft correct?

 

[John Bender*]

The thing with this team is....Y2K.....they are not good enough to outscore the opposition. they need to play air tight defense and have excellent goaltending. Excellent goaltending is what Chicago got tonight. Luongo does not provide that anymore.

You can argue offense until you are blue in the face, but this team is build to win game 1-0, 2-1, etc. Luongo needs to be better, or he needs to get the **** out of dodge and we need to try someone else.

I really would like to see Lack get more games.

 

[arsmaster*]

What I don't understand is how allowing 2 goals isn't good enough. Sure it's not good enough to win games where you only score one. I mean, on average allowing 2 should see you win games

Stats guys: shouldn't this normalize itself?

Shouldn't we able to score above the league average at some point?

I still think we played good. Looks like we got most of our bounces last night.

 

[Grumbler]

Edler was ****ing terrible this game. He is worst right now out of the last three years. Falls down, stands still, brain dead pinches and never gets his shots through traffic. Seriously, its hard for me to believe that he can't skate well rather than the abundant ****s he demonstrates to show that he is just lazy and does not want to chase the opposition players down the ice.

 

[ProstheticConscience]

Lu did a pretty good job of keeping the puck out of our net with several great saves. 2 goals against, in a game against the best offensive team in the league isn't a bad game. Our offense just **** the bed.

Do you even read sentences that don't have the word "Luongo" or "Lu" in them?

 

[deadinthewater]

wtf is everyone panicking? We Lost a 1 goal game where we easily were the better team ... 9 times out of 10 we win this game. And oh ya its only the Stanley Cup Champs

It's such a tough division and we're losing games we should be winning. It's going to be hard getting into the thick of things when teams like SJ/ANA/LA/etc. are the ones we need to pass.

 

[pitseleh]

NHL average save percentage in 06/07 was .905. It's .915 now. That includes backups. Relative numbers are all that matter, no point in comparing the two directly.

Luongo has a .914 SV%. He's probably a below-league average starter nearly two months into the season.

 

[John Bender*]

wtf is everyone panicking? We Lost a 1 goal game where we easily were the better team ... 9 times out of 10 we win this game. And oh ya its only the Stanley Cup Champs

After a dismal California road swing, this team has 3 points out of a possible 8 on it's 5 game home stand with the final game against LA.

Panic time.

 

[The Poacher]

I missed the first period, did Kassian get hurt or was he benched? I noticed he only played a little over 4 minutes.

 

[y2kcanucks]

Against a bottom 10 defense, the Canucks managed 1 goal tonight. Against the number 1 offense in the league Luongo held them to 2 goals. Chicago has averaged 3.70GF/game this year going into tonight, and 3 goals against.

 

[WinterEmpire]

What I don't understand is how allowing 2 goals isn't good enough. Sure it's not good enough to win games where you only score one. I mean, on average allowing 2 should see you win games

Stats guys: shouldn't this normalize itself?

Shouldn't we able to score above the league average at some point?

I still think we played good. Looks like we got most of our bounces last night.

Well see the thing about an average is that likely a fair amount of teams would be below that average....guess which ones the Canucks are

 

[Wetcoaster]

Tortorella post game:

We beat ourselves and teams like Chicago will capitalize on that.

We did a lot of good things but we beat ourselves.

Played a good hockey game other than beating ourselves in those few seconds.

Responded well after getting behind, chance after chance but could not score. 7 or 8 chances to tie it up.

You cannot play mistake free hockey - it is a game of mistakes. And both teams made a lot of mistakes tonight.

Benched Kassian based on his play tonight.

 

[deadinthewater]

I missed the first period, did Kassian get hurt or was he benched? I noticed he only played a little over 4 minutes.

Benched. Not surprised.

 

[Vankiller Whale]

How many excuses for Luongo? 9 seconds. Got outplayed again. This has been going on for mutliple games, not just this one. Right now, FLA game seems the outlier.

With the way this team plays, focusing on possession, playing along the wall and with a heavy forecheck, they will need their goalie to be really good. He had to be the lynchpin, a la Lundqvist in NYR.

This team is like LA. They reduce scoring chances against, increase possession overall, but do not take risks in the neutral zone. As a result, the game is played in a stingier fashion. Something Luongo has not shown to do well within.

Let's see, for November:

Crawford
Bobrovsky
Thomas
Lehtonen
Niemi
Andersen
Quick
Niemi
Smith
Reimer

Bolded are goalies that outplayed him, imo.

 

[polarbearcub]

Aquilinis **** the bed not allowing a Lu buyout

 

[Lonny Bohonos]

How many excuses for Luongo? 9 seconds. Got outplayed again. This has been going on for mutliple games, not just this one. Right now, FLA game seems the outlier.

With the way this team plays, focusing on possession, playing along the wall and with a heavy forecheck, they will need their goalie to be really good. He had to be the linchpin, a la Lundqvist in NYR.

This team is like LA. They reduce scoring chances against, increase possession overall, but do not take risks in the neutral zone. As a result, the game is played in a stingier fashion. Something Luongo has not shown to do well within.

One would think with a heavy focus on possession. Their excellent board play and aggressive forecheck they would be scoring more goals.

 

[cutcopy]

I missed the first period, did Kassian get hurt or was he benched? I noticed he only played a little over 4 minutes.

Turnover machine. He's so frustrating at times.

 

[Intangibos]

Lu has a 931 save percentage this year? What was Crawfords save percentage tonight? What about Reimer? Elite goaltenders, Lu is not that.

Reimer that elite goaltender who is a backup.

Thanks for summing up the people who blame Luongo on this board. Clueless.

 

[StringerBell]

Once again our goalie is provided with a razor thin margin of error.

For as "soft" as the winner was, it was another 100 foot two on one against. Pretty good shot. One you'd hope Lu would get sure.

My gripe is that some people are banging a drum about goaltending not being good enough when we've scored 1 goal or less almost as many teams as we've scored two.

Not a very good recipe for winning. We played hard, unfortunately it looks like we're just not that good.

And again, both goalies were provided with a razor thin margin of error. He's gotta be better than he has been, which unfortunately is simply average this year. Our offense has to be better too. I don't understand why there can only be one thing wrong with the team at a time.

If every single game the other goalie is "better", even goalies who have worse numbers than Luongo on the season, then maybe it's our lethargic offense that only makes them look better?

Crawford played great in the 3rd, but before then? He has a .908 sv% and 2.50 GAA on the year, yet the Blackhawks are still doing much, much better with him than we are with .914 sv% and 2.30 GAA Luongo.

There are a million better ways to describe our offense than "lethargic". As for Luongo, he's been average. He can keep us in games but he can't win games for us anymore unless we score 3+ goals. Letting in 2 or more goals 90% of the time is not good enough in today's game.

Every aspect of the team needs to improve, goaltending is no exception.

 

[John Bender*]

I missed the first period, did Kassian get hurt or was he benched? I noticed he only played a little over 4 minutes.

I suspect he was benched. Made some terrible plays in his own end. I think Torts hates him.

Too bad he could not wear a jersey like that guy in the XFL. "HeHateMe"

 

[luongo321]

How many excuses for Luongo? 9 seconds. Got outplayed again. This has been going on for mutliple games, not just this one. Right now, FLA game seems the outlier.

With the way this team plays, focusing on possession, playing along the wall and with a heavy forecheck, they will need their goalie to be really good. He had to be the linchpin, a la Lundqvist in NYR.

This team is like LA. They reduce scoring chances against, increase possession overall, but do not take risks in the neutral zone. As a result, the game is played in a stingier fashion. Something Luongo has not shown to do well within.

Or maybe our team could score more than 1 ****ing goal in a game. Your Luongo hate is getting pretty tiresome. I don't care what kind of system this team is playing, they should be able to score more than 1 goal. No forward on this team can shoot well. It's pathetic. Please, tell me more about how you predicted the Hawks to score 4 goals tonight.

 

[MarkusNaslund19]

This is laughable. Luongo is mentally weak and fragile and no longer elite, yet when Henrik plays bad it's "oh he must be injured" and with Daniel it's convenient to forget that he was playing poorly even before the Keith injury "maybe he knew he would be injured several games before it happened so his play went downhill?"

Oh look, y2k is martyring himself on Luongo's behalf. What a shock.

The difference is, Henrik has been consistently fantastic for years and years and years. Luongo has been consistently fragile since 2008. He's still a good goaltender, don't get me wrong. But we're not going to win a cup with him. He tends to give up backbreakers.
Also, I can actually point to the moment that I thought Henrik got hurt. Do you think Luongo's hurt? When do you think it happened?

...that's what I thought.

 

[Lonny Bohonos]

Turnover machine. He's so frustrating at times.

Funny thing is they still lose.

Maybe the problem isnt guys like Booth or Kassian.

Maybe Torts will get it one day.

 

[Bleach Clean]

NHL average save percentage in 06/07 was .905. It's .915 now. That includes backups. Relative numbers are all that matter, no point in comparing the two directly.

Luongo has a .914 SV%. He's probably a below-league average starter nearly two months into the season.

Yup, I had tried to make a similar point a few games ago. Obviously, it was met with much defensiveness. SV% doesn't mean much it seems.

I think on the whole, some have failed to recognize that this team's strength now is defense. They limit shots and scoring chances against, play hard along the well and forecheck hard to attain possession. They will be lower scoring, but also better at GA, or should be.

 

[deadinthewater]

Aquilinis **** the bed not allowing a Lu buyout

Such a shame.