Sunday, October 4, 2009

Actual Game Thoughts, Recollected in Sobriety

- Even though he didn't appear on the scoresheet last night, Nik Antropov had a good game. He screened the hell out of Mike Smith on at least one of those Kovalchuk goals.

- Rich Peverley: awesome.

- On top of all the goal-scoring, Kovalchuk had a great game defensively. Keeping the puck out of our zone, etc.

- Gotta get our shots-against to a more favorable ratio.

- There were times in the game when the Thrash looked defensively bewildered, pinned down in their own zone. There were other times, perhaps more frequent, where they were not only attacking the Lightning zone like a pack of angry razorbacks, but looked super-disciplined doing it. More disciplined-looking than I've ever seen. Making all the fancy moves and passes, keeping the puck well in the zone, making opposing d-men look silly, etc.

- WOOOOOOOOOOOOO.

I would end this post with Erik B. and Rakim's "I Ain't No Joke," but we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Like the Czar said, we won the opener last season too and can't rest on our laurels, etc. etc...

Nevertheless, WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

3 comments:

swegs said...

ya i think i saw kovy backcheck more in that game than i ever have. he did get a little lax covering his point men a couple of times which led to some extended pressure by tampa in our zone. peverly picked up right were he left off, should have played him in my fantasy lineup.

Laura (aka Hildymac) said...

I was pretty pleased last night... just wish Pavs would actually get up after he flops down. The goalpost and the quick thinking of our D saved a few goals last night.

We have to stop getting a big lead and then chilling out, and Pavs has got to keep focus enough to where he doesn't let the opposition stage a near-comback. That's the second time so far it's happened.

Jay said...

I also thought Kane looked good. A bit timid, as to be expected, early on, but he started to get more aggressive as the game went on. Nice breakaway that Peverley ended up scoring on. I can't believe how FAST this team is. Pavelec played well for the most part. I definitely left last night with a warm fuzzy feeling about this team. I really don't think this team needs Boris Valabik, to be honest with you. Popovic and Salmella looked quite good. If I was John Anderson, I would have had every magazine, website, and newspaper's preseason predictions posted on the wall with a "NO ONE BELIEVES IN US!!!!" rant going on. Shock the world!