Is there anything truly called a good loss?

[yave1964]

Opening night! Man I love hockey and I am thrilled it is back. Watched the game last night, watched most of it again this morning. Love opening night.

 

  Final score 3-2 Jackets in overtime on a game winner by Panarin. A few quick thoughts.

 

 Man it was so damn nice to see skill on the ice from our defense after all these years of watching guys with bloated contracts lugging the puck or making bad decisions. Cholowski looked like a five year vet the way he came flying in and scored the teams first goal on a beautiful pass from Larkin was unheard of in years past. Hronek played with a certified edge and his passes weren't just flip it up the boards and hope our guy gets there first, they were stick to stick and accurate. Sulak was solid defensively and loves to hit, Hicketts was our primary penalty killer on the back end along with Dekeyser. As for our veteran defense, it was nice to see Dekeyser and Daley with the four rookies, they were both solid.

 Larkin looked ready to take charge as the team leaderand Howard was fantastic in net. 

  But lets face facts folks, the Jackets are a playoff team opening against a non contender and came out firing on all cylinders out shooting the Wings 39-20, winning all key faceoffs. Other than a push halfway through the second for about ten minutes the Jackets controlled the puck and the game most of the night. We outshot them 8-2 over an eight minute stretch and scored our two goals during that time, other than that they outshot us 37-12. 

  We had no answer for the rugged hard hitting line of Anderson/Dubinsky/Jenner and Anderson who showed signs of being a force last year as a rookie was commanding, throwing his big body around and looks to be prepared to establish himself as a top six rugged winger this year. Their top line of Atkinson/Dubois/Panarin absolutely owned us and had the defense backing up all night. The two best players on the ice all night, who we had zero answer for were Panarin and Anderson. Both were brilliant. And Werenski set up at the top of the blueline and waited for passes back to him from his mates pretty much uncontested all night. The fact that this was even a game says lots for the play of Howard.

  The silver linings:

 The kid defense may have been a bit in awe over playing against real NHL players in a regular season game but that will work itself out. And in spite of being outshot 2-1 the Jackets took a ton of long range low percentage shots because the kids did a tremendous job of boxing them out.They will get better and in my mind they were very good.

 

 The dark cloud

 Again Blashill under utilized the younger forwards, Ehn only played 9 minutes, he was caught flat footed on the Jackets first goal as he stood there guarding his area with passes all around him not taking a man and Dubois from behind the net found Atkinson out front who buried a perfect shot. Ehn should have moved over instead of literally standing still and bumped Atkinson who is a little guy and doesn't like to play in crowds but he didn't and that was that. I truly put that goal on him. After that though he settled in and the 4th line actually moved the puck up ice a few times and had a few chances.

 Bertuzzi scored a PPG to tie the game at 2-2 but his total ice time was 11 minutes which is lower than it should have been. Rasmussen barely cracked 12. Now part of that was the ridiculous amount of penalties we had, neither kid penalties and their line was forced to watch for ten minutes of power play time throughout the game as Helm/Glendening were on the ice for six minutes of P/K time each but still, they managed only 14 shifts each while most of the forwards had 22-25.  The other forgotten man was Mantha who started on a line with Larkin/Nyquist who were both brilliant but while they managed 25 shifts each Mantha had 14 minutes of ice time and 19 shifts. This looked like more of the same from Blashill as for several years he has bounced Mantha around screwing with his ice time. Mantha has shown he needs 18 minutes on ice a night to get the most out of him.

 

  So thrilled with the kid pack on defense, thrilled with Jensen being a healthy scratch, thrilled with the play of Larkin and Nyquist but we have to start carrying the puck and applying pressure to the other team. We stole a point last night.

[Hockey-78]

@yave1964 I think there is especially in the early part of season.

 

Team gives its all, the coach can compliment the players. A couple of mistakes that you can pin point, make it as a starting point of a learning curve. A narrow loss grows appetite more than a genuine massacre 6-0. True pros get even more motivated of their profession after a "good" loss.