We lost 3-2 in a shootout after coming back from a 2-0 deficit. Our shootout men were Kotalik, Lisin, Gilroy, Parenteau, Del Zotto, Prospal. I love the preseason.
On defense, apparently Gilroy played a great game, which is exciting news. Del Zotto was reportedly not as good as he had been, but Potter was apparently good enough that Torts has already announced him as someone who will survive this afternoon's cuts. On the flip side, Redden and Rozsival were again reportedly bad. Is there a word that denotes the extreme opposite of "surprise"? I feel like "obvious" isn't strong enough. Goddamn it I'm finding it very hard to keep withholding judgement here.
Up front, Prospal's line, centering Avery and Lisin, was reportedly great. This is promising news. I expect great things from Sean (who, predictably, was assigned a goalie interference penalty that disallowed a Lisin goal), but we're also going to need Prospal to have a great year, especially if we continue to not have Brandon Dubinsky on the team. Some scholars think Prospal's going to fill in as first line center regardless, at least as the season starts, on account of Dubinsky doing all of that not-skating-with-his-potential-wingmen-at-all that he's doing right now, compared to Prospal's actually-working-with-his-teammates.
Also up front, everyone is talking about how great Grachev is. That's fascinating, on account of how 19-years-old he is. But if he keeps playing great hockey, good for us. Here's a whole article about it.
This morning, we had a scrimmage at 9am. You should probably sit down. Are you sitting down? I'll wait. Good. Now, reports are that Marian Gaborik actually played in the scrimmage this morning! A whole scrimmage! And no word about anything breaking, either! Allelujah! At this rate, he'll play in an actual NHL game by sometime in November! Yahoo!
There will be one more scrimmage in about 10 minutes (1:00), and then later this afternoon, the first set of roster cuts gets made. For those of you who don't want to go find it yourselves, here again is our current 55-man roster. The word is that it will get cut down to 30 (or, by some reports, "approximately 30") later today. Thought exercise! Feel free to make guesses as to which 30 we keep and which 25 we dump. Most of it should be easy. If I have time later, I'll post some guesses.
Thought exercise bonus round! Of the 55 men on that roster, as you may know, 54 have been to camp and skated and stuff. The other one...hasn't yet. It's easy to keep one no-show on a roster of 55. Think he'll make a roster cut of 30? Probably. But how long can a coach be expected to keep a phantom roster spot open?
Stay tuned for roster cuts...
From my father:
ReplyDeleteOnly 15 days to go? And our potential #1 Center is unsigned, and our alleged #1 RW is injured [again], and our probable #1 LW is still a pariah being treated like a leper, and our 2 veteran D are "bad," and we have to root for Brashear, and we may have to rely on guys named 'Enver' and 'Maccarone'?! H-E-E-E-E-L-L-P! Buying Tums by the case...