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Post by seventeen on Feb 18, 2002 1:43:03 GMT -5
No sense whining, what do you to to turn this team's fortunes around? Do you make personnel changes? In goal, on defense, up front? I' not going into Pat Quinn's mind cause that's no man's land, but Gretzky has just fired him and hired me. Here's what I do with the cards I'm dealt. In goal, suit up Belfour. That's a risk, but neither Cujo nor Brodeur have inspired confidence. Sit Macinnis. Legs. Up front, Mario's back and I sit Lindros. Eric's doing an Invisible man impression. The concussions have finished him. I use Mario at centre. The rest I leave alone, maybe tinker with the lines. Iginla hasn't looked good either, try him with Peca.
Play "Born to be Wild" after the warm-up in the dressing room.
Graciously accept the Gold Medal. Go home and help out Andre.
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Post by Cranky on Feb 18, 2002 2:31:42 GMT -5
Get rid of Gretzky.
Get rid of Quinn.
Fly in Scotty, Theo, Thornton, Roy. Hire someone to make them look like CuJo and Brodeur
Teach them the Torpedo system.
Teach them to play a transition game.
Teach the defenseman to carry the puck.
Teach them how to skate.
Keep all the Gold metals for myself. After all, if I can do all of the above, I deserve them.
OR
Put Chretien masks on the woman’s team and send them out to show the man how to play.
On a less serious note.
Bench Lindros and Mac. If I remember correctly, Lindros must complete 60 games before a clause in his contract kicks in. Does anybody expect him to hit?
Sorry seventeen, I can’t come up with a more serious answer. There is nothing you can do at this point, system wise or player selection. You just hope that they get use to each other a little more and play a better transition game. Also demand a lot more hitting. However, a hitting game can pull players out of position and from what I saw from the Swedes, Russians and USA, the moment they try a hard hitting game, the opposition will run circles around them.
BTW, 17, you never told me you can coach. Can I be manager? Please!
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Post by Andrew on Feb 18, 2002 3:22:59 GMT -5
Gain center, dump it in, and follow through with determined, gritty, Canadian forechecking. It's what we do best - to attempt otherwise is a mistake.
Failing that, I'd put up a pinup of a nude woman, with 4 pieces of cardboard masking her body, in the dressing room. The pieces of cardboard would represent the 4 wins on the road to gold. For each win, remove one - ultimately revealing the nude woman when the gold is won! Man did that strategy ever work well in Major League.
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Post by The New Guy on Feb 18, 2002 11:07:02 GMT -5
Hire Don Cherry to coach the team. Yes Don Cherry - he may be a pompous windbag, but the guy knows what this team needs to do to win. The fundamentals. Play the body. Dump and chase. Grind up the oppositions bones to make bread. Scratch Eric L. - he goes from zero to hero to zero again in three shifts. He'll go out and hit anything that moves, and then the next shift he'll play more timid than a mouse. I think Mario will make more of an impact than Eric will. Scratch Al M. - he looks good from time to time, but isn't phsyical enough. He's a great guy to have on the point during the PP, but so's just about every other D-man we've got. Lines: Karyia-Yzerman-Shannahan: Yzerman was out stickhandling everyone and thier dog Wayne last night. Shannahan will go to the net hard and Karyia can fly up and down the ice. They'll be able to cycle it in low against the Czech's, and Shannahan might give Hasek a couple nightmares. Smyth-Sakic-Nolan: While lacking an out and out speedster, Sakic and Nolan both have wrist shots like rockets. Smyth adds an extra degree of grit and showed us last night he plays and he plays hard (see those sitches?) Gagne-Lemieux-Iglinla: All three of these guys are strong scorers. Iglinla's been weak, but should perk up when paired with Super Mario. Peca-Nieuendyk-Fluery: The forth line rabble rousers, these guys have done well paired together so far. Why mess with a good thing? Blake-Foote: Chemistry says it all. We need it, they've got it. Pronger-Niedermyer: Lots of threat here, and good puck moving ability. I love it when Scott pinches - it actually feels exciting. Jovo-Brewer: Two great guys to have as thrid string defenders (I'd love to have them as first string defenders!). Play these guys on the PK and when you want to rough up that b@$t@rd Rucinsky a bit.  Brodeur: He moves the puck well, and that'll probably cause the Czech's some headaches Play the body. Stress that. Hit everything that moves. Kill the other team. Kill Hasek. Remember what they did to us in Nagano. We might not be able to out finesse them with long passes through the neutral zone, but I'll be damned if we can't make them so bloody and beaten that they don't want to cross out blueline. We need bloodlust. It's now or never for our guys. Lets go for the kill |
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Post by Habsolutely on Feb 18, 2002 12:19:42 GMT -5
The damage is already done.
Our head office forgot that it was the Olympics... not the NHL. Which means that several players don't have any business out there... while some of them have..
Not selecting Keith Primeau, Jeff O'Neill, Joe Thornton and maybe Jeff Friesen were mistakes. All of the guys have something that we lack.. speed and good skating ability while being able to generate offense.
Yzerman, Shanahan and others are just has beens. They were unaffective 4 years ago, they are unaffective now.
TC didn't want to gamble, they'll get their butts burned.
Anyway to be honest, while I really enjoy those games, I'm very anxious to see the Habs again.. they are the team that, in my eyes, are the only one worth cheering.
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Post by seventeen on Feb 18, 2002 21:07:37 GMT -5
Some decent ideas (well, except for one). Obviously they didn't listen to us. They benched Eric, but the wrong one. Mario looked fine, Stevie Y looks good...actually most of the team looked much better today. It is slowly coming together. I only saw the last 1/2, after it was 2-1 Czechs. We outplayed the Czechs by a large margin in the last half of the 2nd period, and for parts of the 3rd. In other parts of the 3rd, we looked tired. Wonder if the large surface is playing havoc with their conditioning? Or the pace. But its coming. My opinion of Lindros keeps getting re-inforced. When the going gets tough, Eric gets going....on vacation. He may yet develop that Invisible Man nickname. Midway through the 3rd, he looked like his arm or should was troubling him on the bench. Injured? We can only hope.
Finns next....and they've given us trouble the last few years.
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Post by wade on Feb 18, 2002 21:40:27 GMT -5
TNG...
hire don cherry?
can you say missisauga ice dogs?
oh my
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Post by The New Guy on Feb 18, 2002 22:05:17 GMT -5
That's just because he's a bigot who doesn't like Europeans. The thing with the Olympics is that he really doesn't have much of a choice but to hate Euro's, they really can't play on the team anyway. Don likes to play the type of game that Canada needs to play. Namely, Canada's game. Crash the net, let the boys shoot and leave it all on the ice. <br> I don't like a lot of what he says, but I like the passion that he has. Had he been coaching when Hamrlik blindsided Fleury (although Fluery was asking for it by trying to make a bed out of Hasek). You can bet that Canada's diriest players (uhh - do we have dirty players? Maybe Peca, Smyth and Nieuy - guys who are willing to take a cheap shot or five) to even the score. I really hope we meet the Czech's again. I can promise you that Hamerlik won't be walking away. If they want to play that way - we all know Canada can play that way. I've been an advocate of hurting that damnable Czech goalie. I wonder how well he would hold up if Lindros, Smyth and Foote ran into him one or two or twelve times. I'm a big supporter of the "make them regret the day they were born" form of defence. A team can't mount an offence if they can't skate. (You owe me 2.3 cents for editing your post....hey, I got to make a living too  ) HA |
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Post by wade on Feb 19, 2002 1:05:09 GMT -5
although you do have a point.. he's so big on leafs he'd probably play cujo even though he is colder than ice
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Post by Vichab on Feb 19, 2002 2:09:55 GMT -5
After watching today's game i don't think i would change much as the boys are coming together. The only change i would make and others have commented on this, is i would not play McInnis much as I think he is getting too old and slow. He's been beaten a number of timesand made some bad passes. I agree that he should be used on the PP as when you get down to it his shot has always carried him and i think that's why he was selected anyway. I'd probably give Jovo more ice as I think he's played well. But you could probably bo with 4 D ( Pronger,Blake, Nieder, and Foote) as they're all use to playing 30 mins. a game anyway. But I think Brewer has played well. Ottherwise I wouldn't change a thing. At some point you have to stick with what you've gotr and we can't keep changing lines and strategy. They played well enuf to win today and that's all they need to do for 3 more games. That's fine by me.
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Post by BadCompany on Feb 19, 2002 9:05:25 GMT -5
Personally I thought Eric Lindros looked brutal. Very timid, not involved, and on two of the Czech goals he left his man all alone. The first one where both he and Martin Havlat overskated the puck, but somehow Havlat was able to recover and walk in all alone, and the second one where he was just coasting on the backcheck, watching Havlat again walk in all alone.
I haven't seen too many Ranger games of late, but I have heard he has been playing pretty much the same way in those too. Has the latest concussion really made him timid?
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) HA