Some disjointed thoughts occurred to me as the game unfolded and I corresponded with brave-hearted like-minded supporters of the Good Guys.
La formation projetée du match de ce soir.— Canadiens Montréal (@CanadiensMTL) October 3, 2019
The projected lines for tonight's game.#GoHabsGo pic.twitter.com/wEPLi8MxnB
1) Jonathan Drouin will at least start the season as the point man, the quarterback of the first-wave of the powerplay. I'm going to be a broken record and repeat myself from last season, but Jo has to figure out how to just make a quick simple pass, not a highlight-reel wizardy pass on every play. Keep the puck moving, and don't get your pocket picked at the blue line. Don't try to pull a rabbit out of your hat every time you touch the puck.
Like on the Kotkaniemi goal, just skate hard and take the puck in the opponents' zone and then take it to the net.
2) Why isn't it a penalty when a dumbass like Nino Niedereiter sits his dumb ass on the puck, behind his own net, as if he lost the ability to roll off or get up on his feet? With a stupid stupid look on his face, completely gobsmacked by events, "Heavens to Betsy, what on Earth is going on, I must persist on lying down here for a spell..." Isn't that delay of game? Shouldn't this be something the dumb dumb GM committee deals with, instead of futzing with faceoffs and the hand pass?
Keep the play moving, keep the puck moving. Don't let an overmatched player lie down on the puck and freeze it. Don't let a scrambling team kill the play and reset. Give the attacking team the advantage.
You fall down and the puck is under you? It's your frigging job, your responsibility to get off it, or your team gets two minutes for delay of game. There. How hard is that?
This crap doesn't fly in rugby, you can't bury the ball, lie on it and kill it like that. That's an automatic penalty.
3) It's a small sample size, but this game is the first time it truly sank in that the NHL game is different, that it is changed. It's fast, blindingly fast, relentlessly so. Finishing checks is going the way of the dodo. Grinding in the corners used to be about thumping, now it's about clashing sticks and actually battling for the puck, not just crosschecking and wrestling with your opponent, not just trying to wear him down for the third period. Now you skate your opponents into the ground.
The buzz at TSN 1040 Vancouver is that their opening game in Edmonton was lost due to a bad pass by Brandon Sutter at a critical juncture in the third, a flub/brain cramp by Brandon Sutter who tried to weakly bank the puck ahead to a teammate, but it was easily intercepted and it ended up on Connor McDavid's stick going the other way, and in the net. And the radio jocks who watched the game both agreed that Brandon Sutter, who said in camp he did a lot of Pilates and core work over the summer to recover from groin injuries, looked gassed in the third period, and that's a big part of the reason he turned over the puck, his legs were burnt at the end of a shift and he was fried.
With all the speed though, while a lot of the strategic or functional 'toughness' and goonery that was endemic is being extirpated, sadly the artistry of a Gilbert Perreault or Alex Kovalev is also phased out. Players have half a second when receiving a pass to make a decision and move it along, before two opponents converge on them. Tic-tac-toe goals will still exist, and I hope that efforts will continue to reduce the importance of goalie gear in the equation so that snipers can still see some net, so that a Mike Bossy or Reggie Leach can still thrive, but we'll not see a Guy Lafleur in full flight ever again.
And the sport, to my eyes, risks becoming almost impenetrable, like fencing or Kendo, with the subtlest of moves having huge outcomes, and I being made aware that someone did well or won only because of the crowd cheering or the refs indicating. The fact that a true slapshot from the point is becoming more and more rare, because defencemen simply don't have the time to unleash one, is not really a positive development in my book.
4) I had the occasion during the game to form the opinion that Joel Armia wasn't really contributing, was a little slow, a little late on the play, a little invisible.
Until the overtime, when he had a couple of sequences where he took the puck to the net with strength, with drive, against an opponent draped all over him. And I appreciated this effort, how close he came to getting our team the win, but it makes me pine for that quality, the codeword hockey men throw around, the fabled consistency. He needs to 'be more consistent'. As in, excellent all game long, every game, not just for a spectacular burst or two last night in OT.
(Faits saillants RDS)
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