Runners up with 3 games to spare, take that at start of season .. time to rest a few players with niggles now..
Agree. I definitely would have taken that in September. That's not a bad return with the wide scale changes we've made and a new coach. I'm hoping we don't start slowly next season as a result of PR having a season under his belt.
Saying that, we are limping our way to the end of the season. Yet another dire performance. Giants had us under pressures for 8 minutes in the 3rd period and ended up getting the equaliser. We just couldn't exit the zone. We were weak on the stick and looking for soft gentle flips to exit the zone when a pass would have been more effective. Wilde and Crawaford repeatedly put us under needless pressure. The end of the 2nd and pretty much all of the 3rd all we were trying to do was gain the red line to dump the puck and we failed miserably at times to do that, the most basic of game management. It was a tough watch.
Crawford getting man of the match is baffling. The guy is a defensive liability aimlessly icing the puck and failing to make clean passes so we can exit our zone and actually build something but then he pops up and scores the winner so everything is ok. That game just summed Crawford up for me. There was the usual Alderson and Cox no show. Little energy, little interest and little contribution.
Friend yet again bossed the game tonight. He stood on the red line in the warm up and just watched us, no one had a word. Nothing. He made hit after hit and we had no interest in doing anything about it. Alderson is just a waste of a body right now. 6ft something and lightweight. When you needed him to skate into the zone and take some pressure off he was out muscled and easily robbed of the puck, he doesn't even make a beeline for the net any more. Just a 5ft 2", 9 stone player in a 6ft+ body. Embarrassing.
Then on the flip side, you have Brandt who plays like a giant of a man. 100% effort from him, Duggan and Davies.
Take the positive, we won. Somehow. Secured second but christ, we are low in quality, low in offensive threat and lightweight on the puck. More work needs to be done between now and the 1/4 Final as right now, I don't fancy us over two legs.
