Pisteet ottivat sitten tuolta Caps-pisteautomaatti Caneseilta. Tässä kyseisen pelit arvosanat:
Well, that was nice, wasn’t it? . . .
Forwards:
Jeff Halpern: B. Watching Jeff Halpern closely can be an experience unto itself. He wears his emotions plainly, and you can tell when he’s not satisfied with his play. For the most part, he should have been reasonably pleased last night, but then, this is a team he can match up a little better against. He played solidly in his own end, recording the rare "plus" performance (although Jeff O’Neill did shake free of him on a power play to get enough wood on a shot from the edge of the right wing circle on a pretty feed from Eric Staal to beat Olaf Kolzig). Losing 14 of 24 draws is not his norm, but it is one thing the Hurricanes do fairly well (Brind’Amour and O’Neill are both over 60 percent for the year).
Peter Bondra: B. Peter Bondra . . . checker? I saw him throwing hits out there. He didn’t have a great offensive game, but I wonder if that isn’t residue from his injury.
Bates Battaglia: B+. Bates played a pretty solid game, no doubt inspired by the opponent. He displayed an unusual patience on the last goal, first picking Jeff O’Neill’s pocket, then playing a three second game of chicken with Kevin Weekes to see who would commit first . . . Weekes did, and Battaglia pulled the puck to the side and lifted over the goalie.
Kip Miller: D. He’s been effectively demoted, and it was a strange line to behold . . . Semin-Miller-Peat. There isn’t a whole lot Miller can do on or with this line; Semin is more of a virtuoso than a complimentary player who can feed off Miller, and Peat is not really an offensive player, which is essentially all that Miller is. His was perhaps a bad even-strength fit, and his game showed it. It was invisible.
Matt Pettinger: C+. Pettinger has taken to playing with an edge in his game, and sometimes that can mean taking himself out of plays. I like the effort he puts out there, but he’s got to stay upright more often, or he’s going to get burned more often . . . in some cases, it was a good thing the Caps were playing as offensively inept a team as Carolina.
Robert Lang: B. Two plays reflected his game last night. The bad one first. When the opponent is entering the zone in numbers, one might expect the defensive center to be alert to the man coming late and driving to the net. Lang did this . . . until the Hurricanes entered the zone, then he let up. But for the fact that a pass from the left wing was airborne instead of along the ice, the ‘Canes would have had a tap-in, courtesy of Lang’s defense. The good play was the goal, not for the scoring of it, but for how it showed how Lang can be sort of invisible, and all of a sudden, he pops into a void with the puck on his stick for what amounted to an uncontested shot. It’s that "why skate fast, when you can skate half-fast" thing.
Trent Whitfield: B-. Played a sort of "Mini-Me" version of the game Halpern played.
Mike Grier: B. Should have been a penalty shot, in my view. There is a disturbing trend among referees to resist calling the shot if a player actually ends up sending the puck toward the net in any fashion (although Grier’s "shot" went 10 feet wide). It probably wouldn’t have mattered, since Grier was already deep into a game where his shots (both of them) found the middle of the Hurricane logo on Weekes’ chest. He played a good game on his own side of the ice, though. Folks should appreciate the performance of a guy who probably knows his offensive game is sorely lacking but doesn’t often let it affect his effort at the other end.
Alexander Semin: B. He can still be lackadaisical in his own end, but oh, brother, does this kid have skills in the offensive end. After he has, say, 100 games under his belt, he will be a player other teams will have to account for in their game plan. Right now, he is excellent with the puck and displayed quick hands on his goal off a rebound.
Stephen Peat: C. Well, he broke the five-minute barrier, although he only had two shifts after the first period. Hanlon says he "needs to see more" from Peat. Given the state of his development, the need for the team to pile up points in a hurry if they have any wild dream of the playoffs, and Peat’s own collection of skills, six minutes a night isn’t going let Peat show Hanlon much of anything.
Jaromir Jagr: B+. A 1-2-3 night is more than we’ve seen from him lately, but he looks for all the world like a man suffering from depression out there. Scored on his only shot, then seemed content to skate around looking to set up others. With some more effort, this could have been a monster night for him.
Darcy Verot: B. I thought he played his best game in his short NHL career with the Caps. He’s still antsy to get his first major penalty, searching out potential dance partners, but he did show some other skills and a willingness to head to the net and to play defense of a sort that did not involve the bare-knuckled arts.
Defense:
Jason Doig: B. He was almost invisible out there (except for being out there for the Carolina PP goal). That’s a compliment to him. He’s been conspicuous with poor play lately, but if you can go out there, skate for 20+ minutes, have no even strength goals scored against you (when that is a team weakness), and do it quietly and efficiently, you’ve played a good game.
Steve Eminger: B-. Sometimes, he looked dominating in his own end, showing a willingness to take the body and inflict some punishment. A couple of times, he looked almost amateurish getting caught in the wash as Hurricanes created traffic in front of Kolzig. His "holding" penalty, for example . . . he got smooshed between a teammate and a Hurricane, and had to hang on for dear life so that the Hurricane couldn’t spring free.
Brendan Witt: B+. Less sneering, more playing. A nice job by Witt last night. An efficient game similar to Doig’s, only with more minutes.
Joel Kwiatkowski: B+. Kwiatkowski is kwietly (ok, quietly) putting together a string of pretty good games. He’s one of the few Caps defensemen (OK, right now he might be the only one) who can move the puck out of his own end on his own. He’s resisted the temptation born a few weeks ago to think himself the second coming of Paul Coffey, focusing more on play in his own end. It’s worked out well for him.
Sergei Gonchar: B+. Tonight, Sergei just . . . played. No adventures with the puck, no goofy passes at the offensive blue line to be picked off and taken the other way for a 2-on-1. Maybe it was a team thing, but he played a quietly efficient game after the first period.
Chris Hajt: B. Hajt showed some skill handling the puck in this game, actually seemed very comfortable and very calm making decisions with it in his own end. He didn’t get much time, but what he did with the almost-seven minutes he had was pretty decent.
Goaltender:
Olaf Kolzig: A-. You ever see a baseball game, and a hitter hits a ground ball . . . the infielder thinks the ball is coming at him much harder than it is, and he ends up flubbing the play? That was Carolina’s goal. Eric Staal, displaying a set of quick, soft hands, took a pass at the goal line to Kolzig’s left and threaded a pass right onto the stick of Jeff O’Neill. Trouble is, O’Neill kind of "heeled" the puck, and it floated like a change up toward Kolzig’s right shoulder. Kolzig almost had time to take two stabs at it, but the puck ended up finding it’s way over his shoulder for the Hurricane’s goal. Other than that, Kolzig played an absolutely sterling game, especially in that first period, when the Hurricanes launched 14 shots. Given that the Caps played good defense in front of him on this night after that first period, what I saw was the performance of a goalie when he has a decent team in front of him.
Special Teams: B. I was tempted to give another half-grade or so here, then I remembered that Carolina is dead last in the NHL in penalty killing. That made the recording of no shots on two power plays a bit harder to take. The penalty killing was very good after the O’Neill goal, showing a patience to stay in their "box," although Carolina is hardly an aggressive offensive team.
Coaching: B+. Hanlon seems to be taking it one day at a time, which is all you can do at this point. His hardest job now, and for the rest of the season, will be motivation on a game-to-game basis. But hey, Glen . . . what was that deal on a face off when NO Cap was in there to take the draw? . . . when a Cap had to come from the bench to take it? . . . when Jeff O'Neill could be seen mouthing the words to the linesman, "c'mon, drop the $#%&ing puck!" and was yapping at him all the way up the ice. That could have ended up a naked shot on Kolzig if the time rule on draws had actually been enforced.
Overall: B+. Carolina, quite frankly, sucks. They’re not as disappointing as the Caps, but Ron Francis is showing his age more and more, Jeff O’Neill is having a year he’d just as soon forget, and the Carolina defense, praised so lavishly during their Stanley Cup run, isn’t that good . . . or at least isn’t playing that way. The Caps took advantage of that, which is precisely what "good teams" do to struggling teams. The Caps are not a "good team," but they played one on TV last night.
My Three Stars:
Third Star: Jaromir Jagr
Second Star: Robert Lang
First Star: Olaf Kolzig
Slice o’ Pie: Alexander Semin . . . nice hands on the goal . . . he could probably eat the slice with his hands and not leave a crumb.
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Gordon lähti farmiin hakemaan lisää peliaikaa ja harjoittelemaan pisteiden tekoa aikuisten tasolla. Ihan hyvä päätös mielestäni. Portlandilla on mahikset pudotuspeleihin, jotka olisivat hyvää kokemusta juuri näille nuorille kavereille kuten Suts ja Gordo. Turha poikia on pitää nelosessa puolustavassa roolissa kun tuossa hyökkäyspelaamisessa on selkeästi kehitettävää aikuisten tasolla. Tosin Portlandin lehdessä vihjailevat, että Suts olisi kuukauden verran sivussa nivusvamman vuoksi.
Tänään on Oilers sitten vastassa ja Rohloff näyttäisi tekevän come backin ottaen Hajtin pelipaikan kolmosessa. Muutenkin nuo ketjut näyttävät aika mielenkiintoisilta:
20-Lang 11-Halpern 68-Jagr
12-Bondra 23-Whitfield 25-Grier
28-Semin 14-Miller 13-Battaglia
18-Pettinger 76-Verot 51-Peat
19-Witt 55-Gonchar
3-Doig 29-Kwiatkowski
8-Eminger 38-Rohloff
1-Stana
37-Kolzig
Well, that was nice, wasn’t it? . . .
Forwards:
Jeff Halpern: B. Watching Jeff Halpern closely can be an experience unto itself. He wears his emotions plainly, and you can tell when he’s not satisfied with his play. For the most part, he should have been reasonably pleased last night, but then, this is a team he can match up a little better against. He played solidly in his own end, recording the rare "plus" performance (although Jeff O’Neill did shake free of him on a power play to get enough wood on a shot from the edge of the right wing circle on a pretty feed from Eric Staal to beat Olaf Kolzig). Losing 14 of 24 draws is not his norm, but it is one thing the Hurricanes do fairly well (Brind’Amour and O’Neill are both over 60 percent for the year).
Peter Bondra: B. Peter Bondra . . . checker? I saw him throwing hits out there. He didn’t have a great offensive game, but I wonder if that isn’t residue from his injury.
Bates Battaglia: B+. Bates played a pretty solid game, no doubt inspired by the opponent. He displayed an unusual patience on the last goal, first picking Jeff O’Neill’s pocket, then playing a three second game of chicken with Kevin Weekes to see who would commit first . . . Weekes did, and Battaglia pulled the puck to the side and lifted over the goalie.
Kip Miller: D. He’s been effectively demoted, and it was a strange line to behold . . . Semin-Miller-Peat. There isn’t a whole lot Miller can do on or with this line; Semin is more of a virtuoso than a complimentary player who can feed off Miller, and Peat is not really an offensive player, which is essentially all that Miller is. His was perhaps a bad even-strength fit, and his game showed it. It was invisible.
Matt Pettinger: C+. Pettinger has taken to playing with an edge in his game, and sometimes that can mean taking himself out of plays. I like the effort he puts out there, but he’s got to stay upright more often, or he’s going to get burned more often . . . in some cases, it was a good thing the Caps were playing as offensively inept a team as Carolina.
Robert Lang: B. Two plays reflected his game last night. The bad one first. When the opponent is entering the zone in numbers, one might expect the defensive center to be alert to the man coming late and driving to the net. Lang did this . . . until the Hurricanes entered the zone, then he let up. But for the fact that a pass from the left wing was airborne instead of along the ice, the ‘Canes would have had a tap-in, courtesy of Lang’s defense. The good play was the goal, not for the scoring of it, but for how it showed how Lang can be sort of invisible, and all of a sudden, he pops into a void with the puck on his stick for what amounted to an uncontested shot. It’s that "why skate fast, when you can skate half-fast" thing.
Trent Whitfield: B-. Played a sort of "Mini-Me" version of the game Halpern played.
Mike Grier: B. Should have been a penalty shot, in my view. There is a disturbing trend among referees to resist calling the shot if a player actually ends up sending the puck toward the net in any fashion (although Grier’s "shot" went 10 feet wide). It probably wouldn’t have mattered, since Grier was already deep into a game where his shots (both of them) found the middle of the Hurricane logo on Weekes’ chest. He played a good game on his own side of the ice, though. Folks should appreciate the performance of a guy who probably knows his offensive game is sorely lacking but doesn’t often let it affect his effort at the other end.
Alexander Semin: B. He can still be lackadaisical in his own end, but oh, brother, does this kid have skills in the offensive end. After he has, say, 100 games under his belt, he will be a player other teams will have to account for in their game plan. Right now, he is excellent with the puck and displayed quick hands on his goal off a rebound.
Stephen Peat: C. Well, he broke the five-minute barrier, although he only had two shifts after the first period. Hanlon says he "needs to see more" from Peat. Given the state of his development, the need for the team to pile up points in a hurry if they have any wild dream of the playoffs, and Peat’s own collection of skills, six minutes a night isn’t going let Peat show Hanlon much of anything.
Jaromir Jagr: B+. A 1-2-3 night is more than we’ve seen from him lately, but he looks for all the world like a man suffering from depression out there. Scored on his only shot, then seemed content to skate around looking to set up others. With some more effort, this could have been a monster night for him.
Darcy Verot: B. I thought he played his best game in his short NHL career with the Caps. He’s still antsy to get his first major penalty, searching out potential dance partners, but he did show some other skills and a willingness to head to the net and to play defense of a sort that did not involve the bare-knuckled arts.
Defense:
Jason Doig: B. He was almost invisible out there (except for being out there for the Carolina PP goal). That’s a compliment to him. He’s been conspicuous with poor play lately, but if you can go out there, skate for 20+ minutes, have no even strength goals scored against you (when that is a team weakness), and do it quietly and efficiently, you’ve played a good game.
Steve Eminger: B-. Sometimes, he looked dominating in his own end, showing a willingness to take the body and inflict some punishment. A couple of times, he looked almost amateurish getting caught in the wash as Hurricanes created traffic in front of Kolzig. His "holding" penalty, for example . . . he got smooshed between a teammate and a Hurricane, and had to hang on for dear life so that the Hurricane couldn’t spring free.
Brendan Witt: B+. Less sneering, more playing. A nice job by Witt last night. An efficient game similar to Doig’s, only with more minutes.
Joel Kwiatkowski: B+. Kwiatkowski is kwietly (ok, quietly) putting together a string of pretty good games. He’s one of the few Caps defensemen (OK, right now he might be the only one) who can move the puck out of his own end on his own. He’s resisted the temptation born a few weeks ago to think himself the second coming of Paul Coffey, focusing more on play in his own end. It’s worked out well for him.
Sergei Gonchar: B+. Tonight, Sergei just . . . played. No adventures with the puck, no goofy passes at the offensive blue line to be picked off and taken the other way for a 2-on-1. Maybe it was a team thing, but he played a quietly efficient game after the first period.
Chris Hajt: B. Hajt showed some skill handling the puck in this game, actually seemed very comfortable and very calm making decisions with it in his own end. He didn’t get much time, but what he did with the almost-seven minutes he had was pretty decent.
Goaltender:
Olaf Kolzig: A-. You ever see a baseball game, and a hitter hits a ground ball . . . the infielder thinks the ball is coming at him much harder than it is, and he ends up flubbing the play? That was Carolina’s goal. Eric Staal, displaying a set of quick, soft hands, took a pass at the goal line to Kolzig’s left and threaded a pass right onto the stick of Jeff O’Neill. Trouble is, O’Neill kind of "heeled" the puck, and it floated like a change up toward Kolzig’s right shoulder. Kolzig almost had time to take two stabs at it, but the puck ended up finding it’s way over his shoulder for the Hurricane’s goal. Other than that, Kolzig played an absolutely sterling game, especially in that first period, when the Hurricanes launched 14 shots. Given that the Caps played good defense in front of him on this night after that first period, what I saw was the performance of a goalie when he has a decent team in front of him.
Special Teams: B. I was tempted to give another half-grade or so here, then I remembered that Carolina is dead last in the NHL in penalty killing. That made the recording of no shots on two power plays a bit harder to take. The penalty killing was very good after the O’Neill goal, showing a patience to stay in their "box," although Carolina is hardly an aggressive offensive team.
Coaching: B+. Hanlon seems to be taking it one day at a time, which is all you can do at this point. His hardest job now, and for the rest of the season, will be motivation on a game-to-game basis. But hey, Glen . . . what was that deal on a face off when NO Cap was in there to take the draw? . . . when a Cap had to come from the bench to take it? . . . when Jeff O'Neill could be seen mouthing the words to the linesman, "c'mon, drop the $#%&ing puck!" and was yapping at him all the way up the ice. That could have ended up a naked shot on Kolzig if the time rule on draws had actually been enforced.
Overall: B+. Carolina, quite frankly, sucks. They’re not as disappointing as the Caps, but Ron Francis is showing his age more and more, Jeff O’Neill is having a year he’d just as soon forget, and the Carolina defense, praised so lavishly during their Stanley Cup run, isn’t that good . . . or at least isn’t playing that way. The Caps took advantage of that, which is precisely what "good teams" do to struggling teams. The Caps are not a "good team," but they played one on TV last night.
My Three Stars:
Third Star: Jaromir Jagr
Second Star: Robert Lang
First Star: Olaf Kolzig
Slice o’ Pie: Alexander Semin . . . nice hands on the goal . . . he could probably eat the slice with his hands and not leave a crumb.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gordon lähti farmiin hakemaan lisää peliaikaa ja harjoittelemaan pisteiden tekoa aikuisten tasolla. Ihan hyvä päätös mielestäni. Portlandilla on mahikset pudotuspeleihin, jotka olisivat hyvää kokemusta juuri näille nuorille kavereille kuten Suts ja Gordo. Turha poikia on pitää nelosessa puolustavassa roolissa kun tuossa hyökkäyspelaamisessa on selkeästi kehitettävää aikuisten tasolla. Tosin Portlandin lehdessä vihjailevat, että Suts olisi kuukauden verran sivussa nivusvamman vuoksi.
Tänään on Oilers sitten vastassa ja Rohloff näyttäisi tekevän come backin ottaen Hajtin pelipaikan kolmosessa. Muutenkin nuo ketjut näyttävät aika mielenkiintoisilta:
20-Lang 11-Halpern 68-Jagr
12-Bondra 23-Whitfield 25-Grier
28-Semin 14-Miller 13-Battaglia
18-Pettinger 76-Verot 51-Peat
19-Witt 55-Gonchar
3-Doig 29-Kwiatkowski
8-Eminger 38-Rohloff
1-Stana
37-Kolzig