Quote:
Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
I know everyone wants to pile on Virtanen, and the one he took to negate a 5 on 3 was terrible judgment, but the two penalties they called on him in the third were not penalties. Same with the Marner penalty. The refereeing was not good. The goaltending wasn't either. The puck luck was terrible - a puck over the glass at the far end? Yikes. The coaching has been mentioned.
A lot of things went wrong there. It's not on one guy. And the team looked fantastic in the first period. In the third, where'd the forecheck go?
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It isnt just that. The players play but in my opinion its the coach's responsibility to set them up to succeed.
Blackwood was struggling, his coach hung him out to dry.
Virtanen was taking a ton of bad penalties all tournament, his coach kept throwing him out there to the detriment of the team.
Kicketts got unreal playing time making poor decisions, taking bad penalties and the occasional good play but kept getting tons and tons of minutes.
Look at the players who really carried the mail! I liked Stephens, Barzal and Konecky up front along with Crouse.
On the back end Hickey spent most of his time killing Hicketts/Virtanen's various stupid penalties. I liked McKoewn, Dermott, IMO was one of the best Dmen on the team and he got almost no time.