A few thoughts after Ottawa's 5-3 victory over Winnipeg on Saturday afternoon.
(1) Good to see the offense return against Ondrej Pavelec and Winnipeg. Lot of good stuff on that end of the ice in the first two frames, when Ottawa was still playing aggressively through the neutral zone.
Mike Hoffman (1G/1A) and Jason Spezza (0G/3A) both had really good nights, but it's hard to not call Ales Hemsky Ottawa's best forward on the afternoon. Sure, Hemsky got a couple of favorable bounces. More times than not, that's how the whole goals and assist thing works in the National Hockey League. Four assists in limited ice, though -- that's impressive no matter how you slice it up.
The key is doing all of the little things to getting into those positions to score, and Hemsky sure does it better than most. I get the objections with his game (specifically, the desire to want him to shoot the puck a bit more), but what he brings to the table in terms of good v. bad is just overwhelmingly in the positive. A magician with the stick. And, if he can make Jason Spezza a bit better, this will work.
I think Hemsky's going to be massively underpriced come extension time, just like he was massively underpriced come trade deadline time. Funny how it works with guys who don't hit a lot and see their point-scoring take a bit of a hit on brutal hockey teams. Should work favorably for Ottawa when the summer rolls around.
I just wonder if Hemsky realizes he's probably going to get paid with the money that was allocated this year to his buddy, Milan Michalek.
(2) For as decent as the first two periods were (I emphasize decent -- the team was sound at evens, but the run of penalties from the Greening-Smith-Neil line and Cowen/Gryba pairing were just an abomination; Matt Kassian also took maybe the most brainless penalty of the season), the third period was sort of a nightmare. And I concede score effects, obviously. Ottawa didn't have much interest in doing anything but playing it safe and escaping with victory.
They took it to a bit of an extreme, though. Kind of seemed like any time they had the puck in the defensive zone, it was flip it up in the air. If it was in the neutral zone, it got dumped immediately down and the five-man headed off for a change. I kind of get why teams are so risk averse when protecting leads, but Ottawa was doing this for almost half of the period, if not more.
Winnipeg was just drilling Craig Anderson late, but he was game. Maybe a different game though if he doesn't sort of stand on his head to close things out. Or if Ottawa doesn't score five goals.
(3) The ice-time was still something of an issue. Paul MacLean decided to lean more heavily on the Turris line, which is always good. And he even deployed Bobby Ryan on the penalty kill with frequency, which is sort of weird -- perhaps a response to a complaint or two about not getting his bests on the ice more often?
But, man, the Zack Smith line just plays way too much these days. And I get that the team was sort of handcuffed to begin with thanks to having to dress Matt Kassian. The Smith line actually played much more than the Spezza line at evens. That means Chris Neil and Colin Greening played minutes (!) more than Ales Hemsky. Just let that marinate for a minute.
I still don't get it. And I think these things are worth pointing out even in victory.
Thanks for reading!