(Sunrise ) Is it possible to win games with just one line in this league? Probably not.
It turns out that in almost every match, the Canadian answers this question without really wanting to, with nothing in attack, or very little, and what can we do, in absolute terms, with nothing? Nothing, probably.
That somewhat explains Saturday night’s result in Florida, a loveless 4-1 loss to a Panthers who didn’t have to do much except maybe play a little better, but not really.
If there were still hopes of a place in the playoffs, the last two games demonstrated that the Canadian is not quite dreaming of a prolonged spring, especially not the one that is coming .
“They forced us to stay in our zone for quite a long time,” noted captain Nick Suzuki. We had trouble getting the puck out of our territory. When we finally got it out, we were too tired to forecheck, so we had to go back to the bench to make changes. It ended up working to their advantage. »
Juraj Slafkovsky needs to pitch more often, Joel Armia needs to do something, anything, and they’re not the only ones. Christian Dvorak, no shots in almost 16 minutes of play Saturday night, has just two points in his last 10 games. Brendan Gallagher has no goals since November 11, a 21-game drought.
And so on.
“We shoot ourselves in the foot with bad punishments,” admitted Cole Caufield. We were in the game for two periods, and we needed a few favorable puck jumps…”
Martin St-Louis was cautiously optimistic.
Later, the coach will add “we were there”, which is not wrong, but which also reminds us that the Canadian does not have many volunteers when the time comes to have to score a big goal.
Obviously, there’s no point looking back on past misfortunes, but this already poorly equipped team on offense wasn’t going to survive injuries to important players like Kirby Dach or Alex Newhook, and right now, the lack of ammunition in attack is more and more evident.
At the same time, as of writing this, the Canadian ranks 13th in the Eastern Conference standings. Should we be surprised? The answer is no.
