Time For Change

Two more games in the book; first a 5-3 loss to the Montreal Canadians then a surprising 3-2 shootout win over the Red Wings. I actually caught most of the Canadians game, which was a frustrating tilt. It started off great, they played with pressure and scored three times on a team with an excellent goalie tandem of Carey Price and Jaroslav Halak. So what was our downfall? Defense and goal tending, but I'm sure you could have guessed that. It's been our problem all season, and Crawford is finally addressing it. Well, the goalie situation at least. The next game against the Red Wings featured Alex Auld in net. He gave up two goals in roughly the first ten minutes but then locked it down after that. The Stars fought back to send it into the shoot-out, and it took six rounds to decide the victor. Steve Ott backhanded it on a sliding Jimmy Howard who slowed the puck, but pushed it out while on the goal-line. Originally ruled no-goal, the video review overturned the call and after making his sixth save, Auld and the Stars walked away with two points. I've taken away two things from this game. 1) Crawford is giving Auld the chance to be the starter now. It should be interesting to see what he does with this opportunity. He's been excellent in some games, and miserable in others. The team can score, so really we just need some decency. Turco has given up too many soft goals which not only hurt on the scoreboard, but can really demoralize a team. If Auld doesn't work out, I like John's idea to call up Climie for a trial. He's putting up good numbers, so why not? Dallas has had proven success in their goal tending system, let's see what we've got. 2) Lehtinen and Morrow both left the game due to upper body injuries. Morrow's isn't sounding too bad, but for some reason I have a bad feeling about Lehtinen. I'd love to be wrong, but loosing Ribiero for over a month is bad enough, we can't afford any other serious injury.

Minnesota comes to town tomorrow; big game on the national platform of VS. I'll be going, so I hope for a good contest. I figure everyone's watching the Cowboys-Vikings game, but boy was that Chicago-Detroit shoot-out good. Chicago won, but Detroit had some fancy fancy goals. I'll look for highlights tomorrow to put up on the next post. Dallas (Stars) should take this game. I'm not used to them being a better home team than road team. Good for the fans I suppose.