Wednesday, April 21, 2010

What's this game for?

Tomorrow the Canadiens will have a team meeting at the Bell Centre. They played pretty well tonight, but there are some things to work out. Hopefully those things will be addressed tomorrow.
I have no proof that Jacques Martin modeled for this illustration

Unfortunately, I don't think that coaching will be one of those things, but maybe it should be. Our team isn't perfect, but I think overall our players should be able to (at the very least) handle the Capitals better than they have on home ice. I think coaching is a big part of that. If you need a case study: Martin pulled Price with two and a half minutes left to go. In a lot of cases, pulling a goalie is a risky move. (And sometimes "risky" is just short for "what the hell are you thinking?") It rarely works for the Canadiens.  Even I know this. I can try and guess how many scoring chances the Caps usually get in two and a half minutes. So, somehow two empty-net goals surprise me less than Dominic Moore's goal did.

Tony Marinaro made a good point on his show tonight: Sergei Kostitsyn had a +2 this game. The Canadiens scored 3 goals this game. Sergei played less than 9 minutes. Somehow that doesn't add up. If he's doing well, Martin should have thought about playing him a little more. Isn't that logical? A guy's playing well, so more play will boost his confidence and probably make him improve, and will probably benefit the team as a whole? No?

Dear angry fans: think of kittens

Jaroslav Spacek played very well in games 1 and 2. He missed tonight's game because, apparently, he was feeling sick. He seems to be missing a few games because of illness or flu-like symptoms. I'd really like to know more about this - either there's a more serious issue that the fans don't know about, or Spacek's immune system really is that weak, and something needs to be done about it.

Hopefully tomorrow's team meeting will help this team tighten up a little bit. I think they've got it in them. They can win another game, I know it. Maybe the Bell Centre wasn't quite the boost I thought it would be.

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