Youth. Its what the league is about these days. Young legs, hearts of fire, skillful prodigies, sharp reflexes and baby faced sharpshooters going end to end. Every team is developing their own prized studs on the farms across the league in the hopes that one day they'll be a dynasty team. The game against Colorado showcased two hopefuls in the future dynasty era. The difference between their youth and ours was attitude and strategy.
One was clearly more adjusted. Read the official Recap here.
The one thing becoming clear is that its going to take plenty of patience if we ever expect this team to be competing with the monsters teams of the league one day. The better part of the first period last night was spent in pursuit of a Colorado team that seemed quite lucid of the fact that we had a lot of kids cruising the ice last night and taking advantage of the second guesses, hesitations and perhaps an unnerved veteran or two.
The scoring doesn't really reflect how close the game remained for the majority of the evening. After a quick and early time out by Torts, we came out full of fire and assert ourselves. They weathered our storm and from there, it seems as though we forgot why we showed up. Defensive lapses around the net costs us 2 goals in the course of 26 seconds.
There were a few things missing out there last night. Leadership, a scoring threat and security. While I'm still of the opinion that losing Drury for a number of weeks is not catastrophic, Losing Seems to have affected the team and Boogards absence on the ice last night could have played a factor in the testicular fortitude area. While the Tandem of Prust and Avery seemed to be fairly effective at getting some of the dirty work done, there was none to take advantage of the distractions and, none to channel that energy toward the goal. Inserting Todd White into the line up last night really didn't add anything but age. Call me skeptical, but I get the feeling Torts is reluctant to change the strategy he has for this team in the hopes that Stepan, Anisimov and Dubinksy, Del Zotto and every other kid on the Clearasil squad will develop overnight and fill in. Maybe my perceptions and ideals are little outdated for this league of figure skating and diving fairies Bettman is trying to cultivate, but not so long ago... after losing brain, brawn kind of took over on its own and that team we played last night would have been beaten from pillar to post on defense and on offense, our entire team would have been huddled around the opposing crease hacking and chopping at loose pucks. Instead it seemed as though just being able to keep pace and bear witness as they attacked would be enough to get us some points. Torts is going to have to come up with a temporary strategy that our kids can apply with some consistency that takes a lot less skill/luck. There's an ugly side of hockey where offense is a byproduct of deflections, dirty goals, and grinding down the opposition. If that's still possible in the NHL.
Which brings me to my next point, WTF?!?!?! This Ref interference is getting way out of hand. Can we even call this hockey anymore? Two guys jaw at each other a little and trade shoves and a Referee tackles one to the ground and blows a whistle and starts handing out penalty minutes like its his time of the month. This is messing up the natural order of the game. Between this and whistles be blown for shoving someone down while racing for a loose puck,....I don't even know if I can make it through a season of watching this. Whats next telephones in the penalty boxes so you can mandatory phone calls to the other guys mom and apologize before your two minutes are up?
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