I will not make a judgement on our players after one game, but a general feel of what I think needs to be worked on.
My take away from this game is Baertschi, I will be looking for him to be more aggressive out there, more assertive in puck chase. If he doesn't get more aggressive he will get sent down imo. I also think he may need to bulk up some more to work the corners better, it is either that or he gets put on lines with two guys who will go hard in the corners and he becomes a Hemsky type player? I think he has the potential for more but he will have to work on it.
Monahan, I will also be looking for more assertiveness, I think he was so worried about his defensive responsibilities that he was not in on the puck chase at times when he should have been, or at least being the second in puck chase. I noticed him sit back by the blue line or even towards centre a few times when the puck chase should have been on. I will not say if he should get sent down our not after one game but will be looking to the next few games to start figuring that out. I am sure the coaches and GM(s) will be doing the same.
Ramo, I saw him over play quite a lot, he took himself out of position a few times when going side to side, this needs to come under control or the other teams will pick up on it and look for the drop pass to an open net. I noticed this in the preseason as well so hopefully the coaching staff will be working on this with him. He did make some nice saves but lets see him some more before too much judgement.
Our D, well albeit soft, they did a pretty good job overall trying to contain the powerful offence they were facing. Of course they will have to tighten up going forward as a lot of the play this year will be in our end, but not too bad for a first game.
The team in general did pretty well, good overall puck chase(which we will live or die on the next couple of years). I was a little disappointed in some coaching decisions, such as having Street on PP instead of our young guys who have more offensive creativity and with more ice to work with it could be just what the kids need to get settled in to the bigger game. I saw this same decision making last year and I just don't know if I can agree with this. You see other teams throwing their kids into it and succeeding, we should be doing the same imo.
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