Fifth Avenue Forum

'I just can't' with NHL.com stats but Crosby wasn't good for faceoffs last night. Curious what the actual number was.

He was 10 of 24

Put McCan back with Crosby. Put Rust with Geno and Horny. Simon/Juggernaut/Phil should be fine and go play.

I know Maatta had a rough night, but he's probably got, what, 60-70 playoff games?

69 to be exact. How many of them were good though?

A ton of them.

Not only by the eye test, but statistically...no d-man over the last three playoffs has a better ES GF:GA rate than Maatta on our blueline. 61% positive rate. No one over 58% (though to be fair, only Oleksiak and Ruhwedel were below 50%).

If defensemen were assigned a GAA...Maatta's is 1.73. For comparison, Letang is 2.35, Dumoulin 2.27, Schultz 1.90.

And it's not just versus our guys...it's a league-wide thing.

Vlasic 1.39
Kempny 1.45
Schmidt 1.46
Carlson 1.49
Lovejoy 1.59
Lindholm 1.60
Karlsson 1.60
Burns 1.65
Martin 1.69
Maatta 1.73
Ekholm 1.73

There are a lot of guys known for keeping pucks out of their net up there...it's good company to keep.

I don’t get the Maatta hate boner a lot of people have.

Fleury left. Need someone else to scapegoat.

Malkin was good. Kessel is better on line 3 and performed fine. These were the main hurdles into making us scary this spring. But everyone’s got a plan until the big kids shove them into a locker.

Your obsession with the rough stuff is truly disturbing

Your obsession with the rough stuff is truly disturbing

TWSS.

But also, I’m not sure you could watch the game last night and not see a bunch of d men losing their poise and getting muscled around. Maybe you find the 2 unrelated. I don’t.

I don’t get the Maatta hate boner a lot of people have.

For me it just comes down to every criticism I could make of the guy we have every jag around swearing up and down it doesn't exist. It's this weird thing with Maatta, mainly in the media where hes above being called out. Seems like its been like that since day 1. It's dumb but thats just me personally.

Your obsession with the rough stuff is truly disturbing

TWSS.

But also, I’m not sure you could watch the game last night and not see a bunch of d men losing their poise and getting muscled around. Maybe you find the 2 unrelated. I don’t.

I mean, that’s what the Isle’s want to do. It is the first thing on their To Do list. You can’t completely stop a playoff team from doing what they want to a certain extent. Mikey more than covered what the game plan should be moving forward. The D are going to get crumpled. Get used to it. Take the hit to make the play and have numbers going forward. This isn’t some schoolyard bully trying to pull our shirts over our heads. It is the Isles realizing if they don’t try to slow us down with physicality, we would have won this in three games.

It seemed that the Penguins weren't expecting what everyone else knew to expect. It was very strange.

Maatta isn't plainly better than Gudbranson, Johnson or Petterson at the moment imo

Crosby unit was owned by their fourth line except to start overtime. I think they'll figure it out and take advantage of them

I don’t get the Maatta hate boner a lot of people have.

For me it just comes down to every criticism I could make of the guy we have every jag around swearing up and down it doesn't exist. It's this weird thing with Maatta, mainly in the media where hes above being called out. Seems like its been like that since day 1. It's dumb but thats just me personally.

I don't know if its a "You can't call him out" thing... you can.

But I think the problem I have is right now I think there is a better configuration given the recent history that supersedes the pre-cancer, pre-shoulder Olli Maatta.

So far the only rational I've seen is that he's proven a few years ago that he can do this. I don't doubt that and I don't think it's a move that makes or breaks this team... but I think there is a better option right now in terms of how the d pairs are configured, and I don't think that includes at the moment Olli Maatta. Is he a huge drop off if he's on the ice instead of Johnson or Pettersson? No... but I would have gone with the Dumo/Letang, Johnson/Schultz, Pettersson/Gudbranson because I think those pairs all worked well going into the end of the season - and we saw a far tighter defensive performance with those groupings.

Call it Wally Pipp or whatever... but I don't think anyone in that group above has played their way out of a spot, and I certainly don't think the shuffling of pairs that took place in the practice leading up to game 1 was not ideal, and I think some of it showed last night with hose loose the team seemed to be in terms of the defensive side of things.

I said it last night, Johnson is built for a series like this IMO. He has played much better in the second half of the season and isn't afraid to lay the lumber with some huge hits. We do not need a "finesse" guy like Pettersson playing without finesse.

I think that's fair. This is a little bit of an odd time to take Johnson out of the lineup...played 82 straight this year.

I think one improvement is needed to turn this into an easy W for the Pens. Quicker decisions from the D on the breakout.

it was alarming how much more energized they were than us in the first 2 minutes but other than that I thought we were in control for most of the game

we got this

I think one improvement is needed to turn this into an easy W for the Pens. Quicker decisions from the D on the breakout.

Jack Johnson is not suited for that style of game though.

He was 10 of 24

Thanks bruv.

I think one improvement is needed to turn this into an easy W for the Pens. Quicker decisions from the D on the breakout.

Jack Johnson is not suited for that style of game though.

I would disagree here. Johnson makes a decent first pass and has some poise under pressure. I would make the Johnson- Pettersson based on Pettersson’s complete and utter lack of poise last night. He had so much **** in his pants last night, I’m surprised he was able to skate properly.

Yeah, I’d be swapping Pettersson and Johnson. Maatta will get his **** together.

It's easy to forget Pettersson is still a rookie. Thanks for the reminder, though. JMFJ for MMFP works for me.

I think one improvement is needed to turn this into an easy W for the Pens. Quicker decisions from the D on the breakout.

Jack Johnson is not suited for that style of game though.

I would disagree here. Johnson makes a decent first pass and has some poise under pressure. I would make the Johnson- Pettersson based on Pettersson’s complete and utter lack of poise last night. He had so much **** in his pants last night, I’m surprised he was able to skate properly.

I disagree about the poise. I feel Johnson has two/three moves with the puck in his own D zone:

1. Hang onto it for too long
2. Throw it blindly up the boards
3. Try to skate it up himself.

Maybe something changed within the last month, but I dont know how Johnson helps with beating an aggressive forecheck.

And I'm worried about his foot speed and getting stuck against someone like Barzal.

Petterson did looked scared but as has been said, rookie, on the road, against a HUNGRY team. I’m not shocked he looked tentative. I have faith his team and the coach will straighten him out.

I think we’ve hit the point of overanalysis of 1 game. Isles are inexperienced in this situation and may have blown their load right away. Don’t forget how many years Trotz coached teams bowed out in the first round.

Swap Rust for McCan. Calm the eff down. Best these rooks.