Okay. So... EPIC FAIL by not noticing that there was yet another fancy button to be pushed in order to front page my game thread. At least the ladies and gents from PPP were able to find it and sufficiently trash the place. I will be sure to double, triple and quadruple check that everything will go off without a hitch for all remaining gamedays. . Special sorries to saskhab, bigjoe, et al for not delivering as promised.
But EPIC WIN! For the Yotes. Coyotes 6, Hanzal 3 - Leafs 3! No question who the star of the game should be.
Scored the hat trick, and played an all out excellent game. One of the prettier spots from a pretty ugly game.
The Good Stuff:
- Hanzal - Of course. He's so hot right now. Three goals. Grinning like a fool and trying to hide from the camera on the bench afterwards. I hope he gave Shane Doan a lot of crap as it's only 97th NHL game. Doan has yet to get the hattie and he's been in 900+. If he didn't i'm sure the other vets on the team did.
- Getting in front of the net - Pretty much the reason that we were able to score so many goals. Created traffic in the slot and when pucks got through, hey we could get the rebounds because we're in front of the net. Who woulda thunk? Now they just need to keep doing it. They've been so focused on pretty goals that they haven't been able to get the dirty ones. Hopefully putting 6 on the board because of it gets them camping in front all day. That's how Rhino got his first, and keeping it up made for better chances from the outside too. Fridge was able to get the wrister from the circle in part because of fear of the rebound.
- Keeping down the number of opposing shots - Not that it really helped all that much in the first half of the game, but I can't remember the last time a Coyotes opponent got less than 20 SOG. If they can do that a little more frequently they'll find easier Ws.
The Bad Stuff:
- Early goals on both sides - 4 goals on the first 4 shots of the game? Not a great start for either side really. I was happy that we got the goals, but it was pretty ugly for a bit.
- Passing and Clearing - Time to work on the passing in practice boys. Everytime the Yotes wanted to get going out of the zone the pass would find it's way off of the back of a leaf skate, the boardsa and bounce back in the zone funny, or something. Tape-to-tape guys. Also, when to make a pass you have to try and pass through either the legs or under the sticks of 3 opposing players to make it, you should probably pass somewhere else.
The ??? Stuff:
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Goalie controversy? - I think that's about done. Wait. There really wasn't one. Telly played great for a few games, which is exactly what we needed from him. Bryz was out of it a little but when he came in in the 3rd he was lights out. If nothing else this should give the coaches the confidence that if the team has a back-to-back on the schedule, Telly can play and it's not a big deal. That's hopefully exactly what will happen on this road-trip as they have STL then CHI on Sat/Sun. Play Bryz against a bangged up Blues squad and Telly against the Hawks since they've seemed to have Bryz's number. Then Bryz back in for the Dallas game for the end of the road trip.