The Herald's Inside the Flames has Craig Conroy and Andre Roy sitting out tonight due to minor injuries, inserting Dustin Boyd and Eric Nystrom into the lineup. Mark me down as fine with this. Conroy has been a disaster in the first two games. I don't expect that to continue, but he's not up to speed right now. As for Boyd, it's insane he was out of the lineup in the first place, so let's hope that's for good.
Meanwhile, here's Robyn Regehr from another Herald story on what the problem's been so far:
"Defensive zone coverage is something that's pretty easy to break down," suggested Regehr. "It comes down to good positioning and it comes down to hard work."Uh, maybe I'm naive, but I pretty much agree with that assessment entirely, and think it's at the core of the problem from the first two games. The power play does look pretty high on potential to me, and I fail to see how the goals won't come with the way the group is moving the puck. Cammalleri on the point is a positive. He clearly sees the opportunities with the man advantage as well as anyone in the league, and is going to open up space for Jarome Iginla. Also, Cammalleri has clearly, clearly been the Flames' best player in the early going.
But enough about the game. I'd like to share with you a little nugget from my Thanksgiving weekend, when I visited my parents' hometown of Simcoe, Ont., to attend the always awesome Norfolk County Fair. One of the fair highlights is the junior arts-and-crafts competition, which includes a "collage contest" on your future career dreams. Here's one that caught my eye:
Yep, kids from Simcoe want to be Calgary Flames. Or, players who bleed. (I'm going to just convince myself that they don't really, honestly, want to be "Todd Bertuzzi.")
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4 comments:
Defensive zone coverage is easy to break down but difficult to execute. Especially when every single mistake you make (large or small) ends up in your net.
Defensive zone coverage is easy to break down but difficult to execute.
Difficult for this group, anyway. NHL players should be able to do this. Nothing more frustrating than, say, watching Lombardi let Bernier skate away from him and score on a one-timer, or Conroy just stand around next to his net while a Sedin wanders free into the slot.
I would disagree with Robyn in that he seems to imply 'working hard' was a factor, when to me the real difference was intelligence.
ha ha, you have a job. i missed the game, too, since i do not have tsn.
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