This is huge tactic by keefe. Tortorella worthy.
Also Källgren will play like a zerogame tonight. They ain't have nothing in their lineup. We do.
Doesn't anyone find it odd, and a bit contradictory how we as a fanbase and Sheldon as the coach continually demand better results against non-playoff teams, and not playing down to our opponents. Yet, accept the fact that we are not putting out our best lineup, in this case goaltender, because the opponent is not worthy of our best lineup???
Sheldon has made this mistake before by playing our backup against "bad" teams before, and it has cost us points. So it's not a one-off. IMO, by icing a less then optimal lineup as a coach you have already played down to your opponent before the puck has even dropped.
We have shown time and time again an inability to control games against teams exactly like the yotes. We get too cute with the puck, and we play exactly into their system. We get caught on sloppy turnovers, and it bites us in the ass. We lost the division, and an ideal first round opponent last season by going:
Montreal (2-2-0) 4/8 pts available
Arizona (0-1-1) 1/4 pts available
Buffalo (1-3-0) 2/8 pts available
we got 7 of the possible 20pts against these 3 teams. If we were to have got 16 of those pts we would have won the division, and that's not even considering the 3+ goal leads we lost FLA and COL (and probably others), as well as going 0-2-0 against another non-playoff team in Vancouver.
All I am saying is our division is way too good to be giving up points to shitty teams. We cannot guarantee a good matchup in R1 even if we win the presidents trophy, but last season it was the difference in playing TB over WAS in R1. Every game matters. We have to respect every opponent