TSN had an outstanding article about Andrew
Cogliano as he prepares for the World Junior Championships. No shocker, he
made the final roster. In the article, Cogs talked about how winning the gold
last year actually hurt his play at Michigan:
''When I came back after world juniors, I think I slowed down a bit. My
points really tailed off,'' he recalled. ''(Winning gold) was such a high, such
a major thing in my life.
''It was tough for me to get up for games at
Michigan, but really now I'm focusing on doing well here and going back and
playing as hard as possible.''
Yeah. Let's not repeat last year's second half, kay?
Mgoblog has links up to a few good articles as well. Bob Miller had good things to say about two of our commits, and I got a similar review from a friend who attended the tournament out at Compuware:
"A.J. treais was sick, so fast, great hands. Kenny Ryan is good, looked kind of like a man amongst boys, skates and gets to the open spot a lot. [He] seems like a thinker/anticipator out there, trying to get where the puck will end up. [Jon Merrill] is a solid dman. "
As for other hockey stuff:
Seriously, what has gotten into Dan Cleary? He's one goal behind Zetterberg for the team lead. I love that he's getting rewarded for his hard work with a career season. He won me over with his play at the end of the Calgary game that I went to, where we were killing a penalty and had an empty net to shoot at. He missed the net, but then booked down the ice to beat the defenseman to the puck, and drew a hooking penalty on Calgary that pretty much ended the game. I love players that give 100% effort every shift--it's why the two Red Wing jerseys I own are Doug Brown and Tomas Holmstrom.
It's nice to see that someone finally told Datsyuk that it wasn't the playoffs and he was allowed to score goals once in awhile. I will give it to him that he has been pretty good in his own end throughout this slump. He looks great playing with Zetterberg. But his still not someone that I'd be willing to give $6 million to. I still hold firm to my belief that he should've been traded this past offseason, and I think it will be a colossal mistake if they break the bank to keep him. You do that for a player that makes his teammates better, not someone that has to have a top-flight wing on his line to be remotely effective.
Looking back at the moves that I wanted this past offseason, I was wrong about Gerber. He hasn't been good in Ottawa. But I was dead-on that it would've been a huge error to sign Ed Belfour over Hasek. We are really lucky that Belfour wanted too much guaranteed money. We would be in a real hurt right now if he was in net for us every night. Hasek hasn't been spectacular, but I can live with having the goalie with the top GAA in the league. The defense has helped him a ton by limiting shots, but Hasek has been good when he's needed to be overall. I'll stick with what I said at the start of the season: Give me a healthy Hasek in April and I like our chances. They need another scorer though, especially since you can't go into the playoffs counting on Datsyuk. Holland better be ready to pull another deadline deal or two off.
1 comment:
Cleary is pwning in my fantasy pool. I picked him up as a FA at the start of his hot streak, and well, the rest is history. Who knew? (And he's a helluva player in real life too, as you note.)
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