Some notable take aways for me over the weekend were some of the very noticeable improvements in several players. I watched Saturday on tv and attended Sunday afternoon. The pair of Deni Goure and Matthew Papais is dominant. What a treat to watch. Adding Barlow on to their wing is an interesting move and hopefully they can click because that line has so much potential. Goure is really impressive to me. He's all over the puck and noticeably improved in his own zone generating take aways and not backing down from contact.
Guindon has been getting double shifted with them only having 11F dressed and he seems to be able to seamlessly adapt to who ever he is on the ice with. His vision and puck control are so good right now. He's doing a good job of utilizing his line mates and is super dangerous.
Petrovsky got the monkey off his back in a big way, picking up 4 goals over the weekend set. He's been working hard and getting chances, nice to see them start going in for him. With him picking it up you can start to see the depth of the forward group overwhelm as we had several extended shifts in the Erie end.
Brennan is really growing on me. Seeing him in person yesterday was eye opening. He showed off his puck control and his shot is sneaky good. He skates well and works hard. I think the more he plays and the more comfortable he gets he's going to become a consistent threat. I can't see him remaining as part of the rookie rotation in and out of the line up. He's earned a regular turn.
Schweingruber picked up the extra minutes on D with Steen out on Sunday and looked solid. He made some nice soft touch passes exiting the zone right on the tape yesterday that impressed me. He spent some time on the PK as well and didn't look out of place. Hopefully something for him to build off of.
I kind of find it funny, and maybe thats just wwhat fans do regardless of what level the team is, but we've spend so much time talking about what goalie is good, what goalie is struggling, yet we have barely mentioned how well some of these guys are playing.
They way that guys like Cedric Guindon is playing, Deni Goure outplaying almost every other 03 in the league right now, how well Papais has fared, even Nolan Seed who I still have some questions about, is playing quite well.
I figured we would be a very good team, but they are right there as the best team in the West right now, its great to see and exiting for not only this year, but next year as well.
