How obvious are the problems? Before I read either of these articles, I posted the following on another forum after returning home from the game late last night....
As we were driving to Chicago, I commented that if we had a strong scorer, we'd be in the playoffs. Oddly, the Chicago broadcasters said the same thing in the pre-game....if Quad Cities could score, they would be dangerous. Sadly, it isn't to be this season.
We have no offense at even strenth, and the heebie jeebies are carrying over to the power play. Do we know what it means to go strong to the net? Does a critical, veteran d-man (Ramholt) know how to move his feet and skate to the puck instead of watching it go right by him out of the zone time after time during two 5-on-3 power plays? Or, as he indicated today, does he really think he can play offense and defense at the same time and let somebody else pick up the slack?? We had guys so out of position so often that it was ridiculous!!! I, too, was hoping that Keetley would get the start, but I'm not sure it would have made any difference. The problems were evident further out than between the posts. Yet, all of the shutouts have come against McE.....
I love this team and will never stop supporting it, but I also reserve the right to call them out. The rookies appear to be the only ones putting forth much effort. Chicago is a very good team, but we held them for 35 minutes. Several other teams have proved they're beatable lately. We could have and should have scored on our power plays. It's like the other team scores, the air goes out of the balloon and everything, including our usually stellar PK today, goes right down the tubes. The guys forgot what they're doing out there, resulting in more turnovers than we could have counted today! We might be out of the playoffs, but where the heck is the pride?
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