The Two-Line Pass

The Lead

Whatever the opposite of a goaltending battle is, Versus viewers were subjected to one tonight.

Sure, you can argue that there were a few highlight reel saves and that as a result it’s reasonable to surmise that despite allowing nine goals on 79 shots, both Chris Osgood and Marty Turco weren’t quite so bad as perhaps the statistics would lead one to believe.

You, of course, would be horribly wrong, because both the goals AND the ridiculous stops were the result of neither goalie participating in anything resembling sound positional goaltending. Go look at the highlights. What’s Turco thinking on that first goal? The announcer says it was a deflection, but it wasn’t. On the second goal, Turco overcommits to the puck carrier, Pavel Datsyuk, who once again owned him in a consistent and thorough manner all night. As for the Red Wings’ goaltending, the first two Stars goals were through screens, so no fault of Osgood’s there, but the rest of them.. yeesh.

I have never been a goalie at any level of competitive hockey, but I have to assume that, if I were, it would be a bad thing for me to be lying four feet outside of my crease when the opponent scores an overtime game-winner against me. Right? Maybe any readers out there who are goalies can fill me in.

This game would make a perfect instructional video for every goalie under the age of 10 to learn what not to do. “See, Billy, unlike Marty Turco, you DON’T want try to glove a weak wrist shot and have it hit you in the mask twice in one period.”

Man, I’d make such a good peewee coach.

Elsewhere…

Tampa Bay 3, Los Angeles 1

Yes this certainly was a hockey game. I want you to try and spot the difference between the game’s goalscorers. 1) Evgeny Artuhkin. 2) Mark Recchi. 3) Vincent Lecavalier. 4) Peter Harrold. Hmm this is a tough one. What a stupid game. Also, the commentators spent parts of the game talking about this past draft’s No. 1 overall pick, Steven Stamkos (10:38 TOI, 0-1-1), facing off against the No. 2 pick, Drew Doughty (13:03 TOI, -2). They were actually on the ice together for parts of TWO WHOLE SHIFTS in the first period. But that was before Doughty got benched after his awful second period. You win this round, Stamkos, but I’d rather have Doughty any day of the week because he has almost as many points as you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 3:59 am and is filed under Good night. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.