Bethany's Hockey Rants

2-3-0

by Bethany on 10/19/08 at 08:10 PM ET
Comments (1)

I really don’t want to talk about the game from last night, which is probably why it took me until now to even post about it. Coming off a huge home opener win, we had one of the worst efforts I have seen from the Blue Jackets. Fredrik Norrena looked absolutely awful in net, and he admitted it.

“I didn’t stop anything.”

It was definitely a team loss though. We weren’t even trying, and even though we had three goals, it should have just been a shutout as far as I’m concerned. If we are going to make the playoffs we have to start playing better as a team. The goaltenders, the defense, and the forwards. We don’t have an excuse to be out of a game ever, we have two perfectly qualified goaltenders, we have a blue line that shouldn’t hurt us (Tyutin was a minus-3, Klesla was a minus-4 last night), and we have forwards that are able to score.

Some highlights on the night were Derek Dorsett versus Greg de Vries and Ole-Kristian Tollefsen versus Jordin Tootoo. Jason Chimera is on a two game goal streak, good work. Marc Methot socred his first NHL goal, it was about time. Rick Nash scored his fourth goal of the season.

Dan LaCosta made his first appearance in a game and stopped 17 out of 19 shots, then he was sent back down to Syracuse today.

The Jackets had a meeting today, let’s hope it got through to them. We need to play better as a team. I don’t know what it was about last night, but all of our defensemen had a bad night. Thankfully Backman, Malhotra, and Leclaire are doing a full practice tomorrow and could play Tuesday against Vancouver, and don’t forget that Peca will be eligible to play Friday against the New York Rangers.

Oh, in case you missed it, here’s Hitch’s thoughts on Leclaire’s injury:

“What the hell are you doing—that’s why you have a blocker,” Hitchcock said. “The blocker is to block the shot. My first thought is he must (catch) right-handed in baseball. I couldn’t figure out how he got hurt. I couldn’t believe it. I thought his hand got jammed or his blocker got caught parallel to the ice.”

I was there, right above him, and I thought he got sliced by a skate, but didn’t see any blood. Let’s hope Pazzy doesn’t try that move again.

Oh, and here is a video from Opening Night, and that is their entrance music, it is “Woman” by Wolfmother.

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Comments

I missed the first three games on vacation, but when I finally got to see the Preds games it appears as if there is a lot of scrambling in the defensive zone. Guys are overplaying trying to cover other guys because those guys are out of position. It seems there’s a trust factor missing at this point.

I’d like to see Hitch put Rusty and Hejda back together for a bit, and see if they can play like they did down the stretch last year. Commodore and Tyutin should be OK together, I’d think. Let Russell play with anybody, he’s the only one playing out of his mind right now.

Getting Peca back on Friday should help, too.

I like our scoring from this season so far, but we need last years team defense back in a hurry.

Posted by Kick Save from Jacketland on 10/19/08 at 10:10 PM ET