A visit to The 'Peg was perhaps exactly what The Hawks needed to break their four-game losing streak, facing a Jets club that is looking a bit thin in all areas. But hey, this isn't all about how bad The Jets are, some other stuff happened too.
- The big story tonight is that Coach Q gave his head a shake and restored order to his forward lines, reverting almost entirely to the combos we had seen a week+ ago. Only the Kane/Hossa flip-flop remained from his major retooling earlier this week. It takes a man with a ridiculously large moustache to....oh, never mind.
- That said, as long as Q continues to persevere with TVR as he has, he remains on my shit list.
- Three of the four Hawks' goals were highlight-reel quality; Fleischmann received a barely onside pass after a sneaky lift by Teravainen before pulling off some greasy moves to cash in. Similarly, Large Arthur swiped a puck in The Jets' zone, busted a few sweet moves of his own and got a shot on net, the rebound ending up on the fat part of Hossa's stick. Finally, Kane dashing down the wing and depositing yet another backhand laser behind Ondrej Pavelich...can anyone else in the league place a backhand shot, and a hard one at that, like Kane does?
- Caveat: some of these plays were made possible by the Jets being bad at hockey.
- On that note, it was sure refreshing to see a Jets goalie play a representative game against The Hawks, rather than pull a rabbit out of their hat as they've seemed to do for the last two years.
- It's worth noting that the top guys all played 15-16 minutes tonight, this made possible by The Jets being bad at hockey and by a fourth line that can be trusted for more than 7 minutes of sheltered starts. Richard Panik may not be excellent in any regard but he's competent in most ways, which is far more than anyone can say about B. Mashinter.
No comments:
Post a Comment