Scraping By With Three Rookies
December 16th, 2008, 9:41 am
The Kings are not embarrassing. Even after last night, they have 31 points, same as Phoenix, Minnesota, and Colorado, and more than Columbus or Edmonton. As much as the Kings have been the whipping boy of the West in years past, we are starting to see this team get some things right. Kopitar has started a bit slow (much to my fantasy team’s chagrin) but he’s picking it up as of late. Dustin Brown and Patrick O’Sullivan won’t be secrets much longer. Our resident prognosticator, grier, again called it perfectly last night. Get your bookie on speed dial, I hope we’ll have more predictions this week from Nostra-Grier.
With three rookies in the lineup last night and a bevy of different line combinations, the Sharks certainly didn’t have the shimmer and polish that we’re used to seeing. Kaspar played on the top line at times, and we saw Michalek centering the second line. McGinn and Cavanaugh were also in the lineup, but barely got any ice time- under 5 minutes each.
Speaking of shimmer and polish, clearly I’m used to/spoiled by Randy Hahn and Drew Remenda because it seemed like the Kings announcers didn’t have much. I guess I’m not used to Bob Miller; it sounded like he was searching for players’ names all night, and seemed to pull out the same stat when mentioning guys again and again. He must have said Patrick Marleau had 15 (then 16) goals at least five times. Or maybe I’m just watching the NHL Network’s Voices too much.
The one aspect that was firing on all cylinders last night was special teams- 1 for 1 on the man advantage, and perfect on the kill with a shorty. I was about to say that if the Sharks commit as many penalties against Columbus and Detroit as they did last night they will be in trouble, but since those special teams units are mostly intact, I say hack away.
Oh yeah, you can find the latest ChompTalk here, including a discussion with Ryan Garner about the idea of bringing Sean Avery to the Sharks.
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Miller was having an off night calling the game. He was struggling with names, even of the Kings, but he’s usually a lot better.
Having Center Ice helps in seeing how bad some announcers really are and there are some really bad ones out there.
The weird thing is that this season it isn’t nearly as frustrating when we struggle to beat the kings. Last season it was symptomatic of the Ron Wilson “come-out-flat-and-then-struggle-to-score” strategy
As far as their homer slant or lack thereof, I thought they had a pretty good balance, similar to Randy and Drew. I’m not sure I’m remembering correctly, but I think I heard a Sharks-Jackets away game once, and the announcers were such homers I was a little disgusted.
It looked like McLellan switched gears and had Marleau centering the 2nd line by the end of the night. This might be the smart play until Pavelski is back healthy.
Bob Miller has been teetering on senility for a few years now. Probably longs to be calling games with players like Charlie Simmer and Marcel Dionne.
Bob Erry on NHL on the Fly surmised the Sharks were playing for the shootout given LAs poor tie-breaker record. Given their performance for the first 4:30 of OT, I’d say he was right.
Interesting call on that… I sort of assumed the Sharks didn’t want to hit the shootout because they were without two of their best in that department- JR and Pavelski. But given Labarbera’s horrible shootout record, I guess it’s a good play.
I thought Clowe’s was the best- you really saw him use his reach on that. Far forehand to far backhand is too much ground for the goalie to cover.
As to predictions, I don’t know what will happen against Columbus tomorrow (my guess is that we’ll lose as injured guys and the rest of the team is resting before the battle in Detroit), but just as you guys been saying teams bring out their best against the Sharks, we will all see Sharks bring their best game to Detroit.
For the team, as well as for the fans, the biggest measuring stick of how good we really are is how we do against Detroit.
Beating Detroit in Detroit is making a huge statement to the rest of the league, and Sharks will be trying to do just that on Thursday. It’ll also be a huge boost of confidence when we meet them in playoffs – we know we’ve already beaten you in your own house this season..
There is no need to worry if we look flat and lazy against Columbus. There will be none of that in Detroit.
how did Kaspar look? i saw one shift and he forechecked well, created a turnover, and went to the front of the net where he and Thornton almost shoveled in the garbage. but what about the rest of the game?