Day 133 - Ifs, Ands, and Buts...Big Ones

One mistake is usually all it takes for a goal against. A lot of times your goalie can bail you out, but when you allow 47 shots by the worst offensive team in the league you've made a lot of mistakes.

Goal Resulting....
Mistake 1 - Not fighting as hard in front of your own net as you would to bang a goal home at the other end - Briere and Hatcher.

Mistake 2 - Getting sucked into Lasse Kukkonen's ill-fated attempt for a quick breakout - Jason Smith

Mistake 3 - Dicking around with the puck at the offensive blue line instead of chipping it deep - Jim Vandermeer

Mistake 4 - When we need to be the ones beating the Islanders to our dump-ins, getting beaten to one of theirs - Kukkonen. This one is two fold though. After Fedetenko's first shot Umberger skates right past him from the high slot and ends up standing behind the net when the goal is scored. He skated so close to him I guarantee their jerseys touched. If he does ANYTHING to Fedetenko's stick or, and I know I'm talking crazy, hits him, then there is no goal on that play.

General weak play:
Face-offs
The Flyers won less than a third of them.

Passing
I know the ice was bad, but this hasn't been the only game - PASSING. Passing is key to everything. Passes are in players' skates, missing guys by a foot, or straight to the other team. I think Stevens needs to incorporate some passing drills with severe skating penalties for errant passes today. It has to be tape to tape.

Effort
I know it's easier to bust your ass every second you're out there when you know you're only playing 5 minutes a game, but our points guys could learn something by watching Riley Cote video while listening to some Sigor Ros.

I know things aren't even close to as easy as they look out there, and I am never one to yell "shoot!", but I could not believe how lax they were in the neutral zone during the last minute.

The only time I can remember Richards busting his ass was when he gave up a short-handed breakaway to Richard "I was an extra in Platoon" Park. Speaking of breakaways, the Flyers have had 3 of them in their last 3 games - all unconverted.

Defense/Forecheck
This is the most difficult one to solve. Teams constantly have puck control in our zone. The best pay to simplity our game is to cross the red line, get it deep, and then forecheck them. When your forecheck creates mistakes your bury them. The problem is that our forwards are tired after a minute in the D Zone so when one of them dumps it they all go for a change. The opposition changes then too. So when they break it out, and our 1-2-2 doesn't stop them, we end up in the same position with the same results. The only solution is smarter defense by all players in the D zone - anticipating their cycle and cutting it off, staying in passing lanes,a nd knowing where your teammates are going to be when you get the puck in the corner with your head down.

They might need a 4 hour practice today.

This could all actually serve us better as we get closer to the end of the season. If those two shots that rung off the post go, in and Richards scores on his own short-handed breakaway, we probably would've won. And all this little shit could have been swept under the rug. But now it's part of a problem that is growing, and threatening to envelop the team. And now everyone will take a cold, hard look in the mirror.

Listened to: JoJo - Just too Little too Late