triumph_communes

Geez they’re snake bitten again

Staal is so bad

Interesting how quickly Tage has fallen from grace. I don’t think he did anything that bad but hey behind the scenes who knows

They’ve has three games First was total skip by both sides. Still almost won if not for Hutton and Staal Second we dominated play 5v5, got blanked badly on the PP, and didn’t have the bounces. The PP being bad with new players and shortened camp is hard to get fussy about Third game, different team, played just as good as second game but this time rewarded. Over reactors post too much. It’s still too early to claim anything other than Hutton ducks and Staal has given up on hockey and we lost that trade

Hall-Eichel-Cozens Skinner-Lazar-Reinhart Rieder-Eakin-Oloffson Sheahan-Staal-Thompson

Not sure if I’ll make it through the third.. so here’s the notes Theyre keeping the pace they had against the caps in game 2, except actually scoring. They need to shoot more across all lines. Outside the goals of course, I am disappointed with Reinhart. Too much playing dying because he plays soft. Cozens is doing all the small things right, I want to see him jump up. Rieder and Eakin are invisible tonight. Is that the Thompson effect? Team defense has been good. PK looked good. Hope they can keep it up and it’s not just cocky Dlyers making it look this way. Eichel is carrying the puck again. Hall is a good player. Staal is a statue

I defended RK, but after those two games it’s hard to justify keeping Skinner away. He played well and defensively fine. No reason Oloffson should be playing ahead of him

Watching the Capitals vs Penguins game Penguins have no offense and their goals are flukes. Washington controlling the play. Penguins mostly running an umbrella PP. Penguins PK they are all standing like statues. We looked better than the Penguins, with the caveat of the finishing bounces not going our way Some people need to calm the hell down

I think we have a better chance in KC than Buffalo to be honest. Allen was neutered by that wind, we can’t have that again.

Kid hasn’t played in 11mo. Oh he’s still a kid. Defenseman always take longer, and he’s playing 25 min a night. He has magic talents and he’s just making small missteps. Calm the hell down

Outplayed them majorly all game and had every PP opportunity you could ask for and now they can’t score oye that’s a frustrating one Skinner our best player for two games, got a few more minutes but still not all the big ones he deserved with his play. Staal is still lazy. Cozens is maturing. Eakin and Rieder are actually a good third line and we will improve when Okposo comes back. We need more fore checkers. Cant argue with the goals against. They had shots and offense all game. Special teams is a tire fire though. Steve Smith needs gone

The ads moving the screen two directions at the same time made me sick. They need to ditch one of the vertical or horizontal bars entirely and it’d be an acceptable evil. Both at the same time, sliding, is painful to watch The NFL only pulls it off because they do it instantly during screen transition. So it’s not jarring. When I’m trying to track the puck and it’s moving multiple directions it’s sickening. The NHL equivalent would be after whistles before next face off when it’s not TV timeout time. But they’re too greedy for that.

I uninstalled and reinstalled NHL apps on phone and roku before trying this year. It worked flawlessly so far. First year it did so. MSG stream no problem (out of market) Problems I saw were jerky camera men on MSG and these god awful new ad pulls that make me angry every time to screen tears in two directions and I remind myself to never patronize whoever puts their ads there.

If I were to change the lines based on last nights play, Staal and Okposo still out, I go with the below: Hall-Eichel-Thompson Skinner-Mittelstadt-Cozens Rieder-Eakin-Reinhart Oloffson-Lazar-Sheahan And only reason Skinner/Hall aren’t swapped is because of an unwritten agreement. I also doubt the coach swaps Cozens/Reinhart like I did here too

Ggghh

Game is full of rust it’s wrong to be too judgemental That being said, Staal is an uninspiring statue. Reinhart sucked. Oloffson was invisible except on man advantage Eichel turnover machine. Hall is good but turnovers too. Thompson fits on that line I’m excited for it Rieder is shaping up to have a great season. Eakin looks fine. Cozens will stay on the team if he is like this Skinner actually looked good tonight. I don’t think his linemates held him back. In fact I think Staal and Reinhart would have the way they were playing. Mccabe is awful. I expected more out of Jokiharju but there’s still time. I thought Dahlin was just fine Hutton is a tire fire. We win this game with an average goalie We scored goals. This isn’t a team who can’t score anything, and that’s a major step forward. That is something to be happy about. Most of the goals against came from silly turnovers that were mainly due to 10 months of rust. Go watch highlights of all the other games every team is like this. Wish we would have won. Capitals are a good team. We need a new goalie ASAP

Reinhart sucking hard. Disappointed in him

Hutton sucks McCabe isn’t good Eichel is turning it over way too much Cozens stepped it up Rieder is fast. Isn’t just some plug, I’m curious why he struggled so much in Edmonton

Super slow and sloppy start. They woke up after they scored a PP goal for sure though. I can get used to Eichel and Hall two on one breakaways. Skinner barely getting ice time but hasn’t looked bad when he has. Cozens getting a lot of time in Okposo’s spot. He’s experiencing that he can’t be cute with the puck against Chara. Also his low percentage shots are all getting deflected. Competition it’s clear he isn’t used to playing against. Rieder is fast. McCabe is looking bad. Dahlin still missing the net wide all the time.

Great pass by Eichel and Oloffson there. Hall with the quick one. And Dahlin with a great opportunity

The passing is horrendous The fake fan noise is distracting. The new ad screen adjust is infuriating. If it was just bottom up it’d be okay but the vertical panel is annoying as hell

Optimism: New line pairings have a chance to work well. Coaches might change the failing special team systems. New room may be renewed, buying Hall for 9$MM does change the room, and Staal, etc. do too. Young guns have size and maturity now Pessimism: We lack a bonafide match-up line for other top lines, which means we will need to outscore to win games. Once other teams figure them out, our coaches won't change until the season's lost. Hutton is a tire-fire and will lose us enough games to barely miss the playoffs just like last year.

I believe our philosophy and talent on the middle/bottom 6 for the last few years being off has been a huge part of the problem, but the philosophy being first. When they have no puck possession, don't forecheck hard, and don't forecheck quickly, then defenders can rest. It doesn't matter if Lazar is a sub-par NHL player, if he is getting out there every shift and forcing defenders to get dog tired, he is softening them up lategame for the top lines to take advantage. If their strategy is to fail to carry the puck into the zone and barely move the puck around, then we are playing into the other team's comfort zone and simultaneously making it harder on our top lines. Get me some speedy grinders and who cares if they don't score. It'll boost the production out of the other lines. Put Skinner on a 4th line and defenders will never have an easy shift since they'll always have to be looking behind their back for his such awkward playstyle. I wouldn't get hung up on how many points some veteran bottom-6 NHL player made. The question I want to know is do other team's defenders groan if they have to play against them. Now you can argue whether they need to be physical or fast, but we've had neither in our middle-6 for years (if you call the GLO line a 2nd line like they were honestly deployed). Now I see serious offensive threats on three lines and the third line with speedy Rieder and Okposo who has a real shot to worry about and the body to be in dangerous positions. If you just rely on talent to have an effective bottom-6, you'll never have an effective bottom-6. That's where you need culture to get the most out of those guys. It's a team game. When players don't trust each other then every player plays 30% worse than they are capable of, at least. That's what bad culture gets you. Yes, you can still try to 'out talent' that gap, but how did no Bills team of the 90s reinforce to you that excessive talent still didn't matter when push comes to shove? And hockey playoffs are 7-game series. Teams don't fluke their way through. Talent first teams always drop out of the second round. We paid top dollar for talent. We sucked for a decade to draft the rest. We have the talent where it's needed. The game changer now will be culture, to ensure we get the most out of the other 40% of icetime, which will translate into helping the other 60% when they're working hard.

I had mentioned originally Cozens looked tired more than anything, and understandably so. His wear down started in the finals of WJC. Krueger also just made it clear he made the team full time. He must have looked better in practices since then

I watched him play