Bobcat’s Post Game Notes, Game 24

Jackets lose, 4-1 against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

-Lots of returns and debuts tonight: The King of Rock and Roll makes his return. Let’s hope he comes back better than he was in the beginning.

-Secondly, Tim Berni makes his NHL debut. I guess Jake Christiansen is sick or something.

-FINALLY. AFTER FOUR YEARS OF WAITING, KIRILL MARCHENKO HAS MADE HIS NHL DEBUT. I’ve been very high on this kid for a good bit, and I wanna see him succeed. Give ‘em hell, Marchy.

-ONE MINUTE, ONE SHOT, ONE GOAL. Johnny Gaudreau finally scores a goal on the road. That’s a good start.

-Brock McGinn cross-checks Gus Nyquist. In the words of referee Mike Leggo, “you can’t do that.” Off to the BAWX you go.

-We got our opportunities, but the Pens kill it off due to Tristan Jarry doing Tristan Jarry things combined with a good defensive effort.

-I feel very stupid for being as low as I was on Tim Berni before he got called up. I’ve been very impressed by his defensive play so far.

-Jake Guentzel catches Eric Robinson up high. He’s off to hockey jail too. Let’s go, boys.

-Second verse, same as the first: We had our shots, but the Pens expertly killed it off. This is definitely not good for our already dismal power-play numbers…

-We had a great first period, but I’m not convinced we can hold this. Remember last time? We had a 3-1 lead and blew it. BAD.

-Well, here we go. 1:15 into the second, Elvis gets screwed into giving up a goal because there were tons of Pens running into him. That’s blatant GI, but Lars decides not to challenge. I don’t respect the f*ckin’ referees.

-YEP, HERE WE F*CKING GO. Sidney Crosby capitalizes on a juicy rebound and Andrew Peeke raising his stick for no reason to make Elvis look like a sh*tter.

-J*ff C*rter gets sent off for slashing. GOOD.

-Marcus Bjork gets sent off for holding, and then Jake Guentzel takes advantage of Sidney Crosby running into Elvis in the crease to put the Pens up 3-1. We challenged it, but the referees side with the Devil. I could tell from how the ref announced the failed challenge that they knew that he made the wrong decision.

-Tim Berni hooks Teodors Blugers on a breakaway, which leads to a penalty shot that fellow Latvian Elvis denies. He tried his best.

-Tim gets sent to the box for real this time, as he does… something to Rickard Rakell. Let’s kill this off.

-We do kill it off, and even get a power play of our own (Josh Archibald tripped Captain Boone), but that gets killed off too.

-The third became a snoozefest until Elvis got caught trying to go to the bench. 4-1 Pens. At least it was Teodors Blugers that got credited with the goal? His first of the year…

-Chad Ruhwedel shoves Gus into Jarry, and then Gus gets sent off for GI? What the f*ck? Jeff was confused, but I bet Bob was PISSED about that one. I guess Goalie Interference only counts if it’s benefitting the Pens and not against them…

-We started out pretty okay, but then we got screwed by a few missed goalie interference calls and fell into quicksand like we usually do. Our losing streak against the Pens continues…

Defensive pairs

But I'm told by Caps fans that Carlson isn't the problem, its Fehervary... and Gustafsson... and Orlov...

Also was not expecting Ferraro-Cicek to be one of the best xGA/60 pairings of the year so far

Full confession here. I hated the Murray trade when it happened. I absolutely hated it. Right now it’s looking like an absolute genius move and I couldn’t have been more wrong. Murray is 2nd in the league in sv% with a .932. I could not have been more wrong but I’m very happy I was wrong.

We see Guddy and Bean, but now i want to know what the other Blue Jackets pairing is in that quadrant of the chart in that big cluster.

He's played 9 of 27 games. He's looking like a really good backup right now. I'm still not convinced of the trade, but it looks like it might pay off

Thank god everyone is focusing on how Toronto got paid to take on Matt Murray, so that no one remembers Brian MacLellan refused to pay Ilya Samsonov and let him walk without a QO only for him to be currently putting up a .924 sv%.

Murray going off is great because it's not only helping the team win but making a lot of people on here look like idiots.

I was also really skeptical about getting him but he's been fantastic; nice to be proven wrong every once in a while.

The Samuelsson - Dahlin pair is only 30 games in playing together if even that! Can't wait to see what the future holds for them! Definitely see them being able to be in the category with Teows - makar, lingren - fox, sieg - hamilton, and other top D pairings! Right now they are the highest scoring per 60 d pair with 5.39 GF/60 almost 1 goal per 60 more than the next best Siegenthaler - Hamilton. They let in 2.9 while the devils pair only 1.8...Dahlin and Samuelsson take the tougher matchups though for whatever its worth.

I have no idea how 2 of the Canucks d pairs are in the low event receipt 😂

Which Habs pair is high reward?

Ik this is all expected rates but when you get to real GF/60 vs GA/60 over 100 minutes played Josi - McDonough have never let one in against them.

@juiceman why do people keep asking for Cozens when trying to trade Demko to the sabres lmao.

No clue. I’d be asking for Ostlund so we can reunite him with Lekkerimakki

I’m not taking anything away from Murray or Samsonov, both have been amazing. But not enough credit is going to Sanford IMO. He did an excellent job with Demko, Leafs needed a new voice, Steve Briere was not it for us.

I hated the Simon Holmstrom pick in 2019 ( and still think the isles should have taken Tomasino or Kalivev) but Holmstrom had a great season in the AHL last year and is off to a solid start in the NHL, outplaying most Isles forwards.

They cannot send him down once palmieri and clutterbuck is healthy. Holmstrom reminds me of a Lehkonen type of player, 35-40 point player with an elite two way impact.

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he is also converting it looks like at a higher than expected, GF% is 74%

he's great at maintaining possession which leads to more goals even if he doesn't get a point. He also makes little plays that lead to odd man rushes.

I was always high on Samsonov from the start. When I saw that the leafs got Samsonov I was fairly happy about our goaltending as I thought Samsonov was going to take over the starting job. Both of them have been excellant and the moves by Ottawa and Washington in regards to those 2 are looking pretty stupid.

The argument that he's been utilized as a backup is not a good one (I think that's what you are trying to say). First he was injured and then he came back and Samsonov was injured, so both of them have had starter workloads when they are healthy. I know it is still early, but he looks fantastic so far.



Yup. I'm happy to look like an idiot if it means Toronto does well in the process.

I agree, but playing 33% of your team games and being paid what he's being paid isn't that great in the grand scheme of things. If he can do that while playing a majority of the games, that's a different story.

If he was doing this while healthy the whole time I would agree, but he was injured for a month. Having less games due to injury is vastly different than having less games due to a light workload.

Gonna take this as a no...lol

I liked the move. Jack Campbell was really overhyped becasue the leafs had a great team in front of him. He really only had one good month and it made him look better as a whole.

Thank goodness that the Caps are fielding a team with an AHL defense against the one team in the league that fields an AHL offense