[Pierre "Monster" McGuire]

Just got back from the game. Here's some notes:

The whole game was fun to watch tonight. The two new guys, Jessiman and Escolet, really came through for them tonight. The Heat won 3-2 with goals from Jessiman (assists from Escolet and Walter), Walter (assists from Henry and Escolet), and Nemisz (assist from Sylvester).

The Good:

- Jessiman is a beast of a guy. He really utilizes his size, which creates space for him to work down low. His strengths are definitely in front of and around the net, which is exactly where he scored his goal from a nice pass from Escolet. Consider me impressed with this pick up by the Heat.
- Escolet impressed the hell out of me tonight. He's fast, agile, smart, isn't afraid to hit and has an excellent work ethic. I guess to make a comparison, I would say a Carter Bancks/Blair Jones type of player with a bit more skill. He's a got a wicked wrister, which is very accurate. In fact, that whole first line of Escolet-Walter-Jessiman was quite impressive tonight.
- From what I understand, Nemisz worked heavily on his legs with the Heat conditioning coach while he was hurt and he said he was feeling better than he's ever felt before in terms of his leg work. He wasn't kidding. I've never seen Nemisz quicker than I did tonight. I think his injury may have been a bit of a blessing in disguise.
- I liked the looks of the Sylvester-Nemisz-Bancks line. Lots of skill, spent most of their time on the ice in the opposing zone.
- Howse looked great tonight. He's not the one-dimensional offensive forward we all thought. Boy, is he good at backchecking and reading the play. I know of one instance where he saved the tying goal because of he backchecked a Houston shooter who had a completely open net to shoot at. Other than that, he had a couple of good chances tonight. He was also very physical. Unfortunately, he had to play on a line with Laing and Desbiens all night. You can tell that all of the hard work and dedication Howse put in at the beginning of the year has definitely came back to help his cause in raising his stock in this organization. Overall, he's a lot of fun to watch.
- Not much to say about the defense tonight. As a whole group, they played well.

The Bad:

- Piskula and Henry weren't very good tonight. In Piskula's case, it was just an off night for him. He wasn't making good reads and his passes was just a bit off. In terms of Henry, I feel like a broken record complaining about him, but it's so hard not to notice. Henry, in my opinion, just isn't a smart player. I don't know if it's just him having a weird, unconventional style of play or what, but it's not working. Bad reads, bad passes, bad coverage (as usual), and he ices the puck on plays that seemingly shouldn't be iced.
- I don't know what it is with Desbiens, but he just needs to do what he did in Manitoba, which is put in a crazy amount of effort every night. He's just so damn slow, which is to be expected because of his size, but his lack of speed hurts his linemates. It almost seems they have to slow down because of him. Plus, he makes some really dumb plays. I don't know, I don't really want him back on the Heat. If he comes back, it's simply because of his leadership qualities.
- I would like some feedback on this one. Does Karlsson always seem disinterested in the game? Why I say this is because he's a really frustrating goalie to watch. There's no doubt he's a competitive guy, but everything about him on the ice seems like he's in slow motion. His actions seem delayed. It takes him longer than a normal goalie to cover the puck. He lets out a ridiculous amount of unnecessary rebounds. I don't know, it just seems to me like he thinks he's better than this league; like he knows he's guaranteed to go back to Calgary, so he doesn't care if he wins or loses. To me, it seems like he takes this conditioning stint JUST as a conditioning stint and doesn't care about winning the Heat some games. I could be wrong, but everything he does on the ice makes me think that. All in all, I hope he's traded and Irving has more than proven he can be a phenomenal backup at the very least.

Great game. I had alot of fun. Good sized crowd that was nice and loud tonight, which is nice to see because it doesn't happen often.

EDIT - I also forgot to mention that Ward shortened the bench by not playing the fourth line (Aliu, P3L, Patterson) for the whole 3rd period. He said in his post game interview it was because he wanted to keep the tempo up for the rest of the game.