Be professional about your job
October 19th, 2009 | by jays1992 |By Paul Bruno
I know the Leafs are 0-6-1, in the early going of the 2009-10 NHL season, but the players are further away from doing their jobs than their record indicates.
Exhibit A in that regard is the inability of Leaf goalies to perform the most basic positional plays. We have seen a host of bad goals because of house league hockey mistakes.
We have Joey McDonald lose his angle in goal, to the point where he was standing in front of the left goal post and gave up a goal, on a shot from the right wing, which found half of the net that was available for the shooter.
We have seen Vesa Toskala choose to spin around 360 degrees on a shot that missed the net completed and came out the other side, landing on an opponents stick beside an empty cage.
Both goalies have allowed long shots to beat them in their five hole, where a stick save would have been easy. Both goalies have allowed wraparound goals, where a lateral move across, from post to post would prevent these ugly goals.
These are two of a large number of bad goals that these professional goalies have allowed.
House league coaches teach their goalies to be aware of their angles, move laterally across their goallines and keep their sticks on the ice, as much as possible.
Sticking to these three basic goalie moves would cut down the current goals allowed by 50 per cent.
Offensively, the Leafs are not playing with a full deck, either. The puck movement that was so fluid during the exhibition schedule, has been replaced by a very static game, with very little flow. Erratic passing and lots of wide shots on good chances, has cut into the scoring totals.
Most alarming of all this, though, is the clear message of giving up completely once the club has fallen behind by two goals in each of the last three games.
It actually looks like the games I saw at the local rink, some ten years ago, when struggling house league teams of seven year olds would be giving up in the face of the same adversity.
That’s the worst sign in this mess with the current Leafs’ hockey team.
Up next, a primer for the defensemen.
By Mattt on Oct 20, 2009
It’s not very encouraging that all our hopes are now pinned on the Monster. But sadly he has so far in limited minutes played better than the other alternatives.