At any rate, out of curiousity, I paid attention (for the first two periods, at any rate) to the quantity and nature of our shot attempts within the home plate area.
By my count, we had 16 such shot attempts at even strength in the first two periods. Only five, in my estimation, represented a challenging save for the goalie - three of which we scored on. The remaining 11 were blocked, missed the net or shot right into the chest or pads (i.e.: a positionally sound goalie would barely have to make an effort to stop the puck). One area where the lack of Tkachuk was greatly noticeable is the near complete lack of second chance shots because nobody was actually in front of the net to battle for any rebounds.
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