The Panthers game on Friday evening was another tough one to watch, primarily because we were up against a division “rival,” and partly because the Panthers looked like the better team. Oh yeah, and Kris Versteeg scored against us again, an inevitability that I’m still having trouble accepting. Once again, our goaltending has played well (it’s primarily the reason our PDO has rebounded), but we’re just not playing like a team that’s going to put a bunch of pucks in the net. Case in point…
Key
Vertical blue lines — Our goals
Vertical black lines — Their goals
Shaded green — Powerplays
Shaded red — Penalty kills
- Blame the “second-game-of-back-to-back-games” fever, blame the absence of Evander Kane, whatever the excuse we did not play well against Florida. I’m looking at the 3 kills to 1 powerplay, the nearly game-long offensive swoon, the bad turnovers…
- We have played very poorly since Dustin Byfuglien’s return, which isn’t necessarily his fault; it could be just as much the fact that pairings get shuffled a bit and the new combinations are trying to get familiar with one another.
- What I wouldn’t give for a game where we scored more than 2 goals.
