And we're off. Bears Lose 2-4 to Baby Penguins

Image by Drew Olanoff via Flickr

I'm not a hockey apologist. If the Bears lose, I'm not going explain the loss away. They stunk like Limburger cheese last night. If you asked them, I'm going to bet that they'd agree. Before the Penn Live trolls start on the "Get Rid of French" train, let's take a look at what happened.

This was the third pre-season game for WBS. They had their first game almost a week ago, so they are much further along in understanding the system their coach is implementing. The Bears, on the other hand, have had about 20 minutes of PP/PK practice so far this season. Most of the WBS players last night will make the team, very few of the Bears on the ice last night will start the season in Hershey.

So please don't read too much into the score; it is the pre-season.

On to the game breakdown. I'm not going to give a play-by-play recap of the game. I'm just going to give my general impressions.

Early in the game the Bears looked really tentative. Nobody was hitting, just skating around trying to to get into space, rather than getting into the Pens' faces. It's my belief that most of our success last year was due to our aggression and physicality, particularly in the first period of games. When we laid off teams is when we would lose games, and that's what happened last night.

Anton Gustafsson has some work ahead of him if he wants to play in North America any time soon. He is a defense-minded center that doesn't seem to play defense very well. He really needs to impress the coaches in the the next week, or he's headed back to Sweden.

Joe Finley scored half of his goal total from the entire 2008-09 season last night. A beautiful shot high stick side beat Jordan Parise for the first Bears goal of the game. Parise & Finley were seen talking during the pre-game skate, so maybe Jordan was hooking up an old teammate, or maybe Joe just knew where to shoot on Parise. I was annoyed that I didn't have my little, toy lawnmower to throw onto the ice to celebrate Big Joe's first goal as a Bear, but my wife assured me that I wouldn't have been able to get it through the Giant Center's security anyway.

Michael Dubuc scored the Bears' second goal with a canny play in front of the net. With several players fighting for a short rebound, Dubuc poked it past a falling Parise. This isn't the way that Dubuc usually scores. He's more of a sniper, so it was nice to see him stick his nose into a scrum and get rewarded for it. He was playing a little soft last night. He got knocked off the puck in the offensive zone a few times, and I was mentally writing him off until he scored.

Two mildly entertaining fights happened in the first period. Trevor Bruess and Chris Cloud squared off @ 19:57. Bruess took it to Cloud at the beginning of the scrap but faded fast and ended up taking the worst of it. Scoring was Cloud in a unanimous decision. As soon as the puck was dropped to restart, Patrick Wellar and Baby Boogaard went at it. There were a couple nice punches, but it was mostly a hugging match with neither fighter being able to get an arm free for some clean shots. They skated over to the far board and basically decided that the fight was over before the linesman separated them. Scored as a draw, but kudos to Wellar for taking on Boogaard.

Neither Bacashihua nor Ford impressed me very much. Cash was better than Ford but showed why he never made it to the show. He was giving up fat rebounds all night and had a hard time with his positioning. The Pens first goal came as Cash was laying down on the side of the net after leaving the puck in the crease. After a glove save, Ford tried to throw the puck to his D and almost dropped it into his own goal. Granted, there was some defensive confusion in front of the masks, but they needed to be better, and they weren't.

John Carlson got an assist on both goals, but I wasn't impressed with his effort. He got beat getting back on a possible Pens icing that led to a goal by the black chickens. He tried to step up in the O-zone but missed the puck and got beat again getting back which lead to another Pens goal. He never seemed winded coming to the bench, probably because he wasn't trying very hard. Not a good showing for the young man. Hopefully, he'll get it together soon.

I liked Zach Miskovic's effort out there. He was usually in good position and had a lot of hustle. Finley was a bit of dogs' breakfast. On one shift, he'd make a mistake or be out of position; the next, he was setting up a scoring chance, scoring a goal, or de-skating someone. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. He's still learning where he needs to be on the wing, and he's only going to get better.

What did you guys see, good or bad? Agree with my assessment or disagree? Let me know in the comments.

Grizzled Vet