Welcome to the new ride at Hershey Park, the Hershey Bears Fan Coaster. The ride is one of the new electromagnetic coasters which shoot you out of the gate going from 0-60mph in two seconds.
The launch for the Bears this season had us riding high. Three wins out of the gate, including an 8-1 smackdown of Binghamton, had me dreaming of a 140-point season.
Then we hit the top of of the loop and back down we came. Losing 4 out of 5 with the one win in overtime against Bingo, had me searching for what was going wrong.
The boys were outshooting their opponents for the most part, which is a good sign. Our penalty kill ranks in the top five in the AHL, so that's not the problem. So what is?
A couple things pop out immediately.
Problem one: Power Play. At one point during the downturn, they were ranked 23rd in the A on the PP. Today, they are only in 17th with a PP% of .138. That means that the Bears score on one of eight power play opportunities. I don't know what kind of benchmark Coach French has set for his PP unit, but I'm betting it's going to be closer to .225 than .125. The Hartford Wolfpack is leading the league with a .295 percentage, which is exceptional. With the offensive talent on this team, we should be able to come close to that.
Problem two: Goaltending. Michal Neuvirth is a Hershey hero. He stood on his head during the Cup run last season. He looked great in training camp, pushing Semyon Varlamov for the number two spot in Washington. Then he got hurt. His injury was undisclosed, but rumors were it was a groin injury. He came back to Hershey. When his injury healed, he went out and lost three of four games, and didn't look good doing it either. Groins are the worst possible injury for butterfly style goalies. Think about it. Up/down, up/down, push to the side, up, rest. That's a goalie's action for a game. The up/downs take the most effort. That's why you don't see goalies going down in the butterfly during warmups that often.
The ride bottomed out of the loop and back up we went. Four wins on the bounce. Jason Bacashihua decided that he was going to be the rock they needed in net and went out and stoned the opposition. He was the #1 goalie in the AHL with a .948 save percentage after four games.
The saying goes, "What goes up, must come down." Last night, we caught the express drop on Farenheit. Losing 5-0 to Portland hurt. Watching the game on atdhe.net, I didn't see too many let downs that would contribute to that score. Again we were outshooting the Pirates, but nothing was going in. JP Lamoureux was outstanding in net for the opponents. He should have been arrested after the game for grand theft on one Osala shot.
To address some comments that I'm sure I'm going to get: Portland's third goal was called correctly. I'll admit that when it happened I thought that our boy Koharski had been eating too many donuts again. But a thorough search through the rulebook found that as long as the net's pegs are still on their moorings, play isn't stopped. If an offensive player tipped the goal over Cash, that would have been a minor penalty for goaltender interference. But, since it was Ammo tipping it over, no call. I hate being wrong on the rules of hockey. I hate the fact that my least favorite ref made the right call. However, I'm man enough to admit that in this one instance, Mr. Koharski knew the rules better than me.
DisGracefully Yours,
Grizzled Vet
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Bears powerplay is down the drain. Are we going to watch the same thing next weekend at home?
First...I am not in agreement that the power play matters that much. This team isn't playing to its potential at all not just on the power play. They are playing sloppy in all areas of the game and honestly I think the lines need to be changed around some more to send a message. Aucoin and Giroux have been playing on the same line since the beginning of last season....maybe they should be broken up for a bit.
Second...Neuvirth's injury was a hip and it was disclosed. That does partially describe his poor play but another couple of reasons...disappointment in his assignment to Hershey and the defense seemed to be expecting more from him then the other goalies. They were expecting him to make plays like he did in the playoffs last season and he wasn't making those.
GM: Power play is indicative of offensive success or failure. Bad PP time means that a team isn't clicking for whatever reason. My personal opinion is that they are trying too hard, being too "pretty" on the man advantage. I don't like the gain the zone, curl and pass that they are doing right now. The opposing PK is on to that and is clogging the half boards, not allowing passes to the cutting players through. That turns into shorthanded rushes the other way.
Neuvy: I said undisclosed because it was reported as a hip and when I talked to Coach French about it he said it was his knee. Somethings not right about that. Perhaps I should have said conflicting reports.
You're right the D in front of him doesn't seem to be the D that's in front of Cash or Holtby. I'm still thinking that he's hurt and trying to cowboy up, rather than he's having a Sloan-esque pity party for being back in the A.
I don't disagree that they have been "coasting", playing sloppy, for a bit, but I haven't seen you give them an offensive grade lower than a C+ on your blog. I didn't figure out their GPA, but a fair guess would be about a 3.3 in the offensive zone per your grades.
That isn't a slam, it's an observation that sometimes what happened recently colors our observations of a whole season.
GV
Post a Comment