Hate to be a debby downer here, but I think we all know how this will end up. Crawford will ride the "hot hand" too hard and as a result Lehtonen will get injured. This team won't make the playoffs without Lehtonen being healthy all season. He won't be. No playoffs. Hopefully no more Crawford.
Man, I should have just posted this in the Fire Crawford thread.
*I take January 15th in the Lehtonen out-for-season pool.
I think Raycroft is just NotThatGood, to start with.
But honestly, I don't mind the number of consecutive starts because they've had this weirdly spread out schedule to this point in this year. There are going to be stretches of six-in-nine and three-in-four when we get into the read meat of December, January and February, but they've had several long stretches of off days early in the year. Because of that, I don't see the workload as being overly heavy at this point, even for a guy who is considered a little fragile.
Morrow injured his groin before the game in Anaheim and is questionable for tomorrow's rematch.
edit: Which makes the fact that he played 19:21 (his 3rd highest TOI of the season) all the more strange. Unless of course he didn't tell anyone about it until later.
Any news on the extent of Morrow's injury? He's sitting in waivers in one of my fantasy leagues, and I wanted to check with the experts (you guys) to see if he's worth the pick up. Thanks!
Well, he hasn't missed any games, he's playing with it. His effectiveness has diminished a bit and he's not playing as well as early in the year. But his production usually goes as Ribeiro goes who is looking like he's about to get hot, so...
I'm sad Crawford didn't bag skate them all, including himself. This team's mental toughness is poop and has been all season, they need to know games like last night aren't tolerated. Skate the **** out of them.
Stars goaltender Kari Lehtonen is questionable for Friday's game due to some soreness in his back. Lehtonen started experiencing the soreness after yesterday's morning skate in Chicago. He was expected to start against the Blackhawks, but was held out of the game.
"He's improving. He may be an option for us tomorrow but we'll probably again be real careful," said Stars coach Marc Crawford. "Unless is 100 percent, we have to be prudent and sure and just do the right thing. We recognize that it's nothing structurally with him. He's got some soreness and that's going to happen every now and then. I think anybody who has had back surgery or the complications that come with it, knows that it is not about the structure. It's sometimes about how you sleep or you are going to have some soreness. We have to stay diligent with it, he's been diligent with, our trainers have been diligent with it and our medical people have been diligent with it.
So apparently it's now back soreness with Kari, not just lower-body tightness. These are all the old problems cropping up again, the ones that we all saw coming if he was overplayed. Crawford's extolling the virtues of prudence all of a sudden. That's ****ing rich.
Ya, hey Crawford, maybe if you had rested Kari during those B2Bs in the beginning of the year, instead of saying "well our schedule is ok so he can handle it," this wouldn't have happened. God who the **** treats a constantly injured goalie like a workhorse when your backup is playing lights out.
Stars goaltender Kari Lehtonen, who has missed the last three games with a sore back, will likely miss a fourth straight game. Stars coach Marc Crawford said he is not expected to play Monday at San Jose. Andrew Raycroft is expected get the get his fourth straight start.
With how fast they keep ruling him out, I can't help but feel this is something more serious than a "sore back."
