2013-14 National Hockey League Thread

[Mel Cooley XU'81]

Drop the Puck!

[Masterofreality]

No season is longer- from opening night to the Stanley Cup. #marathon

[Mel Cooley XU'81]

Agreed.

I have nothing to say at this point.

[Muskie]

So did the reduced Goalie pads have any effect last night (Chi 6 Wash 4)?
I was not able to watch as I have a huge trial tomorrow.

[Masterofreality]

So did the reduced Goalie pads have any effect last night (Chi 6 Wash 4)?
I was not able to watch as I have a huge trial tomorrow.

If the Caps lost, has PMI melted down yet?

[PMI]

If the Caps lost, has PMI melted down yet?

Nope. I actually was a little bearish on my boys coming into the season, but last night I was pretty pleased. I'm disappointed we didn't get any points out of a really great back and forth hockey game, but we played the best team at their place with some new faces in the lineup (including TWO 19 year old children) and we played a solid game. There were some mistakes, particularly with the young defensemen, but I took away a lot of positives. Grabovski is an overall upgrade over Ribeiro at the 2C. He may not score at the rate Ribs did, but he's a better two-way 5 on 5 player, and he certainly didn't miss a beat on the power play where I thought Ribeiro would be irreplaceable for us. A 4 point debut with a hat trick was a hell of a way to start his career in red. Last year's top ranked power play looks every bit as fluid and dangerous, our final one notwithstanding. I thought the 3rd and 4th lines did a really nice job overall of grinding and controlling the puck, and our big names produced. Holtby, yes he gave up 5 goals, but overall he looked solid and made some big saves. Unfortunately, the game winner he gave up was bad, and all on him, but I don't see that becoming a habit. Chicago is outstanding and they get so many good opportunities a game. I thought we did a fine job of keeping right on pace and giving ourselves a good chance to take points, until that terrible final goal. I'll take it and move on to tomorrow night, where we get a team at home that's on the other end of the spectrum in the lowly Calgary Flames. There are still holes in our team, no doubt. We are going to have a lot of guys who aren't true centers taking face-offs this year, and the defense past the first two lines is a concern until proven otherwise, but overall, I think Oates is going to have a team that will compete in easily the toughest division in hockey.

[Tardy Turtle]

Hey, PMI;

The Burakovsky kid is going to be a good one. He was the best player on the ice Saturday night (G, 4A)... the goal was a sick wrister and he was backchecking with a purpose. Once he puts on a bit of weight and gets accustomed to the smaller ice surface the sky's the limit.

http://www.ontariohockeyleague.com/schedule/show/game/66248

(Of course it never hurts playing wing on Connor McDavid's line.)

[PMI]

I'm excited about Burakovsky, Tardy. The kid has a lot of promise. A lot of Caps fans get on our GM George McPhee for all the playoff failures, but he's done a pretty good job of continuously finding good, young talent to keep the beat going on. All a GM can do is help put the pieces in place, and I think he's done that. There is a lot of good, young talent in our system. Hell, we're playing two teenagers on the team right now, and we're getting our the best prospect in our system, Evegeni Kuznetzov, around April once his Russian season is done. We've been able to find some pretty good players later in the first round in recent years, so hopefully Burakovsky is one of them. I think he's is probably two years away from his NHL debut, but he's certainly making it tougher on the team to keep him down. He'll probably be in Hershey in no time.

Right now though, I'm more concerned with the team figuring out how to score at even strength. Our main stars are producing big time, mostly on the power play, but we need more than just grinding and puck control from the 3rd and 4th lines to take some pressure off the power play. It was tops in the NHL last year, and it should stay up there again this year, but no team can continue on the pace we've been on so far. Somebody other than Ovechkin needs to start scoring even strength goals.

[Kahns Krazy]

Sick goal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XwLs_ULR0o

I played some bad intramural hockey for a few years. I can't start to imagine the talent level that allows a 19 year old to actually execute on such an insane attempt.

[PMI]

Sick goal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XwLs_ULR0o

I played some bad intramural hockey for a few years. I can't start to imagine the talent level that allows a 19 year old to actually execute on such an insane attempt.

Yea, that was dirty. Lazy defense by Staal but ver, very dirty.