[GranteedEV]

For whatever it's worth, there were some positives in that game. Some big missed details - poor D zone coverage on the first goal, poor backchecking on the second goal, zero net front coverage on the right side to tie up a stick by the penalty killing defenseman - that was the difference.

I know we've all seen this story before in the Gully era so those positives don't feel like much. But all teams do go through stretches of play where the details aren't there and I'd say overall they carried the play in back to back games which is a marked improvement over most of Ward's tenure. It sucks that this team can never seem to manage a balance between carrying the play and backchecking when it doesn't have a hardass coach, though. I don't think it's unique to this team or anything, but you can definitely tell this team responded better to Hartley and Peters' short leashes.