I feel bad for the fans that went to see the game. They look beat. They look tired. Uninterested. Uneventful. Team that lacks to produce scoring chances, let alone high danger scoring chances. I said this last week too, but we just cant generate offense. I know a lot of you say that we lack finish, we lack shooters, goal scorers. But even if we had better scorers, tonight they wouldve not helped at all. They cant finish chances we dont generate. How many actual scoring chances we generated in roughly four minutes with the goalie pulled? Gusev open net and the eventual Wood goal that was already too late. Most of the time was spent passing the puck between the D on the blue line.
I also dont understand the personel choices on that 5on3 PP. I dont think Jack had been out there. I understand Wood in front of the net, Palms at shooting position, Zacha as the hot hand, your choice of D to QB it.. and then JOHNSSON? Literally just get Jack out there and give him the 20 seconds to find either Palms or Zacha for one timer to atleast get a shot at goal rather than giving the time to someone who has been glued to his wing for weeks without nothing to show for it. Sigh..
I thought they were pretty awful on weekend. Couldve easily got shutout by Caps, both of our goals were bad goals. I expected some.. atleast some line up changes.. but we roll in with the same line up and put out even less of an effort (I know we outshot them but how much of it actually mattered?) .. at this point its mind boggling how is Ryan Murray out of the lineup if its not injury related or he said something really bad. I get it. Send a message since he was doing worse after Covid. When is the message being sent to.. PK? Vatanen? Palmieri? Johnsson? And I hate to say this cause I love him, but also Zajac. Gusev too but he has been out of the lineup already. It just looks like he forgot how to play hockey.
Send a message and healthy scratch a player or two to get younger, hungrier guys in. I'm sure guys like Kuok and Merkley would love to get back in. You think they'd produce any less on a top 6 role for a game or two? You know.. I fully expect Shara or Maltsev or Bastian etc to have bad games and to make bad decisions. But right now the bad decisions are coming from the players you should consider if not the leadership group of this team, at the very least the veteran presence.
And look, I know PK is not getting scratched. He makes too much and is too big of a name. Palms is not getting scratched either. I just wish someone had the balls to do such things in order to tell it to their faces that you guys are supposed to be the leaders of this team and right now youre the much bigger problem than the young guys.
Bring in Murray, Kuokkanen and Merkley next game. At the very least its fresh legs in a very tough schedule. This team also looks tired and its understandable. That makes it even more questionable to not have any changes to the line up.
Maybe I'm too harsh, I dont know.
