I warned ‘em but I guess sometimes it just isn’t enough. Not that we played badly, we just didn’t have enough left.
The Ducks came at us hard but the best performance was young Hiller as usual. We had our chances, we battled hard but it wasn’t to be. We shelled Hilly with 17 in the first to no avail. 13 sogs in the second only yielded 1 goal and they were some doozy shots. We struck early in the third and then got held off the board. The Ducks took advantage of our PK like they were naive school girls.
We definitely looked a little worn, guys were running into each other, we committed 9 penalties and we couldn’t get to loose pucks cleanly most of the night. Special teams… nuthin special about our power play thats for sure. Man does it still need work. We just haven’t produced when it would matter most. And we’re killin our PK guys. 9 penalties! Uggghhh. What the hell are we thinkin? I could simply chalk it up to mental or physical fatigue except we seem to be determined to be the PIM kings of the league even when we’re rested and at home. Trust me, we get our share of shitty reffing but that doesn’t account for most of our plain and simple brain farts.
Sooo we shot ourselves in the foot, let the Ducks retain their relevance and get a skate on the ladder to crawl back into the cup hunt. These are the games we need to jump on but I will give the boys a pass given the nasty scheduling this week.
The boys come home with half the available points and retain our spot in the standings. A strong home stand could help us leapfrog some serious contenders like the Flames, Sabres and Avalanche. We need to avoid our normal 2 game loss pattern and hope those 3 get a little stagnant. Catching back up to the Kings and gaining 8th place in the league would be a great place to end 2009.
We’re rollin gansta. But keep your fingers crossed that Fiddy will be okay (he left the game with a lower body issue). We need those face off wins and the puck possession to keep the momentum going. Winnie and TayPy would really miss him.
So hopefully I will see you all on Monday night when the boys take on Nash & Co… again. Maan, Olympic year makes for cruel scheduling.
As always… GO COYOTES!
