Episode 77 – Sundries
December 9th, 2009, 8:59 am
In this episode, Mike and Doug talk about the various happenings around the NHL, and only a cursory look to the Sharks. That’s because last Sunday the dudes talked themselves hoarse on the radio about the Sharks (episode to follow). This time, it’s all about the Flyers troubles, long term contracts, and Ovechkin’s knee, as well as Brendan Witt v. Yukon.
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Before everyone has their one of two predictable responces about losing four of the last five…
(i.e. Overly stoic and “let’s be patient” mentality or, “the sky is falling-let’s fire the coach/trade everyone away!!!”)
I’m glad the Sharks are working this out now rather than in march.
Dudes… You nailed it. Our D sucks.
Bottom line for me… The Sharks haven’t looked the same since getting bent over by Chicago. That still points to the mental game though, which isn’t a good sign.
Regarding the dirty play, I recall Don Cherry calling Malkin out last year on the same type of cheap play. If I recall correctly, he blamed it on being European. Thought it was kinda funny.
FYI, you’re onto round 2 of the Blog Off on thenhlarena.com 🙂
Thanks for supporting us over there – we’re getting murdered in Round Two. Someone even wrote that we didn’t use any “humor” over here. Huh?
So, here we go:
“A rabbi, a priest and Link Gaetz walk into a bar…”
There’s only 24 votes so far, so you Dudes could still catch up.
It sounded like the top 3 advance, so you have to catch one of those teams that’s in 2nd/3rd. I voted for Fear the Fin and the 4th place blog so you could close the gap on those other two!
I think you guys are a riot! You may not be comedians all the time, but then it wouldn’t be funny when you were. But what I love most about this place is the insight you have into not only the team, but the league and the other teams in it. It provides for great analysis and speculation! 🙂
I go to Fear the Fin for comraderie and the collegiality, I come here for serious talk about the Sharks (though they definitely put up some good statistical analysis over there every now and again). You guys rock, and should be no worse than 3 along with FTF and Sharkspage. Im gonna go vote!
Honestly, I don’t think the D is that much of a problem. The Sharks are the second best team offensively, and play an uptempo system. Yet they #8 in goals against average as well. This is all without one of their top checking forwards (Mitchell), Pavelski out for about 50% of the games, and relying on two rookies (Demers/Joslin) to play about 15-18 minutes a game on the back end (and sometimes at the same time while Rob Blake was out).
Vlasic seems to be getting a lot of blame recently, as well. For some reason, the only way to be a solid Dman is to play with a mean streak. Why is that? As much as I love seeing Murray flatten Iginla, I would much rather have Vlasic gaurding the likes of Kane, Teows, Datsyuk, Perry, and others of that ilk. Jackman, who was suggested as a possible trade target, perhaps even for Vlasic, is a vey good Dman, with similar advanced metrics as Vlasic, but simply because he does it physicaly doesn’t mean he does it better.
The Sharks were bound to stumble. Minus a ridiculous toe save by Kipper and nabby’s 5 hole the team would be coasting.