Uh oh – No Ehrhoff?
April 9th, 2008, 11:05 am
The Sharks have lost ten of the 22 games Alexei “Frankenstein” Semenov has played this year. That is almost half. That sucks for a team that experts around the country are picking to make a long anticipated run for Lord Stanley’s Cup. Why does this matter? Because, all indications are that Christian Ehrhoff is not healthy enough to play tonight in Game 1 against the Calgary Flames, so Ron Wilson has turned to Frankenstein to pick up the slack. Frankenstein. A brain-eating defensemen who contributes nothing to the club but a disasterous plus/minus stat of -8, which stinks for a guy who played only a quarter of the games this year. Actually, Semenov only had three games this year when he was on the plus side of the number.
What does this say about Matt Carle? Well, it says that Ron Wilson trusts him about as much as a week-old Breakfast Hot Pocket. FLUSH POCKET! He has only seen the ice five times since March 1st. And Ozo’s -3 performance against Dallas in the finale cemented his role as practice dummy. I guess, when you look around, the options are pretty slim. Should the Sharks have hung on to Rob Davison instead of peddling him off for a 7th round pick? We’re about to find out.
This is alarming, especially when you consider that MacLaren has been fighting the puck all season as well. That means we only hav 2/3 of a solid D-core.
As for who we should play off the bench…I would rather go with Ozo’s 137 playoff-games-worth of experience than our other options on the benh.
Carle must be skating like Happy Gilmore in practice, because I thought he looked decent in his last couple of outings. If Semenov plays in Canada I’m sure Sutter will pull whoever he needs to off the ice in order to get the Semenov-Iginla matchup.