went to the game, so great to be back at the tank... here at the thoughts:
1. Celebrini is for real. Its not just the goal and assist: his anticipation, his passing, his skating, his shot, his ability to find space, and his IQ .... its all there.
2. Every other high end prospect fumbled. Dickinson was god awful. Musty was terrible. Graf was mediocre at best. Cagnoni was moderately interesting and I liked his aggressiveness, but much to learn.
Basically, no one but celebrini looked clearly NHL ready.
3. we need one more NHL winger to be competitive. Just one more top 6 winger. Kostin aint gunna cut it. Toffoli looks great. Eklund and granlund looked good, but that was it. Not impressed by dylandrea in his first look. I know its just one game, but you can see it...
4. Warsofsky's post game presser was perfect. Its a learning curve. Dick, musty.... these guys are 18/19 years old and the game is faster here. They have the raw tools but speeding up your brain takes time. Dick is clearly going back to london. Musty took a step back to sudbury (or wherever he lands in the O). Nevertheless, warsofsky is clearly a good teacher and ill be interested to watch as camp progresses...
5. On the unfortunate side, I also saw a lot of last year in this game. 10 shots in the first two periods. Very little Ozone possession time. It was familiar, and the sharks had most of their lineup playing (Wennberg, walman, zetterlund, Smith, and Benning were the only somewhat 'main' guys out), while VGK played a pretty much exclusively rookie lineup other than a few depth guys lik hutton or howden. Still vegas vastly outplayed us and nearly doubled up the shot total. Thats depressing when a mostly NHL team plays a junior/ahl team and loses. Warsofsky has his work cut out for him...