When a team loses six straight,
no matter how much they talk about how well they have played and the luck has
not come, the coach is going to make some changes in hopes of changing the
results. The headline of those changes
will be that everyone’s favorite scapegoat for last night’s loss, Michael Del
Zotto, is being scratched from the lineup and Steve Eminger will be back in. There is no doubt that Del Zotto blew it on
the turnover/penalty that led to the power play, but that is not what cost the
Rangers the game. If the team does what
it has done so often in killing off the chance, instead of allowing Evander
Kane multiple uncontested chances, then the scapegoating of Del Zotto would be
less today. In fact, if we want to
discuss which defensive player had the worse night, then Matt Gilroy would get
the nod for me last night.
According to Andrew Gross,
Michael Del Zotto will remain with the team even though he is going to be
scratched for tomorrow’s game. I worry
about the way this scenario is being handled by the coaching staff and the
development of this particular young player.
If you have a player with a confidence problem and you continued to send
him out there when he was not ready, benching him after last night’s play only
reinforces the negative thoughts and the belief that he might have been a main
cause for the loss. Even worse than
that, benching him as opposed to sending him down to play is not helping his
development. The best place for Del
Zotto is to get consistent time in the AHL and work through all of these things
without fear of the mistakes costing him a spot in the lineup. It is a knee-jerk reaction like this to bench
him over that play that causes him to play absolutely terrified hockey when he
is out there.
I am happy to see Eminger back
in the lineup because I did not truly buy the reasons for him being benched and
hopefully he plays well enough to maintain his spot. What brining Eminger back in the lineup does
other than adding some more physical play is it allows Matt Gilroy more freedom
to roam on the ice. Gilroy has played
very tentative hockey while paired with Del Zotto and hopefully now he will get
back to doing what was making him so successful a few weeks ago.
Beyond Del Zotto, after staying
with the same lines for the last three games, today coach John Tortorella blew
all of the lines apart and came up with some interesting combinations when he
put humpty dumpty back together again.
Also per Andrew
Gross, the new lines at practice were:
Brandon Dubinsky-Vinny Prospal-Marian Gaborik
Wojtek Wolski-Brian Boyle-Ryan Callahan
Sean Avery-Artem Anisimov-Derek Stepan
Mats Zuccarello-Erik Christensen-Brandon Prust
Brandon Dubinsky-Vinny Prospal-Marian Gaborik
Wojtek Wolski-Brian Boyle-Ryan Callahan
Sean Avery-Artem Anisimov-Derek Stepan
Mats Zuccarello-Erik Christensen-Brandon Prust
These lines really confuse me in
different ways, so let’s go line by line.
- I have no issue with the first line combination, but Prospal is clearly laboring at times to skate right now and mainly out of a refusal to move Dubinsky back to center, Vinny is asked to skate more playing the middle and I do not understand that.
- Boyle over the last four or five games seems like he is completely out of gas from playing more minutes and against a higher level competition than he ever has in the NHL, but now he is being put with Callahan and Wolski and presumably being asked to add minutes to the tires. Also, I am not a huge fan of separating Boyle and Prust, even if they have not produced much of late.
- I like the idea of moving Stepan to the wing, but the left side would be a more natural spot for him and leaving him with at least one of Wolski and Zuccarello would be better for chemistry purposes. There is no way anyone on this line wins a faceoff either.
- To put Zuccarello with Christensen and Prust on what is presumably the fourth line seems like a waste of his skill set and means he is unlikely to get anything resembling significant minutes.
I would rather see a lineup
looking something like this:
Avery-Prospal-Gaborik
Stepan-Dubinsky-Zuccarello
Wolski-Anisimov-Callahan
Christensen-Boyle-Prust
Video
of John Tortorella courtesy of Jesse
Spector’s Blueshirts Blog:
