Yea, a dive is when you leave your feet and essentially jump to fall. Gelinas just decided to lay on the ice. It's the same call in the end, and he should have been called for it.
Looks like the Bruins finally decided to start playing. Crowd also finally realized there's a game going on. Just perfect. I would have rather them all stayed asleep.
Barring a couple horrible turn overs, good game for the cats. Auld was great . Booth was pretty solid, i like the call up so far. Finally things break our way, nice win on the ROAD. Now lets carry this momentum into the tampa game on wednesday. GO PANTHERS GO!
I'm surprised Chara only got a 4 minute penalty for that - did I see something wrong, or did he not have Allen on the ground, and throw a few punches at him? Thought that constitutes a major. So, Boston's still without a fighting major.
They got me nervous towards the end, there. But, it's good to see a win.
Booth was good, too. It's great to see someone come up and play with so much energy like he did tonight. Let's carry the momentum over for Tampa - Buffalo might have broken their spirit with that seven goal second period.
Barring a couple horrible turn overs, good game for the cats. Auld was great . Booth was pretty solid, i like the call up so far. Finally things break our way, nice win on the ROAD. Now lets carry this momentum into the tampa game on wednesday. GO PANTHERS GO!
Yeah, really impressed by Booth, I've watched him play since he played for MSU and I always liked him on there. He's good offensively, a strong skater, and good offensive abilities. His skating was his biggest knock because he wasn't someone to go blazing by people, he's just a strong skater in general, not amazing acceleration but his feet sure were moving tonight.
These NESN announcers are SOO boring. Hockey is a fast, exciting sport and I just don't get that impression listening to these guys.
Their PBP guy is probably the worst I've seen from watching Center Ice every night. He'll say three words and then wait another 5 seconds before saying anything else. I love their commentator though. His Bostonian accent is just "wickahd sweet."
Their PBP guy is probably the worst I've seen from watching Center Ice every night. He'll say three words and then wait another 5 seconds before saying anything else. I love their commentator though. His Bostonian accent is just "wickahd sweet."
Yeah but when the panthers scored, I had to make sure to wait for the pantehrs celebrating before I was sure it was a goal. When Horton shot that laser, I barely saw it go in and they annoucers were like "Horton shoots" in a monotone and Thomas reacted, I thought he had missed the net until the annoucers finally said "3-0 panthers."
How good was Tim Thomas though? Weiss REALLY looked great out there and he was ROBBED on that last play when Thomas's helmet was off, that was pretty much a sure goal I thought, same with that save on Gratton.
just got back from the game. wow, exciting final couple of minutes we didn't really need. auld should have had that 2nd goal but he had a nice night overall. i like booth too - his first real touch started a nice break (2 consecutive stick to stick passes through the neutral zone) the likes of which we don't see too often. and his work led to 2 power plays. weiss looked stronger tonight than on saturday. very impressive that he's still in there. he played a tough game too. should have had at least one more point but was robbed by thomas twice, as was gratton on one of the rebounds. this is our future captain (i hope).
defensively though... ugh. very disorganized. how many times did their forwards get in behind us? and what was up with that scramble leading to the first goal? two defensemen standing in front of an empty net watching the puck instead picking someone up? we are really struggling on the blue line. even jbo. mezei - wow. his giveway on an easy clear attempt led directly to that first goal. really poor game for him.
one last note - i'm surprised nobody mentioned the first line switcharoo. i was very pleased to see olli demoted and i think the weiss/gratton/gelinas line brought some energy and produced tonight. meanwhile olli was up to his old tricks with a lazy penalty after the offensive zone giveaway and then a halfhearted effort to back check on the ensuing 3 on 1 - it happened right in front of me and i watched him skate the whole way back and he was at 75% tops. if you don't think his teammates on the bench noticed that, you're kidding yourself. weak, olli, really weak. thankfully the coaches have noticed now too.
I'm pretty sure Boston had a fighting major against us on opening night, Allen v. Stastny.
We sure like to keep things interesting all the way down to the wire. Instead of scoring our 3rd PP goal to lead 4-1 and put things away, we give up a goal to let them back in it. It does seem that we run into good goaltending. That's back-to-back games now where the opposing netminder made those highlight reel saves.
Very impressed with Booth; he had a good debut. The way he stood out tonight reminded me of the first time I seen Olesz play last season. Nice work!
I wouldn't say it was a dive, more of an intentional fall but still crappy nonetheless. This makes up for the 53 times other teams have dove and we got called.
Diving doesn't make up for diving, that's just when hockey gets spoiled.
Good to get a win, but from the first two periods I saw, no one should be saying this was a good or great game for the guys.
Sloppy play start to finish - they still couldn't quite connect on their passes - that first pp goal looked like a gift as each player in the tic-tac passing sequence barely managed to get his stick on the puck, and looked panicked reaching for the pass and redirecting it to the next guy. Gelinas even looked panicky putting his stick down to get it into the net behind Thomas.
Booth was fantastic for a 2nd round pick who's on the slow-development path through the minors and getting his first NHL game. I expect Martin to send him right back when Olesz conditioning stint is over because Heaven forbid we'd keep a player who cares on the roster.
Boston was able to repeatedly get behind our defense, which would have amounted to a loss if we'd be facing players like Kovalchuk or Heatley or Crosby or Ovechkin or Jagr (all on different teams in our conference, btw). Lots of penalties were taken because of this. Of course, the refs seemed to be doing their usual one-sided calls through the first two periods anyway, most blatantly when they failed to call the trip on Nieuwendyk when he had a partial breakaway and ended up plowing into Thomas, then the net, then the boards. Then, naturally, less than two minutes later the Panthers get whistled on a borderline interference call.
Horton wasn't great, but I must say the best play of the entire game was his goal in the 2nd. Very smart, heads-up move to drop pass the puck and drift up to the slot.
Didn't see the third, but I can imagine it was more of the same, since Boston scored twice and came close to tying the game.
Neither team should be proud of their overall performance. Must say, though, that for the most part, no one can blame the goalies in this one. Both Auld and Thomas were solid and each made one spectacular save at some point in the two periods I watched (though Thomas' was more impressive, diving to stop that third shot in a sequence where each one came from a different direction in rapid succession).
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"...and ultimately it doesn't matter."
I'd rather them send Campbell down for a bit and keep Booth, also, Enough. I agree with your asessment of the game also. Just seemed like a sloppy game, and teh refs were their usual bad call selves.
I will say this, though...The Panthers ae only 4 points out of the top 8, and 15 points out of the first place spot. That sounds like we're way behind, but in reality it's 4 to 8 games. It's not likely they'll go on an 8 game win streak by Christmas, but if they can keep it close, they could go on a run similiar to last year's and actually make the playoffs this season. They could have Bert back by then, also.
__________________ Gudbranson fanboy and defender for liiiiiife!
Last time I checked there was no separate column for "ugly win" vs good quality deserved win. We won.
All I'm saying is that I'm not getting my hopes up that this is the big turnaround until I see them beat a quality team or even a poor team with a professional looking performance. Last night's game just looked clumsy to me.
Their PBP guy is probably the worst I've seen from watching Center Ice every night. He'll say three words and then wait another 5 seconds before saying anything else. I love their commentator though. His Bostonian accent is just "wickahd sweet."
I have to admit I was annoyed by having to do a double take to see if the Panthers had scored because the announcer would say it so subtly that you almost couldn't tell he'd said it. I don't expect him to say "YAY THE OTHER TEAM SCORED!" but every game I've ever listened to with other announcers there's at least a tone of "Dammit they scored!" in the announcement so that you know it happened. Last night it's like "and Horton gets his own rebound, hit the post or something, and passes it back, from the slot and he scores and how about that play by Thomas to stop that first shot?"
