Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Panthers @ Oilers: Post Game Comment.

This evening, MattM and I headed down to the Black Frog to catch this PPV game. We are both a bit down on the Oil lately, but hoped tonight would be a bounce back game. I can say with confidence that we were not disappointed. A few observations:

- Stoll's line played the toughest minutes tonight, and they looked great out there. With the exception of a partial breakaway after a Matt Greene mistake, Jokinen's line had basically no quality chances at ES. Coming out a collective +4 against the other the other teams best is pretty much the best case scenario. All around a great performance by Stoll, Pisani and Torres.

- Although I have mentioned in the past that it's not my ideal line, Hemsky played well with Horc and Smyth. It certainly is an improvement over MacT's insistence on pairing Horcoff with defensive liabilities and expecting him to play tough minutes. It's not how I would do it, but I'll take it.

- Jan Hejda should stay in the line up. There is no reason why this guy should be sitting in the press box while we field Smid, Greene, and Tjarnqvist. He played a solid game tonight, just like every other game he's played this season. His key pinch led to the all important first goal of the game, and he covered very nicely for Greene's mess up by forcing Jokinen to the outside.

- Pouliot had a decent game, and Petersen played OK. They had one good energy shift 4 or 5 shifts before our first goal.

- MAB is such a roller coaster player, he makes 2 bad plays and 2 great plays in the same shift. Luckily, one of the great plays led the Game Winning Goal.

- Roloson played OK. Although I'm glad we kept Florida hemmed in their zone, as he still looked like he was fighting the puck on a few occasions.

All and all a solid effort by the Oil. Let's hope they can keep it up.

3 comments:

Shawn said...

Ignore me.

kinger said...

Fixed.

Unknown said...

I like MAB more.
Acai Berry