Post-Game Talk: The only thing in the mix, are the line combos... Habs lose to Capitals.

[Souker]

11 games and… What a train wreck of a season this is going to be lol
So many problems with this team:
- Faceoffs
- PP
- Defensive coverage
- Puck movement on offence
- No real top 6
- “Developmental” bottom 6 + heavy contract filler
- 2 inconsistent goalies (although to be fair, they are left on their own many times)

Let’s remove Caufield from the equation: Gallagher and Suzuki each have 4 goals, EVERYONE else 2 goals or less. That’s completely unacceptable.
Playoffs are not a year or 2 away…

 

[zx81]

Anderson stepped up for a teammate.

I hope he's f***ing scratched for that.

Can't wait for the p***y reporters to ask not a single challenging question

Anderson also finished with minus 3 and overall sucks ball. The guy can rot in the AHL for all I care.

 

[eurodin]

If I could make a comparison. Right now our d looks like :
Emelin (Guhle) - petry (matheson)
Gill (Savard) - Subban rookie (Hutson)
Paul mara - yannick weber (xhekaj, varron, struble and cie)

I mean. How can we expect win something on a regular basis?
back in the days , The moment Petry was eating too much minutes (on markov or weber injury. The team was atrocious. Thats what happen today

Good comparison, and they currently suck on the backend. Petry and Matheson are very similiar and for all the wrong reasons. But when Petry was at his peak game day, he was good.

Savard is over rated. He is not good defensivly. Very overated.
Arber, I love his heart, but he is dumb/not mature. Always takes himself out of position.
A lot of missed assignments from everyone.
We had issues since Markov left, Albeit, Webber/Chiarot/Edmundson are much better defensivly then what we have now.
We lack a top pairing, and Savard is taking up the place of a top player. Matheson is playing some bad hockey now which does not help.

 

[HuGort]

They were doing fine for 2 periods but then fell apart in the 3rd.

I can't blame Primeau. I don't think I've ever seen a goalie get so little support from his D. The front of our net is owned by the opposition. There is zero battle there.

Suzuki picked up 2a. Caufield another goal. Hutson with 2a. Hutson put 2 perfect passes on the tape of both Armia & Caufield on the 5 on 3 & both players f***ed it up. Lol

Oh yeah, and Anderson beat the crap out of Wilson. Good times.

14 goals against over the past 2 games - not good times.

You fellows all wanted the rebuild. I posted a dozen times going to be 5 years of this. Could slide to a dozen years like the Sabres. You fellows all ridiculed me!!

 

[eurodin]

11 games and… What a train wreck of a season this is going to be lol
So many problems with this team:
- Faceoffs
- PP
- Defensive coverage
- Puck movement on offence
- No real top 6
- “Developmental” bottom 6 + heavy contract filler
- 2 inconsistent goalies (although to be fair, they are left on their own many times)

Let’s remove Caufield from the equation: Gallagher and Suzuki each have 4 goals, EVERYONE else 2 goals or less. That’s completely unacceptable.
Playoffs are not a year or 2 away…

Agreed, but how much of that is coaching. I think the defensive coverage is on the coach. I Have never seen it this bad. A ton of mental lapses in the game all D man, and poor positioning. You are taught in Peewee to get between the forward and your goalie as D man. More than half goales store the D man are too high.

 

[Souker]

Agreed, but how much of that is coaching. I think the defensive coverage is on the coach. I Have never seen it this bad. A ton of mental lapses in the game all D man, and poor positioning. You are taught in Peewee to get between the forward and your goalie as D man. More than half goales store the D man are too high.

100%
I’ve been watching this team closely for over 2 decades, and we both know there were very dark years, but I can’t recall a single year with a worse defensive coverage then what we seen early in the season.
What even is that? Some sort of static man to man? It’s so easy to counter with an aggressive and dynamic forecheck. That’s why as you all noticed, they’ve had sooo many instances where they were stuck in their zone for 1+ min with just watching the puck circulate. It’s ridiculous.
I been to a Laval game recently and they have much better coverage than that.

 

[eurodin]

100%
I’ve been watching this team closely for over 2 decades, and we both know there were very dark years, but I can’t recall a single year with a worse defensive coverage then what we seen early in the season.
What even is that? Some sort of static man to man? It’s so easy to counter with an aggressive and dynamic forecheck. That’s why as you all noticed, they’ve had sooo many instances where they were stuck in their zone for 1+ min with just watching the puck circulate. It’s ridiculous.
I been to a Laval game recently and they have much better coverage than that.

This version is as bad at the late 90's early 2000's team. But on paper there is individual talent. Zero system and/or chemistry.

 

[Habs]

Anderson also finished with minus 3 and overall sucks ball. The guy can rot in the AHL for all I care.

Yeah but at least he gave a f***, gotta give him that. I bet Guhle and the boys loved the fact he stepped up , no hesitation. When Lane was hit, there was nothing at all, disgusting. I mean really, -3 or -2 when you are blown out of the water.. what's the difference at that point right?

 

[NotProkofievian]

It takes a while for the stink to wash off. Lots of good forwards in this draft, the kind of which we don't really have in our system.

 

[Heffyhoof]

The disturbing love of MSL at the mockery of anyone else player or fan, the weird hatred of X, and now some very recent pooping on Slaf. What weird new articles have the boring posters been reading and regurgitating recently?

The on ice product does not match the reality some are peddling.

 

[waitin425]

"oh no....we suck again"

 

[Habs Icing]

What perplexes me about MSL's concepts is that he and Robidas insist on playing man-to-man in their own zone. That is just bonkers.

An example: on one of the Caps' goals MSL's concept was to have Hutson skate to his defensive blueline to follow his man and the puck. It didn't matter that Suzuki was there already. The Cap D-man takes a shot on net and Caulfield - a diminutive forward - was asked to cover the slot area. Obviously CC was late to the party and even if he arrived on time he was not strong enough or apt enough to tie up the forward. The Caps scored.

This makes sense to anyone? Teams outside the NHL pick up big strong youngsters and place them on defence. They invest time and money to teach them how to defend. NHL teams draft the best of these players hoping one day they'll be able to box out or tie up an opposing forward. Along comes MSL and reinvents the wheel. Naw, with his concepts everyone can play any position. A few more years of this, we won't have to distinguish d-men from forwards. And we won't have to draft d-men when we don't have enough d-men. We'll just draft anyone and tell them you'll have to play every position.

The problem with MSL as a coach is that as a player he was great at almost everything on the ice. Now, he thinks every player is like he was.

 

[Walrus26]

The disturbing love of MSL at the mockery of anyone else player or fan, the weird hatred of X, and now some very recent pooping on Slaf. What weird new articles have the boring posters been reading and regurgitating recently?

The on ice product does not match the reality some are peddling.

I still think Slaf is hurting.

As for the on-ice product, what do you see? Compete, team cohesion, good individual decision-making....you know, the foundations of being a team that can hang in most games without having to rely on individual moments of brilliance just to stay close all the time?

Well I don't.

 

[beowulf]

Ouch is all I can say again...

 

[Habs Icing]

I still think Slaf is hurting.

As for the on-ice product, what do you see? Compete, team cohesion, good individual decision-making....you know, the foundations of being a team that can hang in most games without having to rely on individual moments of brilliance just to stay close all the time?

Well I don't.

Well, I suggest when watching the game you close your eyes. You'll see what MSL sees. His concepts in action.

 

[Seven7]

MSL might be the new tank general.

 

[MTL Dirty Birdy]

Slaf looks heavily regressed as well.

Dudes been fighting a nagging injury and was a PPG going into last night

 

[FrankMTL]

Well, technically this is year 3 of the rebuild...We obviously won't count 2021-2022 as they weren't rebuilding, they just sucked. This is tough to watch but is somewhat par for the course if you don't have some luck and draft a generational type player first overall.

I mentioned before the season that it would not be the worst thing to have another "tank year" because of all the high draft picks that we have in the upcoming draft, and I still believe that but it doesn't make it any easier to watch.

I don't know how Sabres fans have been able to do this for 14 years.

 

[Tyson]

Losing is expected in a rebuild, losing like this and looking this bad is never acceptable. Even the worst teams play structured hockey. This can't continue. These guys no longer care if they lose...

 

[Tuggy]

-15 goal differential through 11 games.

2nd most goals against.

Yeah, that's not good.

 

[Big Lurk]

What other team is playing our system defensively?

 

[BLONG7]

What perplexes me about MSL's concepts is that he and Robidas insist on playing man-to-man in their own zone. That is just bonkers.

An example: on one of the Caps' goals MSL's concept was to have Hutson skate to his defensive blueline to follow his man and the puck. It didn't matter that Suzuki was there already. The Cap D-man takes a shot on net and Caulfield - a diminutive forward - was asked to cover the slot area. Obviously CC was late to the party and even if he arrived on time he was not strong enough or apt enough to tie up the forward. The Caps scored.

This makes sense to anyone? Teams outside the NHL pick up big strong youngsters and place them on defence. They invest time and money to teach them how to defend. NHL teams draft the best of these players hoping one day they'll be able to box out or tie up an opposing forward. Along comes MSL and reinvents the wheel. Naw, with his concepts everyone can play any position. A few more years of this, we won't have to distinguish d-men from forwards. And we won't have to draft d-men when we don't have enough d-men. We'll just draft anyone and tell them you'll have to play every position.

The problem with MSL as a coach is that as a player he was great at almost everything on the ice. Now, he thinks every player is like he was.

As a 5 man unit, in their own end....................disaster. They do not defend in their own end, at all.

Brutal on the coaching....it's not working, so why double down on a system that does NOT work?

 

[vokiel]

Newhook had a bit of his soul taken tonight.

He's one of the most obvious trade bait to fix the ship's direction. We just have to hope we don't get hosed further with another unproven addition.

What other team is playing our system defensively?

What system? The coaching style seems to be sending players on the ice and tell them to win. I hate suffocating systems as much as anyone, but that shouldn't mean not having any game plan against your next opponent.

 

[hvac412]

What perplexes me about MSL's concepts is that he and Robidas insist on playing man-to-man in their own zone. That is just bonkers.

An example: on one of the Caps' goals MSL's concept was to have Hutson skate to his defensive blueline to follow his man and the puck. It didn't matter that Suzuki was there already. The Cap D-man takes a shot on net and Caulfield - a diminutive forward - was asked to cover the slot area. Obviously CC was late to the party and even if he arrived on time he was not strong enough or apt enough to tie up the forward. The Caps scored.

This makes sense to anyone? Teams outside the NHL pick up big strong youngsters and place them on defence. They invest time and money to teach them how to defend. NHL teams draft the best of these players hoping one day they'll be able to box out or tie up an opposing forward. Along comes MSL and reinvents the wheel. Naw, with his concepts everyone can play any position. A few more years of this, we won't have to distinguish d-men from forwards. And we won't have to draft d-men when we don't have enough d-men. We'll just draft anyone and tell them you'll have to play every position.

The problem with MSL as a coach is that as a player he was great at almost everything on the ice. Now, he thinks every player is like he was.

E we're

As a 5 man unit, in their own end....................disaster. They do not defend in their own end, at all.

Brutal on the coaching....it's not working, so why double down on a system that does NOT work?

You can't fix Marty's Napoleon complex,this is on KH & JG.They were Dumb enough to keep DD around for six months after the take over,I doubt Mr Clean & Lumpy have any clue on how to handle MSL,thanks for another waisted year .

 

[morhilane]

He's clearly decided to keep his flag planted on that hill.
Claiming Washington plays the same system in their end WTF.

I haven't watched the game, but MSL is probably right about that part: Washington playing the same dzone system he wants his players to play. Just like Laval is playing the same system and looks way better doing it.

I keep saying it since the start of the season, the majority (and not necessarily the kids) aren't executing: distance between players is all wrong (both teammates and opponents), Ds cheats too much (which is bad with the team inability to keep the puck) and puck pressure (and support) is almost absent.

And in previous seasons, these issues were fixed super fast. This year, the players tuned out the coaches before the season even started.