GDT 21/10/2014: Canucks @ Stars 17:30PST - SNV

[Strangelove]

Ratski, call me a cab?

You're a cab...

*drives self home*

[rats19]

Ratski, call me a cab?

You're a cab...

*drives self home*

Sorry man...the vacuum was just too strong....good job tonight, text me when you get home.

[Hockey Widow]

You know we have a very good bottom six. It's time to decide which six to keep, turf the others and build a second line. They don't have to be defensively responsible, we have a good bottom six for that. Call them the fifth line if you like. We just need a young offensive line to play 8-10 minutes a night. Mission, score more goals than you allow. Roll them with the top line and let the bottom six take care of defence.

Get a couple of the kids up here and tell them to just fucking score. We may lose every game 6-5 but at least it will be fun.

Tonight we got some good goals and three should be enough to win. Tanev with his worst game of his career.

But at least we didn't fold when it was 5-0. Now I'm sounding like a Flames fan

[sagebrush]

The numbers are telling.

+3: Sedins, Vrbata
-9: Burrows, Bonino, Higgins
+0: Kassian, Richardson, Matthias
+0: Dorsett, Vey, Hansen

[damonberryman]

What's amatter your sarcameter broke?
I got patience a plenty that's why I'm not gonna jump off the bandwagon at game 5.

This is a team that's gonna have some bad nights, so what?

As long as they have a reasonable chance to win on any given night and there is individual improvement, I'm happy

Jeezuz man, what kinda rush you sniff'n...just look at our line up...it sucks, it sucked in pre-season, it sucks now.
I would say we might have a chance with more younger, hungrier, faster, more talented kids in the line up but why rush them like the cOilers

Face the facts dude. We are in transition. Not a playoff team right now. Maybe next year, maybe in a few but it just doesn't add up. Miller, Burrows, Edler, etc...this was never going to be our year....

Fack'n MakeLeafers masquerading as Canuck fans

We are not this bad

[herb]

Didn't watch this one but had a good laugh when I got home and saw the score was already 3-0. The Gaglardi curse strikes again!

Another own goal in off one of our guys (Burrows)? Man, we really are cursed.

Tanev blows a tire, tackles Miller and Miller still almost makes the save! WDF was that?

Another one is initially saved by Miller, then deflects in off his knob and wobbles into the net.

Oh well. We outshot mighty Dallas by like 20 damn shots. We can't really suck that bad then, can we?

[herb]

HW, ideally Horvat plays his six games or whatever in Utica and plays well. I think it's pretty obvious management doesn't want to send him back to junior. With Horvat, Matthias, Richardson, Hansen, Kassian and Dorsett we have a very good to excellent bottom six that should be able to eat up 25 minutes a night easily.

The Sedin line will get their 19-20 minutes a night.

That leaves about 15 minutes a night for that second line. You'd think we'd be able to shelter a kid or two for 15 minutes given the other three lines have some pretty tried and trusted players.

Now, is that the best way to develop Shinkaruk and Jensen? I don't know, but I'm getting kind of tired of having a pile of career third liners on our second line.

[Meds]

We are not this bad

No, we aren't.

If you take away all of the random crap that can be attributed to bounces and the hockey gods: Burrow's deflected goal, Tanev blowing a tire, and the fluke of a change-up on the 4th goal.....then add on the disallowed goal that was clearly a goal, and suddenly we win that game 4-3, or we are at least getting a loser point.

The Stars scored 3 good goals, and even their 2nd goal should have been called back and a penalty handed out to Horcoff. But I digress.

The Canucks scored 4 goals that were the result of puck possession and heads up plays, 3 counted. Vrbata's was typical tic-tac-toe Sedinery. Kassian's was a really nice read by Tanev for the slap-pass and redirection. Hank's was the result of good play and then the Dallas player pushed Dank into the crease over Lehtonen, no way should that have been disallowed. Hansen's was a good clean hockey goal, no better or worse than anything Dallas notched.

I realize it's all a bunch of IF's, and these things are all a part of hockey, but everything went the Stars' way last night.

[Tciso]

I'm not sure the acquisition of Miller was cap money well spent. At this point I think Läck is the better goalie, and even though Markström hasn't proven himself in the NHL, I'm not sure he'd be any worse than Miller was tonight, and at a fraction of the cost...

The cap we spend on Miller could have been used either on some fire power up front or a blue chip blue liner.
I think either of those would have been a smarter choice.

Miller wasn't the problem. 1 was bad luck (end of his knob). 1 was an interference when our D-man was pushed out of the way. at least 2 were defensive lapses. And, a couple were just good goals. If our 3rd goal wasn't called back (bad call imo), it could have easily been 4-3 or 4-4 tie, and we would be having a different argument.

It was an OK game by the team, with a terrible outcome. But, the team played hard, and I don't expect such a bad result when we play the next game like that, or if we played every game like that. Good compete level.

[Hockey Widow]

HW, ideally Horvat plays his six games or whatever in Utica and plays well. I think it's pretty obvious management doesn't want to send him back to junior. With Horvat, Matthias, Richardson, Hansen, Kassian and Dorsett we have a very good to excellent bottom six that should be able to eat up 25 minutes a night easily.

The Sedin line will get their 19-20 minutes a night.

That leaves about 15 minutes a night for that second line. You'd think we'd be able to shelter a kid or two for 15 minutes given the other three lines have some pretty tried and trusted players.

Now, is that the best way to develop Shinkaruk and Jensen? I don't know, but I'm getting kind of tired of having a pile of career third liners on our second line.

With a strong bottom six you let the kid line play whatever minutes they can. Some games that might be 8-10 and others it might be 10-15. I'd be more interested in producing offence to shelter the twins. It's the same old problem we have had for yeRs. Shut down the twins and you shut down our offence, for the most part. But, in this league with two goalies like Miller and Lack, three goals should be good enough to win most nights.

I agree with others,Mae had a good effort and I for one even thought for a moment we might get back in it. Can't say I felt that way much last year.

[dbr]

Oh well. We outshot mighty Dallas by like 20 damn shots. We can't really suck that bad then, can we?

Score effects.

[herb]

Oh well. We outshot mighty Dallas by like 20 damn shots. We can't really suck that bad then, can we?

Score effects.

A lot of the game was garbage time, but the Canucks out shot and out shot-attempted the Stars in all three periods.

That was just a garbage game with some uncharacteristic breakdowns we won't see from most of our key players very often.

[dbr]

Oh well. We outshot mighty Dallas by like 20 damn shots. We can't really suck that bad then, can we?

Score effects.

A lot of the game was garbage time, but the Canucks out shot and out shot-attempted the Stars in all three periods.

That was just a garbage game with some uncharacteristic breakdowns we won't see from most of our key players very often.

Well.. the Canucks outshot the Stars 2-0 in the part of that game where the score was tied.. That said they were 10-10 when Dallas scored their third goal, the Canucks piled up their entire lead with the game pretty much put away.

This isn't to say that the Canucks really are as bad as their most pant-pissingest critic says.. just that the shot totals in a blowout usually don't mean much. I didn't even watch this game though, and I hear there were some goofy goals scored so as usual it's best to just forget it and move on.

[Meds]

Well.. the Canucks outshot the Stars 2-0 in the part of that game where the score was tied.. That said they were 10-10 when Dallas scored their third goal, the Canucks piled up their entire lead with the game pretty much put away.

This isn't to say that the Canucks really are as bad as their most pant-pissingest critic says.. just that the shot totals in a blowout usually don't mean much. I didn't even watch this game though, and I hear there were some goofy goals scored so as usual it's best to just forget it and move on.

Yeah, I think it was John Garret who gave a worthwhile insight (and as much as I like him, he rarely says anything overly insightful).....But his point was that advanced stats like Corsi and Fenwick pretty much go out the window in a game like this because as soon as the Stars are up 5-1 they are content to sit on a lead and ride it out by focusing on defense, not taking penalties, and letting the Canucks control more of the pace while they stay home and play smart defensive hockey to ensure the 2 points.

I've never put too much stock in SOG, unless it is factoring in second shot opportunities, because so often that first shot coming in is not going to challenge the goaltender to any extent, but what happens after that shot once you've made the defense turn around and the goaltender leave his feet, that is more telling.

[herb]

I've never put too much stock in SOG...

Ummmm except it has been shown that there is a very strong correlation between outshooting your opponent and being a successful hockey team.