Saturday, February 7, 2015

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly! - Feb 7th. 2015



Now it's time for the post that called in sick with the flu.  It's your officially unofficial, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!  Sharks lost to the hurricanes because LOL Sharks, and your pal Ian is going to tell you how he saw it.

The Good: The kids had a good game and the bottom 6 in its current configuration continues to impress.  Hertl got 2 goals, and an assist. Tierny frankly made things happen with some good old fashioned hustle. Without the 3rd line the Sharks never get into this game at all.  I thought Mirco Mueller had another good game, he is so good with his stick and makes a lot of really nice little plays.  Does he need work?  Yes but he's got the foundation to be a quality D man, he just needs to use his body better.  The Sharks to deserve some credit for their 3rd period heroics but honestly I'm not going to hurt my hand patting them on the back.  I thought Irwin actually had another good game. Penalty Kill minus Vlasic only allowed 1 goal on 3 attempts... I'll take it.

The Bad: Well we lost so there is that.  Antti Niemi had a game to forget, the first goal was soft and while you cannot lay this down at his feet because he was the only Shark other than a few players to actually play the first period he just needs to be better.  I felt like the Hurricanes pushed the play for a great deal of the game causing the Sharks to chase them around and yet somehow got murdered in the hit count.  We knew missing Vlasic was going to be problematic with this group but the fact that Scott Hannan was trusted to eat up 22:24 seconds is scary.  Now in fairness Hannan had a good game, and frankly I've said may times that my beef is not so much with Hannan as it is how the Sharks use him.  Tonight was a good example of that although maybe no one else can play those kind of minutes yet making the veteran the right choice.... devil's advocate.  Also with the loss of Vlasic our transition game was bad because the forwards had to do too much of the heavy lifting trying to get out of the zone. 

The Ugly:  This was a dog shit effort for two periods, and at this point I have given up on the idea that they are going to put these kind of habits behind them.  I understand everyone, even the best teams in the league are going to look uninspired at times but no one seems to do it as frequently as the Sharks do.  It took a lot of game time before I feel like I heard Randy mention a lot of our Veteran players names and I noticed Joe Thornton a couple of times tonight at all.  I don't think I have ever put Joe Thornton in the Ugly ever but he was kinda shitty tonight.  I thought Couture's game got better as the game went on but he was a slow starter, didn't think Marleau or Pavelski were particularly good either.  I don't know I thought leaders were supposed to lead by example tonight the kids set the example and that isn't the recipie for long term success with or without Vlasic.  Brendon Dillon also had a game to forget.

Final Thoughts: What is really left to say that I have not wrote 100 times before this year.  The Sharks have to be better, the sharks have to play 60 minute games, the sharks have to stop losing to teams that could draft Connor McDavid.  I want to tell you the Sharks are better than this but well over the half way point of the season is it time we stop staying that since the evidence certainly does not support it at all?

Remember if you have a question you would like me to answer in the Breaking It Down blog please e-mail me at ian.blogs.sharks@gmail.com I will not post your name as the question asker if you don't want me too.  To read the answer to the last reader question check out this post: http://ianblogssharks.blogspot.ca/2015/02/this-special-hot-take-alert-is-to.html


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