3/28 vs. Nashville - But I'm Working Harder Than Ever and You Could Call It Macking

Jordu

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Apr 30, 2003
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Got a little loose there in the third period, but that was an impressive effort. They're all big wins now.
 

TFP

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Dec 10, 2007
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Random thought, K. Miller has played so much better this year than last year.
I hate to admit it but this is so true. He was awful last year but he is way down the list of problems this year.

Riley Nash has been excellent of late.
There's a legitimate case to be made that he's had a huge role in saving their season. I wouldn't have guessed that either.
 

veritas

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Jan 13, 2009
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IMO Riley Nash has been doing all the hockey things really well all season except for being pretty terrible finishing or making a helpful pass in the offensive zone. The curse of #20. Good to see his hard work getting rewarded though. I hope he's anchoring the 4th line next season.

I thought they really showed up to play tonight effort-wise and earned the win, but that game could have gone either way. It's a little concerning that they can bring their best effort and not definitively outplay a team on the second night of a road back to back. But a win is a win.

It's weird to me that Brandon Carlo has played every game this season. Really, it's weird to me that NHL players are expected to play 82 games if they're good and healthy. Maybe this is a bit of a moot point given the new bye week, but with the talk about how goalies performance decreases > 60 games, why do we just assume skaters can play 82 no problem? I'd love to see a forward thinking team try a strict rotation with all their players. With 2 extra F and 1 D every game, healthy players would play ~70 games. Imagine Washington right now with Ovechkin et al. coming off healthy 70 game seasons? Yeah they might be a 3 seed but they'd be terrifying going into the playoffs given the grind of an NHL season. And *maybe* all of their players' 70 games would be at a higher level than their 82 games and they would have steamrolled the league anyway.

Random game thread thoughts/rants.
 

joe dokes

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Jul 18, 2005
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I thought they really showed up to play tonight effort-wise and earned the win, but that game could have gone either way. It's a little concerning that they can bring their best effort and not definitively outplay a team on the second night of a road back to back. But a win is a win.
That's the talent shortage showing up. Hayes, as most agree, is pretty useless.......bad hands, late to the action on 50/50 plays, gets less leverage in board play than Krug (he reminds me of Bledsoe running QB sneaks). But his uselessness helps make the entire 3rd line ineffective. Not saying that Spooner is great, or even better than average. But while Hayes on the wing would make Bergeron-Marchand mortal rather than superior, it turns Spooner and whoever the other wing is from mortal-and-occasionally-useful 3rd liners into useless. Spooner, Vatrano, Hayes played under 10 minutes.
 

Dummy Hoy

Angry Pissbum
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Jul 22, 2006
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That's the talent shortage showing up. Hayes, as most agree, is pretty useless.......bad hands, late to the action on 50/50 plays, gets less leverage in board play than Krug (he reminds me of Bledsoe running QB sneaks). But his uselessness helps make the entire 3rd line ineffective. Not saying that Spooner is great, or even better than average. But while Hayes on the wing would make Bergeron-Marchand mortal rather than superior, it turns Spooner and whoever the other wing is from mortal-and-occasionally-useful 3rd liners into useless. Spooner, Vatrano, Hayes played under 10 minutes.
I'm not sure this is even true.

Of course I hope we never have cause to find out.
 

MiracleOfO2704

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Jul 12, 2005
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I'd love to see a forward thinking team try a strict rotation with all their players. With 2 extra F and 1 D every game, healthy players would play ~70 games. Imagine Washington right now with Ovechkin et al. coming off healthy 70 game seasons? Yeah they might be a 3 seed but they'd be terrifying going into the playoffs given the grind of an NHL season.
Ask Claude Julien how easy it is to rotate players when you have pressure from above to make the playoffs, come hell or high water. In the cap era, when you have to make hard decisions about depth players, you don't get the luxury of stocking your rosters with most team's top-9 forwards/top-4 defensemen/starting goalies, so if your depth is ever tested, there's going to be a downgrade in talent, whether is lack of development to date or simply being a poorer player getting bigger minutes than they should. Voluntarily stress-testing your team's depth isn't exactly something teams will flock to do.
 

PedroSpecialK

Comes at you like a tornado of hair and the NHL sa
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Dec 12, 2004
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Putting this in a game thread because it's a game thread-level thought.

Colorado has a -106 goal differential this year. Arizona is second at -63. Nobody else is worse than -50.

The Avs are on some '03 Tigers level futility
 

cshea

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Nov 15, 2006
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Putting this in a game thread because it's a game thread-level thought.

Colorado has a -106 goal differential this year. Arizona is second at -63. Nobody else is worse than -50.

The Avs are on some '03 Tigers level futility
The sad thing is the Avs were trying to win going into the season. They have 43 points with 7 games remaining. They need 11 points to match the Sabres '14/15 team that was openly tanking the entire year.