Leafs Bruins Post-Game
My Leafs just suffered an embarassing lackluster defeat to the woeful-but-surging Bruins, who have won three straight for the first time this year. Here are a few of my notes from the game:
- Hal Gill is really, really good with his stick. Smart, too. He understands that quickness is not his strength, and he plays within his limitations. He’s rarely if ever caught pinching, and he’s quietly effective at using his size and reach to thwart opposing forecheckers. Even when he loses the footrace, he frequently reaches around and catches up to faster players before they realize what he’s done with his stick.
- Nikolai Antropov doesn’t lose one-on-one battles for the puck. Say what you want about Antropov, but he’s oh-so-tough to knock off of the puck in the offensive zone. He and Alexei Ponikarovsky share one other characteristic that I just love: they don’t give up. They keep fighting. Love it!
- Zdeno Chara is intimidating. You notice this much more than his size, which is very noticable. Few players bother hitting him, even if they’re not scared, per se. They realize that even if they throw a good hit, they’re just going to bounce off of him. That frees up the big man to take his time in his own end, which is a bad thing if you’re trying to get a solid forecheck going.
- Boston is not a good team. They won this game, and they lead most of the way, but they were only just barely better than a very bad Leafs team tonight. The Bruins sat back and watched the clock with a one goal lead against a team that wasn’t playing well. It worked tonight, but it generally doesn’t. Tim Thomas made some good saves but he really wasn’t tested. Should have been a lopsided Toronto win.
- Bryan McCabe is looking better as the season rolls along. I still don’t think he deserved the $5.75 million per year, and certainly not the no movement clause, but in his last 6 or 7 games, Bryan has shown flashes of just why JFJ gave him that deal. He’s been more physical, smarter, better in both ends of the rink, and isn’t trying to do too much. The insertion of Pavel Kubina and the refreshingly good play of Ian White, Brendan Bell and Gill take enormous amounts of pressure off of McCabe (Tomas Kaberle, too) and it shows. If he continues to improve - IF - in a few months we may be wondering how JFJ managed to sign him to such a cheap contract for so long. But I wouldn’t order the champagne just yet.
- Two games in two nights is bad, but a week off can be worse. The Bruins were obviously tired; the Leafs were rustier than… well I won’t go there. I dread hearing excuses for any loss, but the layoff certainly didn’t help the Blue’n'White tonight.
- The Leafs will live and die this year based on their forecheck. They’re good on face-offs, but they’re not a great finesse team and they don’t cause many turnovers leading to odd-man rushes. Almost every single one of their good scoring chances tonight came either from cycling down low, or from faceoffs or penalties caused by their great cycling. The good news is that they’re pretty darned good at it. The better news is that Maurice seems to be (usually) pretty good at getting the team to work hard, because the bad news is that they won’t win many games without outworking their opponents.