At this point, something's got to give. Today the Stars dropped their 4th straight game and have now lost 7 of their last 9 games.
The Moose scored first just 2 minutes into the game, but the Stars matched wits with them and balanced the score 52 seconds later on Colton Sceviour's 5th of the season. Texas would score next as Travis Morin redirected a Landon Wilson's shot which we got after tapping the puck out of midair along the boards. This, however, would end the Stars scoring. Two minutes later, Salcido would score with assists from Desbiens and Waugh. Before the second period was over, Grabner put another one behind Matt Climie.
In the third period, the Stars would outshoot the Moose 15-4 with 3 power plays that the Stars could not capitalize on. Moose goaltender, Cory Schneider, certainly deserved the #1 star that he received for his play in this game. He stopped 34 of the 36 shots that he faced from the Stars, who outshot the Moose overall in the game 36-29. This is almost 10 shots above their per game average which ranks them second to last in shots per game. The Stars previously had a record of 5-2-0-0 when outshooting their opponents but now drop to 5-3-0-0.
So the Stars put a lot of pucks on net and played pretty well for most of the game. What now? Certainly a large part of the Moose victory was the play of goaltender, Schneider. Schneider has played some in the NHL this season, stoning the Dallas Stars on 45 of 47 shots on November 6th but still taking the loss 2-1. Coach Gulutzan said in the postgame that the Stars will look at the game film but he does not intend on changing much about their approach.
One positive note, Maxime Fortunus stopped two empty net attempts by the Moose in the waning seconds of the game. We should really get that guy a glove and blocker and see what he could do!
As Josh mentioned in the broadcast, congratulations go out to Perttu Lindgren of the Texas Stars who did not travel with the club today as his wife gave birth this morning to a baby boy.
This may sound like a really, really crazy thought being half way into the teams first season, and with the success that they had to start out with, but if this slide continues, how long can Gulutzan really keep his job, his system is all about forwards being responsible on defense, but when you have defensemen that are always looking to jump into the play, like Vishnevskiy, and to a lesser extent Fortunus (and pairing them up with each other doesn't help much either), and Hutchinson, then it doesn't matter how responsible your forwards are, you're still going to give up goals (especially with Climie starting), and you're not going to be able to score enough to stay in it. They need to get back to chipping the puck in deep, getting set up, and moving the puck to get an opening (I know there's plenty of people yelling "SHOOT" when we're on the power play and passing the puck, but they don't realize shooting doesn't do you any good when there's someone right in front of you to block it out of your zone), that's what they were doing when they were successful early in the season, and it seems that they've gotten away from that. That's been pretty plain to see for me, they started getting away from it quite some time ago, and if Gulutzan can't see it, then maybe he should go back to coaching in the ECHL for a while.
ReplyDeleteAnd that'll do it for my Dan Snyder style "do something for me right now or else you're gonna be fired before you finish a full season" comment
I think Gulutzan build up enough capital in the start of the season with the wins and although it's not a good excuse, Krahn's injury certainly can't be blamed on him. I think that with this being the first season, they won't fire him. He had a solid record in the ECHL with the Wranglers and I think for a team that is trying to find its identity in its first season, it wouldn't be wise to drop him.
ReplyDeleteI said it was gonna sound crazy, and I definitely agree that Krahn being injured is a huge part of our losing streak, the problem is that their forwards stick with a very defensive game even when they're down, and I know Climie is not the best, but he's still got a 2.42, but only 9 wins in 22 starts. The team has yet to come back to win a game when it's down in the third period, but the same can't be said about winning while leading in the third. I find it hard to believe that a team that had been leading it's division so comfortably (in addition to briefly being best in the league) could be struggling to find it's identity, they had an identity which was very successful when they were playing a dump and chase game, but they've been trying to enter the zone with one player trying to get past 3 opposing players and maintain possession, and then try to put a quality shot on goal, but it's not working. So if the team is struggling to find it's identity, it's simply because the coach has failed to bring them back to what worked for them. And as I said, I know it's very early to be saying something like we need to fire the coach, but if they keep this losing streak going, and end up being outside a playoff spot 3/4th's of the way through the season, then it seems to me that Gulutzan would have to go, we obviously have the personell to succeed, as they showed us early in the year.
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