Occult Enemies - Pens 3, Hawks 2

is not the way to go through life, I agree McClure, but at the same time i think its ok to differentiate between a clean normal hit on a player and one where the “Head is the principal point of contact” and the player leaves his feet. There is no room for that in the game and Engelland needs to get his douchenozzle ass beat for that.

Honestly for me I agree with the instigator penalty for the most part but tonight it looked stupid. Even Doc and princess Mcguire were saying the hit should have been a penalty.

may be an exaggeration, but damn he was good in the 3rd

The D corps in general had a tough night.

Hjammer and Leddy get caught having a slumber party on the blue line, Keith got caught pinching, and Monty got caught chasing out of position. Unless it’s the Great One, the guy behind the net isn’t going to do any harm; let him go. What’s funny is that a few seconds after Monty did it, Hjammer did the exact same thing and Staal (I think?) might have buried another if his stick doesn’t break.

Hats off to the Pens for making the most of their opportunities and hats off to you, sir, for being objective.

Stals must’ve watched a Rocky montage during the second intermission because he was hearts on fire in the third. If his eyes glowed like that all the time he never would’ve started on the fourth line in the first place.

and damn his pass to stals was right under the stick of that pens player. so nice

He only uses his black magic for good (from the perspective of a ’Hawks fan at least)

Pens outplayed the Hawks also because the Hawks did not play the best after the fight.

so they might still be ahead of the NBA, just by a bit.

Now, if you wanted to call them the most incompetent – I can get behind that.

the days of games being officiated by a single ref are long gone. Thank god. Those games were WWE style (back then it was called WWF) laughable. Behind the ref’s back it was anything goes and the inconsistent decisions were mind boggling, not to mention that certain refs played up grudges against certain teams.

I was massively pissed tonight, but it’s still 1,000 times better than it used to be.

Nashville got beat by the Capitals, so there is another “plus”

Meh. I’d rather see them win the Northwest rather than the Canucks.

Who, by the way, just mentioning their name can calm any argument between Bears and Packers fans. Unreal how hatred of that team can bring harmony and peace to a long time holy war.

not should.

At first I thought some of the blame could fall on Toews, but when I watched the play from a different camera angle, Toews definitely chose the right player to cover.

Malkin is sitting there, uncovered, on the strong side of the play. Toews has to take him. That pass by Lovejoy gets through the crease maybe 2-3 times out of 10.

And Monty made himself useless.

No need for screencaps. Monty has to stay with his man. He did not. Making Leddy have to leave the net. Toews goes to cover the next most dangerous man, leaving the back open. Kane is out high where he should be. It’s on Monty and he got beat with speed.

It was 4 on 4. Monty either has to stop and pick up the back door so Leddy knows what to do, or Monty has follow and finish the puck carrier. He didn’t do any either of these.

I swear Engelland was dropping the gloves before he even stood up and before Scott got there. How is that instigating? (serious question) I thought instigating was more like what Bieksa did to Stalberg back in the playoffs where Stalberg didn’t even get his gloves off before Bieksa was punching him.

Also, as a person not generally in favor of fighting, John Scott was absolutely right in that situation. The refs should’ve taken care of it first though.

because, you know what, yeah, we failed to kill the ensuing penalty and that probably tilted the game to the Pens’ favor. But any other night the refs should have called offsetting penalties on that, and if what had followed was a 4on4, can you still say we would have lost or won the game?

I’m don’t think fighting the guy led to the loss—that’s a careless statement to make and I’d like to hear your rationale for it, same way you’d like to hear the rationale behind the fight being the right thing to do. I think we ran into bad luck with the refs’ call there and we can’t control that. But I do think that’s the risk you take when you play, you might get the call and you might not, but what matters is the consistency with which you play.

Players like Scott are signed as enforcers, they’re supposed to be policing what happens on the ice. If he sticks to that tenet, that he’ll always fight the guy that takes advantage of his teammates, then his team knows what to expect from him. The other teams know what to expect from him. You’ll still get shitheads like Engelland who won’t care, but there will be guys who think twice about laying out questionable hits on our guys, as opposed to our guys thinking twice about pursuing the puck because they’re worried opponents will just take runs at them. At least, that’s the idea.

It’s not something you can score or quantify with numbers, but the Blackhawks like that he did it, and Quenneville likes that he did it. It resulted in one loss, yes, but we’re not about to win 82 games in a season. I’d rather lose once and have the Hawks continue to trust that he has their back, and their opponents believe they’ll be made to pay if they step out of line, than have targets drawn on the backs of all our players the rest of the year.

Morin has the potential to be another Versteeg in that situation .. something that Frolik clearly isn’t and never will be. Definitely worth a shot.

but we know that Q rewards hard work, and the guys on the bench seem to enjoy his presence.

if we’re going to be forced to watch Scott play, then I’m going to drink the koolaid and just hope that his limited TOI will be filled with good things.

thanks for doing the research though.

so basically, it seems we’re looking for a slightly better quality lower-pair Dman (outside of our mythical 2L center) during trading time. Or at least one Q trusts enough to have him play more minutes than Scott/Lepisto/OD.

But if all three of them don’t eat those minutes, then as I said above, we have an even bigger problem. I don’t want to rely on Keith having huge minutes all year and then have him be gassed at the end when we need him most. Same for all the forwards too.

I really dig the read/unread feature

there are days when I can’t get the app to open no matter how many times I try, restart, etc.

Also, I had a lot of respect for Ference last year for doing the same when his teammate did something nasty. Milbury went on and on about how it impacted the locker room, but I think stuff like that is necessary if you want to change the game, and also to not be total hypocrites.

then just pooh pooh it. We’re forever reading about Crosby and the impact of his concussion – and how the Pens organization feel about it. Wouldn’t it be great if someone who is in a situation where they lost a player (for who knows how long), stands up and says yeah it was dangerous, we’re going to talk about it, or even what I said in the subject line to be more generic, instead of just blind defense.

because I’ve generally enjoy Nesterenko’s comments, and he had a good point.