Originally Posted by TheSquatch
Being 5-2 so far in this playoffs is one thing, and a good thing, but you couldn't look at the greater part of last night's game and say "Yeah we're really humming along here."
I think the most positive thing I could say about the team play was that in the third, some change was made and the defense became less static, almost like they went from zone to man or something, I don't really know. And it had a disruptive effect, Dallas had much less in the way of good entries and clean "box setup" zone time. And that's really important, the first two periods it looked like Dallas was on the powerplay, it was frightening. Scraping the win out of that mess.... boy maybe it's the hockey gods' way of taking Benn out of the playoffs for being a POS. I dunno.
But as a GM, I'd have watched that game and thought "Wow I have to get rid of some of these guys while they have any value at all." I thought Gio looked better last night, and if he's trending up that's fantastic, cuz he's looked like garbage so far. And maybe that's why Dallas couldn't keep it up last night - maybe Gio finding some game is enough to disrupt them. But I think Johnny's been terrible, no effort defensively, one-hand-on-the-stick-and-cruising-around style. And no jam offensively, he absolutely won't play through any physical opposition, and he's not drawing any penalties because of it, nor creating much. His vision is there, but his heart isn't. I'd give Monahan and Lindholm part marks too, neither did much last night - solid but much more a "second line" solid than a "wow these guys are good" solid. Mangiapane, Backlund, Dube, Lucic, these guys are elevating. I'd include Andersson on that list but I thought he looked really, really tired last night, I didn't think he had a great game. Hanifin looking better and better though, which also tells me (I hope) that Hamonic's time with the Flames is up - he's held Hanifin back somehow as a D man.
I have no idea what this team is. What we saw last night wasn't good enough, and a strong team like Vegas would have won that game 14-1. It's lucky the Stars couldn't find the net, cuz it was there. And you can't expect that effort or result from Talbot every night. So the shutout is great, the win sweet, but anyone saying "See? These guys are great." is out of their mind. You have to call that a lucky win.
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