Accused of Cruising: Panthers 3 - Blackhawks 2

I think Hossa was double-shifted a couple times towards the end

he jumped to try to avoid the hit at the wrong place. hope he’s okay

but yes, pretty brutal to watch.

it even SAYS Hossa on the back of the jersey too. Caption fail.

Quite a lot, actually

I’m still more concerned about the current 3rd line. Not sure the Hawks can go far using the 2nd line as their checking line and protecting the 2 bottom lines, but I guess each theory (top heavy vs spread out) has its pros and cons

First off, Keith was way too close to Leddy to make that pass. Second, it was a bad pass that Leddy couldn’t adjust to because of the short distance. Leddy peeled off to cover Booth who was streaking toward the net, but because the Hawks were on a line change and Hossa gets screened coming off the bench, no forward covers the guy with the puck. Leddy turns just as Repik is releasing the initial shot, so there’s nothing he can do to block it. He never had a chance to get inside position on Booth either. If he had tried, he would’ve got called for interference.
Juicy rebound by Crow. Goal.

Leddy is quickly becoming last year’s Sopel. Anytime he’s on the ice for a goal against, he’s to blame.

Stalberg still makes too many dog house mistakes, so let’s get that out of the way.

Frolik so far is more defensively responsible and better on the forecheck than Bickell. He also has some speed and adds scoring punch. It’s likely a case of the good of the team is greater than one player/spot. Frolik helps the 3rd line more than Bickell would, since Brouwer and Bickell are similar, and the 2nd line needs someone to dig in the corners.

Maybe Q prefers Brouwer’s experience on the 3rd line? Dunno, but Bickell and Brouwer have both been invisible to my eyes. Why not flip them?

That combed over toothless wonder seems pretty damned useless. Would love Morin to be healthy and playing up and Bickell sent down to get a hair cut, dental work and then traded.

Give Vokoun credit for standing tall. However I can’t get passed why we didn’t just start off that way and play 60 mins. Lets get back at it tonight. I think it would sting a little more if we weren’t playing tonight!

Lets go Hawks!

If you ain’t Grumpy you must be Goofy.

JK – totally agree with you about the reaction to the loss. I believe I even saw the kitchen sink being tossed at Vokoun at the end. If Sharp, Dowell, Campbell or Campoli get a little lucky we’d be playing for 10 tonight. i liked the way the hawk defensemen got into the offensive flow.

Turco, although not tested to any great extent, looked ready to contribute. He made a few nice passes to get the O in motion.

the Panthers absolutely suck, which is why this game is so infuriating. There is no way in god’s green earth the Hawks should have spotted these guys 3 goals, other than a complete and utter shitstorm of stupid and lazy play. Slamming the barn door closed with authority is not impressive if the horse has already galloped far down the lane.

doing what they want to do rather than what needs to be done to win games

I don’t understand this statement. What’s the wrong idea they’re getting? Aside from scoring more goals, what should they have done after it was 3-2? They looked to be on a 20 min PP.

To my untrained eye I saw them swarming the net and staying consistently in the panthers zone – I by no means saw them being lazy, but rather doing what they had to, to win the game. I’m pretty confident in the results they’ll get if they continue playing at the pace of the 2nd and 3rd periods against other teams.

Since the deadspin fiasco. So I’m not really surprised at his play last night, I thought he had the best game of the first line actually. Hossa and Kane were on fire last night IMO (after the 1st)

But when the team in front of him is not playing particularly well, you can’t really count on Crawford to win the game for you

I think Crawford has done just that several times this season, this past Saturday’s third period against Toronto being the most recent example. Also, I think we tend to forget that Crow’s a rookie goaltender in this league and he’s going to have some WTF moments. Overall his performance so far has been nothing short of remarkable.

Going back to your statement, I think you could say the same about almost any goalie in the league. Put a team playing shitty hockey in front of him and they’re going to win precious few games. It’ll happen occasionally, but no goalie is going to get many wins playing behind an underperforming team.
I just don’t think you can expect any goalie to bail out the team for a win consistently every time the team decides to mail it in.

The number of times Crawford has kept us alive in games when the team defense was playing poorly in front of him. He’s had more than his fair share of “goalie wins”. Exactly where he’d be ranked against other goaltenders this year is something to argue about, but he’s at least among the top 10 to top 12 starters in the league this year and has been remarkably consistent. It’s frightening to think where this team would be without him this year.