Three Stars (of the first two periods)
- Marian Hossa, 1 G
- Scott Darling
- Trevor Van Reimsdyk
So, this team can still hold their own minus four major players: Anisimov, Keith, Seabrook, and Crawford. Imagine how good we’ll be in the playoffs once we have them back.
Positives:
- Through the first two periods, we were playing fine. Like, really well considering all of the adversity we were facing
- That 5 minute PK was something special. Probably the most impressive part of the game for the team. A short handed goal plus a great kill and some major saves.
- Andrew Shaw will stick up for his teammates. His teammates are going to riot if he’s gone this offseason.
- Marian Hossa and Marcus Kruger are the best PK unit in the league. It doesn’t matter who their defensemen are (usually last night it was Roszival and Van Reimsdyk), they will end your momentum.
There’s a lot of negatives last night. I don’t like being negative on this site, so I’m going to summarize in three.
- Dumb penalties – Shaw and Keith. One was considerably more dumb, and the other was more karmic. Both were reactionary, and we shouldn’t be reactionary.
- Third period implosion – up until the third it looked like we could pull it out. Then the Wild scored every seven minutes.
- Power play – it needs to be fixed. It may not be while Anisimov is still hurt. Ideally, the lines would be Kane-Arty-Panarin-Shaw-Keith, Ladd-Toews-Teuvo-Seabrook-Hossa. It won’t be for a while.
I really miss Corey Crawford. Apparently he’s dealing with vertigo as well now, and that’s a horrible injury. It ruined Bryan Bickell’s remnants of a career and if it does the same to Crawford – we’re going to be big players on the goalie market this offseason.
The leaked emails are really interesting. We’ll get into this later on, probably as a part of the Year End wrap up.
Next Up: Winnipeg on Friday. We’ll see if we have a write up, I’ll be on the mainland of Europe for the next month. I need a break from this team.
(Psst. Spread the word. Duncan Keith is a dummy)