I didn't sleep much either.
I agree, we still have far too much dead weight. I think that's what's bothering me - it's dead weight, not youthful inexperience. We're not the Ducks. This isn't a team with zero playoff experience getting their first taste of what it's like to try and lock down a game. The players we had out there at the end of this game are either 10+ year vets with multiple playoff runs or have Rings themselves. Sunny, Thomas, Schenn, and Parayko were all out there at the end. Buch, Suter, and Faulk too. Every single one of those guys should know better.
I'm still so f***ing pissed at Parayko. All he had to do was get involved in that board battle with 12 seconds left to go and help Thomas pin the puck to let the clock expire. Instead, he lurked outside and watched three Jets players dig while Thomas tried to keep the puck in place. Parayko is such a waste of a 6'6 human it's not even funny sometimes. Like, look at this:
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What the f***ing f*** are you doing there dude? There's no reason to stand outside that scrum. Put your huge f***ing body on at least one of those guys and shove his face in the f***ing glass and kill the clock. I mean just absolutely inexcusable from the guy who's supposed to be our franchise D.
I also want to say that Monty deserves a good amount of blame for this as well. I have two major criticisms - the first is that whatever we are doing in man down situations isn't working. We had the most abysmal PK under him for much of the season until the winning streak. We also gave up the most 6 v 5 goals in the league - something Boston had an issue with as well when he was there. I wonder how much of that is Claude Julien's influence (He's an assistant for us now), as some people have mentioned that Boston still plays man down situations with a lot of the elements of Julien's system, and it hasn't worked out well for them either.
The other issue I have with Monty is that he gets far too conservative far too early. I can understand shortening your bench a bit with say under 5 minutes to go, but he started doing all sorts of stupid shit with 15 minutes left in the game. We kept putting extra faceoff guys out there during D-zone draws, and then when we would win them, the extra guy would scurry off the ice. This would f*** up our breakout, and then subsequently our forecheck. That's why we looked like we were turtling, b/c Monty kept playing stupid games with the lines. Bolduc didn't see the ice once after the 15 minute mark of the third period. Joseph got like two shifts. Kyrou was playing hopscotch - he would pop on, we'd lose possession b/c no one was on the right side, and then he'd have to pop back off. The Joseph-Sunny-Bolduc line had one of the best xGA/60 of any line that played a minimum of 150 minutes - they were just as good, if not better, then the WTF line at holding down the fort - yet by Monty's actions you would never know it. That leads to gassed out players by the end of the game, and then you have situations like we just saw. There's no reason to shorten the bench with 15 minutes to go and up by 2. You roll the lines and continue to play your game, you don't f*** around and give away all the momentum.
I know I should be excited about the long view, b/c it still looks bright, but man I simply cannot right now.
