Game 1 Recap: Red Wings 3, Avalanche 0

The Avalanche owned the faceoff circle, winning 67% of the draws. McClement (78%), Duchene (71%) and O’Reilly (67%) all had big nights

I never. EVER would have guessed this. Didnt seem that way at all

I only got to watch the last half of the game (I chose the wrong half) so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I thought both Hejda and Johnson looked questionable.

So very disappointed tonight. Things that stuck out tonight:

There was no electricity on the offense, everyone seemed very tentative all game long, more concerned with getting the puck deep and getting their shift changes than they did with actually creating offense. There was no creativity, no risk taking in the offensive zone.

Everyone seemed tentative tonight, no one seemed to want to hold the puck on their stick, or be the guy to create that chance. I’m not sure if its because we dont have a captain, or if its the reason we dont have a captain.

This team was NOT fast tonight, everyone looked like they were skating in mud.

Jan Hejda doesn’t make many mistakes, does a good good job separating players from the puck. He could use a little work when outnumbered though, his 2 on 1’s 3 on 2’s etc were suspect.

The defense looked strong, I was impressed by OBrien and Wilson, it seems like the whole group is more purposeful, like they understand their system much better. Same on the penalty kill.

Varalmov is a good goalie, plain and simple. BUT STAY IN YOUR FUCKING NET MAN. Nearly 3 unnecessary heart attacks tonight.

Overall, not a good game. But I think there were some positives, and I think many of the negatives can be chalked up to nerves, I really hope thats the problem. I suppose we’ll see on monday. ya know, those of us without jobs and stuff, the rest of us have to wait a week since columbus isnt televised. I may not see an Avalanche goal for another week? Sweet

Would have preferred to see newcomers like Lidstrom & Elliot, rather then veterans like Kobasew and O’Brien. Sacco employing the ‘method’ & ‘traditional due paying’ instead of what I’d do.

First Forsberg then the moment of silence. I have to say, the Avalanche organization did an outstanding job. Every highlight goal Forsberg scored in the video, the crowd cheered like he just scored that goal. It was a very moving and special night that I will remember forever.

But I really liked the third line.

As per the pre-season, too many shots MISSED THE NET.
Also, our guys were outshot (eg ON NET) 34-14, after a strong 9-2 start.
My guess is we’ll see Lindstrom next game.
Varly was our best player.

lots of positives to build off of tonight, even thought the overall result sucked. D looks pretty good, loved O’brien’s work down low and the entire D corps infront of the net brought a man tear to my eye. With the exception of the third line, forward chemistry seems to be a work in progress, this is why the Avs take 5 game road trips in october every year ;)

I probably need to be smacked with a stick and told to panic. It’s my burgundy and blue goggles doing me in. But I’m not worried about this season yet. Lets compare teams here for a bit:

Last year: Wings = playoffs, Avs = Tank. The Wings have confidence in their abilities; the Avs are still questioning theirs.
Team experience: a decent number of the Wings have been playing together for 15 years. Half the Avs weren’t here even 15 months ago. Heck, a big handful of our team wasn’t here 15 weeks ago! The Amwings have their core’s chemistry sorted out. We’re still working on ours.
Veterans: The Avs burnt out after an emotionally high first period. As McNab said, its a common thing with young teams – they’re still learning how to sustain a high level of pressure over the course of the 60 minutes. The Wings are mostly veterans. They know what to do when they’re in those situations. Simply, the rookie team got rooked tonight. But they’re working on it and they’ll figure it out eventually.
Systems: The Wings are tough defensively and good with puck possession. That’s what they do – that’s where they excel and win games. The Avs are either still looking for a system that they excel at or have that system in place and are still getting comfortable with. Practice makes perfect. We’ve not had much yet.

All I’m saying is that the Avs are a young team that’s still getting to know each other and got outplayed by an extremely experienced one. They’re learning and one bad opening night (even though it was an emotional blow) isn’t going to dictate the rest of the season. Give them time to all come up to speed (Mueller) and find their chemistry, and things will start to turn around. Besides, this isn’t like last year’s soul-crushing losses either. Good things happened – we’re forging this team from lot of raw talent. We saw some of that talent tonight in Varly and Landy especially. But all the individual raw abilities need to come together and hone themselves into one cohesive unit before this team will be competitive on a nightly basis. It’s going to take some time, but it will happen once they get more comfortable with each other. This is a team that will grow up together. The chemistry will come and it will be magical when it does.

forgot about Varly, he seemed a little scrambly at points, but then I thought that was my inital reaction to that..guy..Ander..something or other I can’t remember his name,,,

Hey, how about that Ottawa team..11 GA in two games..who’s between their pipes?? ;)

This is a team that will grow up together. The chemistry will come and it will be magical when it does.

or we’ll be the Oilers and suck forever.. ;)

Especially about Landy and Varly. I was really impressed with Landeskog, especially on the PK.

Seriously though, other than two terrible lapses on defense and a lack of quality finishing when they reached the net, that game was actually not too bad.

The ceremony was really, really sweet. I wish they had done something similar with the Sakic ceremony. I didn’t tear up this time, but Foppa made a really nice speech. I was hoping they’d debut a new captain tonight but Hejduk, Stastny, and Johnson all had As.

Varly had a very god game (he looked a million times better than he did in the preseason THANK GOD), and I thought Kobasew (lol) and Landy looked good as well. Quincey seems to be returning to his BAMF old self, and really, pretty much the whole team had a rough night. Especially Johnson, good god. But I’m not worried about him.

The Avs came out…I wanted to type “strong” there, but I think “solid” might be a better word. … the Avalanche had played almost a perfect game through 30 minutes and had nothing to show for it

I don’t think we were watching the same game. That was the part of the game where neither team could string two passes together (except the Thirst line, which usually ended up in a Landeskog scoring chance unfortunately, and I say unfortunately because it was his first game so it’s unreasonable to expect him to pot two of those chances….. sigh). That was the part of the game where each team would touch the puck 20 times in the neutral zone before something happened. Where the Arrested Development prison guards had dressed up in stripes and instituted their NO TOUCHING policy. Both teams made a ton of mistakes, and not the least among them being the Avs’ multiple missed scoring chances.

Stastny in particular had a beauty, Landeskog had two or three, Mueller nearly deflected one in, Quincey and Hejda let loose some boomers, just….

The difference in the game was the dead things stopped being quite as sloppy and we didn’t. The other difference was Detroit put Varly to work, and Conklin seemed to always be exactly in position. I only remember thinking we’d been robbed once or twice.

tough loss, but not the worst game in the world. Landeskog is going to be legit and may hit the 20 goal mark this year. The kid has great instincts, is a great two way player and once he bulks up maybe we can see a few flashes of 21 in the future. Varly also looked awesome. The Franzen goal would have gotten past every goalie in this league. The Zetterburg goal was due to a Hejda break down in the neutral zone. Valry made very impressive saves and with his athletic ability he is going to be the ideal goalie who will go off on streaks. Thank god we have a reliabe vet in Giggy to relax Varly when he hits his rough patches. I think the goalie make up is beautiful. O’reilly looked sharp and honestly I think he is due for a nice year. Mueller looked slow. Hopefully he regains the speed but I dig the dark visor. Only certain players can pull that off and he is one of em. All in all this team needs a bona fide sniper and that’s about it to be playoff contenders. Rather Mueller can mold himself into that or he and Landeskog can form some kind of scoring machine for the Avs I just don’t see where they are going to get gaols besides the 27 from Duchene and 20 from Stats. We will see tho. Too bad we couldn’t turn Cumisky and other prospects into a scorer but oh well. We shall see what happenes. Not a good night but a promising night. Also, Detroit is one of the best teams in the league so this could have been worse than it was. Cheers MHH i’ll catch ya on the flip side.

The good:

Kobasew (seriously)
Varlamov (awesome)
Hejda (great pickup)
Quincey (he was legit tonight)
Landeskog (I hate the pick, but he was great tonight)

The okay:
O’Brien (he was solid enough)
Mueller (decent first game back)
O’Reilly (all over the ice)

The bad:
Duchene and Hejduk (both completely invisible)
Johnson (shaky game)
Stastny (he needs help)

Let’s face it; Detroit is a really good team and we played them to a draw the first two periods despite some shady penalties.

It was a fun game, great experience, and I am 100x more optimistic about this team than the 2010-2011 version. This team will compete and win more than their fair share of games.

Hey all, does anyone know if they will be posting the pre-game Forsberg tribute video online anywhere? I am currently on the boat, but would like to watch it when I am able to. Thanks!

However, I did get a package for my birthday today, which included pictures of my birthday gift from my family. Once it gets sent to me in Japan, I will have a game used stick signed by Forsberg. I was floored when I opened that envelope.

Thanks for the info on the game video. Hopefully I will be able to join y’all in some game threads sooner rather than later.

Cheers,

Chop Chop Chop

The team looked like a team that had 7 days off between games. That was way too much time.

The defense looks mean and big. I like it.

Varly played great but the offense looked, again, like they had been off for a week. It will get better.

I am headed up to Boston today for the game tomorrow. I am extremely excited as it’s one of two games I get to see live this year.

Since I didn’t see the whole game, just a couple of quick observations. D looked better, a nice effort, same from Varly (though I still think Giggy will replace him at some point this year, not sure why).

Just not enough quality shots on offense. Too much time spent passing, not enough driving to the net

Definitely not the best game, but I must say, for my first one, it was insanely fun! I’m loving Varly as well as O’Reilly’s line, plus the Foppa ceremony was fantastic! Glad I finally got to meet a few of you guys too! I’m recovering from the amount of drinks I had last night today, then back to Austin tomorrow. Seeee yaaaaaaaa!!!

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Foote was in that box as well as Claude.

I kid I kid I kid

Here’s my opinion for what it’s worth:

Landeskog looked good outside of his awful d zone turnover. Took good shots and was around the puck a lot. Solid on the forecheck and it seemed he was in the right places defensively.

I also was impressed with the defense in general, O’Brien in particular. I agree that EJ didn’t have his best game but I didn’t think he was all that bad either. I do think Elliott/Barrie will help out with the offense although the defense was solid with their pinches and shots from the point.

Varly- Solid game and the 2 goals against were going in no matter who was in net. Absolute lasers. I thought he was solid and I think he will be the cure to me flinching every time a shot goes on net. If he can play that solid all year we should be in good shape.

Now for the offense… Not much going on after the first. A lot of this is due to the Wings puck control. Our big guns were pretty ineffective all night long. They just seemed out of sync. I thought Kobasew gave a solid effort but he didn’t seem like he had the puck skills/offensive instinct to complement Jones and Stastny. Dutchy’s line was silent. O’Reilly’s line was solid. 4th line was ok, thought Galiardi looked decent.

This game came down to the Wings capitalizing on 2 miscues. McClement has to get that puck deep. If he can chip it deeper it at least allows the third forward to get high and help out the d. Still one hell of a shot from Franzen. Second goal was pretty much the same. Bad turnover at the offensive blue line leads to an odd man rush. Pretty set-up and shot is why Datsyuk and Zetterberg are elite players.

PK good. PP bad.

Not a terrible game overall but we have to get more shots on net and better on the pp.

Holy we had awesome scoring chances in the first… way more than I remembered last night. Also, Gali getting tackled from behind on the breakaway was retarded. Every other time that play happens, it is guarenteed penalty. Fuck you red wings. Cheap ass bitches.

every time i watch an interview with him it seems so natural — i’ve never once questioned his choice of words. I wish he was already 5 years with us so we could put the Captain issue to rest

It’s still early, I’m sure everything will be fine.

Despite the loss, it was a fun game to watch. Sure the Avs looked young, and were frustrating at times. But they were playing.

Now if someone can recalibrate their sites so that their shots hit the net. And if they can some how get rid of the freaking curse of the Backup goalie.

Kobasew looked much better on the Stastny line then he did a week ago at Frozen Fury.
Ladenskog still looks good…thought a few times he was actually going to get his first goal. He is so calm with the puck on his stick.
PK looked good, Power play not so much.
Players are much more active in front of their own net. They were pouncing on pucks and mostly took that extra second to make sure they had an open lane before clearing the puck.
Still need to take the puck to the center of the ice and crash the net, they work the puck to much out side.

The Avs looked very good the first period. The dominated and really had some good offesive plays, just barely missing on several occassions.
After that it seemed they lost their legs, like they were not conditioned enough to play an entire NHL level game. Maybe the AMwings had an edge having already played a game. But our guys, especially Duchene, really looked winded after the first. Either they really turned it on on taking into the offensive zone and then had nothing left for back checking, or vise versa. Maybe they need to train in Aspen or something.
Valry was outstanding. I don’t think Roy would have given us a better game! I got nervous when he handled the puck as well, but Roy made nervouse when he did that as well.
Overall, I think we are counting on the early season to get our guys in condition. Maybe that is a better strategy for making it to the second half of the season in great condition. However, I think it might also be a way to get guys hurt.
Mueller looked like he could hold his own,but nothing special yet. That was a relief.

The Avs lost several chances to develop playing with stick handling errors slowing the play down. The problem is, when this team doesn’t get the jump it doesn’t score goals.

Also, with all due respect to Koba, its going to be a long freakin season if he is the best we can muster for the top line.

There are some new faces but its not like there was a wholesale team change, I don’t buy into “they need time to develop chemistry”.

At least there was effort from the boys.

The D did a good job of clearing loose pucks around the net. Last year’s D could have given up a few more goals at least on pucks sitting in the crease/slot area.

Mueller is listed as having a concussion (as of 10/08/11) on the front page. Is this some kind of sick Joke?

Peter Mueller concussion 10/08/2011

This loss kinda made me sick. Not because I thought we played bad. It was just the Red Wings and I really didn’t think they did anything to really beat us, other then two perfect shots. The refs were typical when we play the Red Wings, so not much to speak about there.

Johnson didn’t play his best game, but I liked how he was trying to much instead of not enough. It’s one game against a very veteran team. Remember we make fun of them because of there age. They beat us with that veteran experience this time. And they took advantage of Johnson.

Hejda was great, and my gosh he might have been a steal. He has a very good shot and knows how to play.

Quincy was tough, and mean. Some people have a talent to get a shot through, other has the talent to pelt sprawling defenders. Quincy has the talent of hitting people with the puck. He was really strong.

I don’t know why people thought SOB played bad, but I thought he played pretty dang good. He was on the ice when Franzen decided to load a pin an 50cal and fire it over Varley, but what the hell do you want from a guy.

Kobasew I thought was decent. I am not advocating he is or doesn’t deserve it, I just wonder if his game is set for a top 6 type of player. Even if he matches career best don’t we want more points from a top 6. He seems to be a good third liner. He pisses people off and he drives hard to the net, with a bit of a scoring flare. The Avs seems to be missing a top 6 guy but the best viable option is Landeskog. Kobasew definitely deserves to be on this team.

Our third line was by far the best line.

Gali, this guy has lost his mojo.

Hejduk. For the first time in his career, I said, wow that wasn’t his best performance. No shots. really had a hard time keeping the puck. It’s one game so I am not going to make a big deal about it. But seriously, Hejduk and Duchene only 1 shot, that needs to be 5-9 shots a game.

Landy was the best forward in my opinion. He hit, he rebounded, he shot, he did good on the PK, and was on the PP. He fought hard, his line had 8 shots. Twice as much as the first line.

If Varley plays like that all the time, we are going to win a lot of games.

In summary, I thought we played a good game, we need to improve on a lot of things but I thought we did a lot of things right. McLeod was robbed early, SOS had a couple of really good chances, Landy I thought had three different goals, Winnik got unlucky in the third. This game could have been very different. Ultimately, we need more shots on net. Especially from players like Duchene, Radar (there is higher expectations this year) and Hejduk.

FYI, Nugent-Hopkins just scored 1st NHL goal, in 1st NHL game, to tie Pitts 1-1 late in the 3rd, from Hall…

Anybody w Center Ice may want to check out Edm/Pitts OT, etc. Might produce a pretty fun Shootout :)

Varly was awesome.

FACT

It’s only one game so I’m not going to pass judgement on anyone at this point.

Fundamentally I can’t help but think that O’Reilly is simply better than Kobasew and perhaps even Mueller or Jones right now. I know he’s the 3rd line center but I see a future where Sacco may want to squeeze him up in the top six.

I think McClement is a fine 3rd line center. Is O’Reilly a waste at wing? Well, play making wingers aren’t exactly rare in Avalanche history, see Forsberg and Tanguay.

But it’s early. I’m encouraged by the breakouts so far, which was a huge weakness last year. Need to see more, and the Avs certainly need to more puck possession. I think for Landeskog that’s the next step. Once he gets some more confidence I think he will hold the puck a tad longer.

At first Rainbow’s world was shattered. But then Rainbow thought more about the opener, and suddenly things are going to be OK. Better than OK. Sure, we didn’t score a single goal against the Wings. But you know what? Rainbow is still sure this team is destined for greatness. And greatness starts today with a win over the defending cup champs. Avs 6 – Bruins 1. Kobasew with the hatty.