Seattle loses again to night, this time at home to the Kelowna Rockets who had lost the previous night on the road in Everett giving up 8 goals in the process.
I don't think there is any way to sugar coat this loss at all. The Tbirds showed a few stretches where they looked like the team we thought they would be at the start of the year but far too many stretches where they looked downright ordinary, slow and generally unmotivated during a home game.
While I do think Kelowna is still a quality opponent, with Luke Schenn looking like he is going to stick in Toronto and Tyson Dowzak signing with the New York Rangers, this team is not the same team we thought they might be at the start of the season. You simply cannot lose a home game to a team on their second night of back to back road games and call yourself anything other than a 2-8-1 team right now. I'm not trying to go out of my way to bad mouth the kids or the team but I have to call it like I see it and right now this team is either under achieving or simply just not that good. I still believe they are just under achieving.
A few bright spots in the game....
I thought at times Greg Scott looked simply dominant. I remember last season thinking that Jim O'Brien was the consistently fastest game skater the Tbirds had and so far from what I have seen Greg Scott is faster. On numerous occasions he simply skated around and past Kelowna defenders and I thought the 3 stars of the game were totally wrong and it was simply ridiculous that he wasn't one of the three stars. In the first 10 minutes of the game Scott had 3 big hits, drew a penalty and then drew the assist on the goal during the Power Play he created.
Calvin Pickard again looked very good and solid but also looked like a 16 year old goaltender at times. Yes... I know he miss played the puck in the 1st period that gave the Rockets a 2-1 lead but he also made 27 saves and kept his team in the game and gave them a chance to win, which is all you can ask of a goaltender. On the flip side... he looked like a rookie on the goal by Colin Long... but Long is also the reigning #2 scorer in the league. I also thought the goal (ahem, shot) that was reviewed in the 2nd period certainly looked like a goal from my vantage point (I could totally be wrong about that) and that was a big break for Seattle.... but most of the time Pickard controlled rebounds and came up with a few huge saves to keep Kelowna at bay at times when they could have buried the game. This is where the struggles of Jake DeSerres is really killing the Tbirds. Pickard is playing admirably but a team just cannot lean on a 16 year old goaltender and expect to contend. The problem is that at 2-8-1 this team doesn't have much wiggle room to wait for Jake to get his confidence back.
Also good... the Tbirds continue to get really good shifts out of players like Luke Lockhart, Brenden Silvester and Colin Haas.
Lindsay Nielsen was a scratch tonight and I also did not see him in the stands (on the bench?) so I'm curious to know about his status.
I thought the 3 stars were way off base and I thought stars were more deserving for Dylan Hood for Kelowna and Greg Scott for Seattle. Long obviously did score a goal, O'Brien had a nice goal and Boyer had a nice assist on the Chris Cloud shorthanded goal so I'm not saying they didn't have some nice moments.
Tbirds get right back to action Wednesday night in Kamloops before heading to Spokane on Friday and back home for Everett on Saturday... so things do not get much easier.
Hockey Challenge 2014
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5 comments :
From my view (113), Benn's shot was definitly in. Totally agree, birds looked good only in stretches. I heard Nielly was attending a funeral (bro heard it on the radio before the game), so that should account for his absence.
The two things that I noticed the most in last nights game were this.
1. They can not clear the puck. Someone will try to knock it out but nobody follows up and allowed a Kelowna player to skate to the puck unimpeded to keep it in. This happened at least a dozen times.
2. They have surrendered the neutral zone. The team needs to learn to dig the puck out and get it in the attacking zone. Again someone would hit the puck but not follow it up allowing a Kelowna player to simply skate up and bring it back in the zone.
A couple of bright notes were
1. I completely agree about Gregg. He looked to be dominating out on the ice. I just hope that the rest of the team can look at him and learn something. He continuously played the puck and was probably the best player on the ice last night.
2. Thomas looked good as well. I like how he helped guard the goal while he was in the defensive zone. He almost seemed to shadow Calvin out front to help protect.
When all is said and done though the team needs to learn how to do one thing and I believe it would solve all of their problems. They need to play 60 minutes of hockey (yes I know that sounds like a "duh" comment but it seems like we are getting one good period one horrible period and one that shows glimpses of greatness.
I sit in 107 behind the goal, Benn's shot did hit the crossbar. From there you can see the puck just to the left of the center bar and come down. It could have possibly been in, I have basically the same view as the goal judge so I could be wrong.
I don't know if it's just me, but does anybody else ever see any T-birds crash the net. When we pressure it hardly seems like anyone is ever in front of the net.
Also in 107, I just equated to the no call as the one the birds had gotten in the season opener. Same goal judge in both instances.
Does anyone else feel the number of offsides called on the T-Birds is worthy of note? I think they were legitamate calls, and I'm concerned about the lack of attention to something as important as staying onsides....
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