Bolts
Pat Casey
Posts: 319
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Post by Bolts on Sept 7, 2014 19:22:22 GMT
What do we learn from getting beat every match? It's not like our attacking players are getting much practice in and the d will be knackered by the time the league starts? K-wall will have a bad back from having to pick the puck out of his net!!! Give over! It's a fair point....getting spanked every game doesn't help confidence regardless of what anyone says. I'm not saying we shouldn't of accepted the invite, just saying it's not good heading into the domestic season
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Ian
Matt Myers
Posts: 1,702
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Post by Ian on Sept 7, 2014 19:43:05 GMT
Thoughts on this afternoon's game...
Lulea are a hell of a team. Their transition play, skating, passing and puck retention are phenomenal, and their rolling 4 lines meant a constant barrage of top quality attacking play coming at our players on every shift. No surprise that we lost twice, and heavily too, against a team like that. No shame in it either.
Positives - I thought we battled hard for the full 60 minutes. There was no lack of effort out there, even when we were way behind. Also K-Wall's performance, which sounds silly when we let 9 in, but he was our standout performer and kept the goals against down with some excellent saves.
Negatives - Lack of offensive threat. This has been a concern in all the CHL games. Even against superior sides, I would expect us to be able to create more going forward than we have and that is a worry for the domestic campaign. Secondly, and even more worrying, the constant stream of unforced errors in our own zone and poor turnovers. Passing the puck to opponents in front of your own net is never a good idea, nor is trying to clear the puck up the centre of the ice. These are concepts that should have been drilled into these players since they were 7 or 8 years old, and are not the kind of mistakes professionals should be making on a regular basis. Lulea punished practically every mistake we made, but even EIHL rivals will punish enough of them to hurt us if we keep on making them.
Still reserving judgement on how beneficial our CHL participation will prove to be overall. On the positive side, fitness should be good having played a series of competitive games right at the start of the season, but not sure how much chasing Lukko and Lulea players around Scandinavian ice will have helped in our preparation for the domestic competitions in terms of lines, systems etc. Essentially, it's very hard to judge where our players are in terms of ability or sharpness when the opponents are so superior. All will be revealed starting next Saturday I guess.
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Post by pantherdman on Sept 7, 2014 20:08:27 GMT
Happy with that, improving all the time. We must play in the chl as often as possible. If we play like we're playing lulea and lukko every week we'll win the league. Chl is three times faster than the elite league. I'd take testing ourselves against euros best and getting some tonkings over mid season elite league dross, no question. This is the only future.
No reason we can't keep the best of our current squad for the season. Not sure why confidence would be low? We won a friendly tournament between chl games didn't we. I think confidence will be through the roof when we come out 100mph vs 2mph devils on big ice
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