People are human. This is a team that had high expectations coming into the year and were meeting them despite an obvious flaw in the roster.
What’s the point of trying if you know your goalie is going to let something in? When you go down in a game, you take risks. You change lines. You become desperate. Habits creep into your game to adjust. You lose momentum, and then things go for a toss.
This is a sport played by humans, not by AI or robots. If there was a perfect system that completely eliminated human error then no team would ever win the cup as every game would always be tied 0-0.
I have no clue how you look at measurable defensive statistics, see that they’re still in the top half of the league while at the same time comparing goaltending numbers to league averages and conclude that the defense is the issue.
Occams razor.
Its about not being a professional and being too fragile. So when things go sideways you quit.
Thats not a formula for winning at all.
There are so many examples of people and teams overcoming adversity.
To lose this game against a very mediocre team like the Ducks and give them chance after chance without contesting anything is not about being human.
Its about not being committed to the details required to win.
That frustrates me because it isnt a switch they can just turn on and change.
I have said before that maybe its because these games just dont mean as much as the playoffs.
The problem is though that creating good habits by locking down details allows players to lay the foundation for how they react when the games get dialed up. They react with confidence.
This team looks confused to me. Players arent in their proper positions and other players (ie Ekholm) are then trying to do too much. It creates confusion and solidifies poor decision making. You then start forcing the play and thats something we see Connor and Leon do all the time lately. I think thats partly why Leon made so many agregious mistakes in this game.
Over time it becomes that much harder to overcome. Thats where this team appears to be right now.
Changing goalies is fine but it wont solve the above problem.
Do you really think that a new goalie is going to fix all of the above?
Its an issue but its seperate to all the other issues that the skaters are creating for themsleves.
An elite goalie will help (that would help any team) but he wont be able to overcome and resolve all the issues this team currently has. An elite goalie isnt even an option for this team at this time. they just dont have the cap space.
You also have to consider how hard it is to play goal when you have no way of prediciting what the players in front of you are going to do.
It becomes a shit show.
Structure does help goaltenidng though. Thats been proven time and time again.
This team has such poor structure right now...very poor habits...its so obvious.
Maybe a few more energy players will help the team to get more emotionally invested. Maybe most of these issues are due in large part to the lack of emotion for these regualr season games.
I wish I knew.
It wont be easy to turn that around. Hard work and a commitment to detail is the only way out IMO.
I have taken some heat for this but I really think that this team is too soft....too vanilla.
Whats the difference between Henrique, Janmark, Brown, Arvidsson, Skinner, Kapanen, Perry et al?
Does one player really stand above any of the other players? Not really,...Skinner maybe scores more on 5x5 and the 40 year old Perry still has some game in him but none of those players really stands high above any of the others. Very vanilla.
They are also too old/slow.
They need some young physicality in the lineup. Some emotion. Thats one reason why losing Holloway was so critical for this team. Speed and physicality is badly needed.
This is also why I think that players like Fredric will help. Physicality has its place and creating emotion is maybe something this team really needs to get reinvested into what it takes to win.