by Eismann on Sat Sep 20, 2008 9:49 pm
Saw up to midway through the third. Random observations:
1) Hot crowd. Didn't hear the attendance, prolly 12-14k. EDIT: officially listed at 16,287.
2) Pretty rusty through most of the first two. Some good moves here and there by the top guys, but also a load of missed passes. That was the biggest thing that stuck out for me, and it was most prevalent among the young guys. Gogo, Lovejoy, Godard, etc. had lots of trouble floating pucks out of reach. It settled somewhat as the game went on.
3) Staal looked quite comfortable on the left, good hop, nice awareness around the boards of dmen and Geno.
4) I continue to loathe the PP with Sid and Geno together. Geno played the left point again, with Sid, Miro, Staal in front and some rotating dmen on the right point. Same story. Loads of perimeter passing, not much cutting or box shifting. Meh, whatev. I complained about that so much last year that they made the SC finals. Forget it, Eis, and move on.
5) The building collectively thought "here we go again" when Eaton took a shot in the leg in the 2nd. Not this early, man, please.
6) The ice was in rare late-season, mid-80's temp terrible.
7) Early nic for Miro is Analog TV, because he can't convert. Yeah, first game, but I counted about 5 chances that Sid spoon-fed him and should have at least made some noise. Otherwise, he looked fine, especially on the rush. Yes, he will float around center board, but he picks his times pretty well and is waiting for the outlet.
8) Speaking of which, decent start to the transition game. Good lateral in-zone pass to create space and forward momentum. The pass rustiness notwithstanding, you can see that they're more inclined to begin the rush as units, not always springing someone.
9) MAF will be pretty po'ed tonight about the goals, but in general his form was mostly fine.
10) Please end the Stone experiment. He looks exactly the same now as he did when first stepped on the arena ice; like a newborn calf.
11) Not a great first showing for Godard. If we're looking at comparisons with BGL, I'd give it an incomplete, because I didn't see much in the way of skating. This one will have to develop.
12) Peso looked okay. You can see he has pretty well-developed sense about positioning and reading the flow of play, but the newness of his linemates is likely weighing him down. I still say he has the most skill out of all the non-established new guys.
13) Sid's slash was tremendous.
14) My 4 year-old daughter went with me and had a complete blast. She loves the "tough guys who fight," was into the whole game, yelled "Let's Go Pens" a bazillion times, and ate popcorn with her jabrone dad.
15) Game on.
Last edited by
Eismann on Sat Sep 20, 2008 11:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.