3 goals in 4 NHL games for Zykov now. I'm not even excited that Zykov scored 2 tonight, I'm more stewing over the fact that the idiots who run this team left him in Charlotte until we were out of the playoff picture when this team begged for goals all season. And then I read about the Waddell conversation in the other thread and suddenly felt sick to my stomach about how even more screwed up this team might still be even with a new GM in place. Hopefully Waddell is completely uninformed.
Congrats Zykov, please don't bolt for the KHL comrade!
I thought our play was pretty crappy for much of this game tonight, but it's nice to walk out of the PNC with a win (I think we've dropped the last 7 out of 8 there). I don't know why the refs didn't stop play when they couldn't see the puck and Cam backed into the net. No one else could see it either for a few critical seconds. Weird.
Ya, why was that not a held puck whistle? Let's say it's not, and let's say Cam doesn't back up into the net. What's the next move? The Coyotes are allowed to hack at Cam's skate to knock the puck out of them? Or he has to realize it's in there and say Hey Mr. Ref, please blow the whistle! How is the play supposed to stop if Cam doesn't back up into the goal?
Look. This stuff is not brain surgery. Putting a purely offensive player like Zykov on the line with your two most productive offensive forwards not only freed that line up to attack, it freed up your best defensive center (Staal) to play a more natural role with two more grinding forwards on his line. The other two lines were still sort of a patchwork quilt, but hey ... this roster ain't perfect. Either way ... when you let players slot into roles they're comfortable with, it's funny how every just settles in and does their job.
The fact that Peters waits until the season is over to even experiment with Aho centering a purely offensive first line ... I'm not even going to get started. Peters is an bull headed idiot. He's proven that a million times over.