The Eagles lived up to my expectation of what kind of team I though that they were. They were fast, they moved the puck well, and have solid defense and goaltending. Their forwards were smart and screened me well and often. They used their points often and seemed to have a solid power play unit (they managed to go 1 for 1 on the PP).
We managed to put a pretty damn good game together ourselves though, we had our full compliment of players (for a change) and as long as we continue to have everyone show up consistently, we (in my opinion) can only continue to get better. Our lines have changed up a little bit as we moved one of our forwards (who had always played defense up until three years ago) back to help shore up our defense. He's been back there for the last two games, and its helping, a lot. Danny has speed (he can rush the puck when he has to), good hands, quick feet (an import attribute for a defense man) and an extremely high hockey I.Q. Seldom does he ever do something foolish, and he never makes panicked reactions in our zone. He is the kind of player that, from my stand point, puts me at ease, and allows me to truly focus on the puck/play in front of me because I never feel like I have to cheat to make up for a defense man that I don't completely trust. For our first few games we only really had three true defense man, meaning that were were always throwing someone into the fire on D who wasn't totally comfortable with the position. Moving Danny back on D makes us a very solid team defensively, giving us two very good defensive pairings.
Our offensive players have always been very talented, so moving Danny back doesn't really hurt us up front, and now, he becomes a threat from the blue line, where I think he is much more comfortable. Our first line is, in my opinion, as good as any other line in the league, and our second line is no joke either. We have a team who understands how to grind out a win, we don't have guys who are prima donnas that won't go into the corners and muck it up for the puck. They will, and they do, and when they go in the corners, they usually come out with the puck, and because of that kind of play we managed to score the first two goals (well, sort of, the first two goals were lasers that found there way just under the crossbar on glove side).
Like I said before, the Eagles scored on the power play, although it was kind of a bullshit/lucky goal. With about thirty seconds left in the PP, one of their forwards fired a shot from the left wing boards that barely missed the net, but managed to ricochet off the end boards behind the net out front on the opposite side to the other winger who fired the puck, I managed to get a piece of it, but not enough, and that made it 2-1. We picked up another goal off of some solid work in front of the net, and with about six minutes left in the game they scored again off of some of their own solid work in front of me.
I felt good though about my play overall, despite the two goals, because as I said from the start, those guys lived up to my expectations as to just how good they are. They were definitely relentless, they took a lot of shots, several of which came through screens. I started using my height to my advantage in the last couple of weeks though, so instead of trying to look through the screens by getting down in the butterfly and looking through a tangle of legs for the puck, I have been looking over them, allowing me to maintain my focus on the puck, and it also allows me to see what other aspects of the play are developing...
The game ended with us on top 3-2, getting us a game over .500, putting our record at 3-2-1 in 6 games, and putting my GAA 2.50. We play Shepley's next week at 10 PM Monday night...
No comments:
Post a Comment