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Last night, for the first two minutes of the third period, I was yelling "dump the puck down the ice" at my TV. For two minutes straight, without interruption, I was yelling at a TV. You know that when you're doing that, you might as well watch something else, and so when the puck finally ended up in our net, I turned the game off.
I am sick and tired of watching players stand behind their own net, looking around for someone to pass the puck to- what f***ing team in the history of the NHL that you have EVER seen does that? Which one? Here's the short list: none. You know why? Because the other team forechecks, steals the puck, and it ends up in YOUR F***ING NET, that's why. Dump the puck down the ice- until we get a coach who teaches them to dump the puck down the ice, our team will suck.
You MUST play some version of the left wing lock in the NHL, unless you LIKE losing every night. You'd think after countless practices, meetings and video sessions, that they'd figure out that MAYBE it's WHAT THEY'RE TRYING TO DO that is the f***ing problem here. As I said, I don't know sh*t about the technical specifics of the game, but I know enough from watching it for 40 years to know that what THEY are doing is WRONG, whatever the f**k it is. The fact that the coach is not being fired leads me to believe that there's some sort of organizational philosophy hell bent on reinventing the wheel, with the thinking that "if we just build an all-star team, we'll be able to do this," not realizing that it's never going to happen.
Yes, sometimes, when they play a bigger team, they're going to get manhandled in front of their own net. Yes, if the secondary scoring goes to sh*t, they're going to have trouble winning games. However, all of those apparent disadvantages pale in comparison to causing your own trouble with a faulty game plan. There IS something that CAN be fixed here, without changing personnel at all- in fact, you don't even really NEED to change the coach. There simply needs to be a commitment to playing defense that comes from the top of the organization down to the bottom of Bridgeport. That WOULD solve at least 90% of the problem, as I've said.
All they really need to do to accomplish this is to watch the videotape of the first two minutes of period three last night, freeze frame every instance where an Islander player looks around for someone to pass to when he has the puck is in his own zone, and tell them that from now on, instead of doing that, they are simply to DUMP THE PUCK DOWN THE F***ING ICE- no need to look up, at all; one way or another, straight around the dasher, and OUT. It's not rocket science, unless you make it rocket science, which is most of the problem here. The organizational philosophy of making everything into rocket science instead of going with conventional wisdom has not worked for the 13 years Wang has owned this team, and it's NEVER GOING TO WORK. Might as well try something that someone else is doing....you know, like some organization that WINS hockey games. Like that. |
