Plus/Minus Post-Game: Islanders 5 (EN) vs. Capitals 3

That guy who dropped the puck before the game.

+ New Line Combos – they seemed to work, especially the 2nd line
+ 2nd line- Frans starting the scoring, P.A.P Getting the tying and gw goals
+ Matt Martin – The Guy does everything, nuff said
- Not seeing Montoya – DP looked good, i just wished i could see Montoya
+ Cap’s announcers-I ahd that stream, they had nothing but positive things to say about the Isles

+ we won
+ we scored 4 non-empty net goals
+ team effort
+ I didnt think anyone played awful tonight (although I do remember cursing Okposo and Staois more than once)
- we need to get off to better starts of games (sorry there had to be one – or it wouldnt be a +/-)

They looked shaky with a lack of chemistry in the beginning(does not make for a good martini), but they came out to play in the second period. Last season, I was dying for Gordon/Cappy to put Grabner on the first line, at least until the FNGo line started creating such magic. But, it seemed to work tonight.

+Grabner on the first line works
+Eaton has done really well blocking shots
-Staos is starting to get on my nerves now

Cappy sprinkled some pixie dust with the second line, yes?

+ PAP (obvious, but please, please PAP haters – can we agree to agree that he earns his keep, and then some)
+ Martin and Nielsen (also obvious)
+ The second line in general
+ Did they score 4 (?!) even strength goals?
- First period effort – yikes – had to be talked off the ledge
- DP – i guess he played OK, but some of the goals seemed soft and for chrissakes: STAY. IN. THE. F^&*ING. CREASE.
- Staios – He looks slow as molasses – in both movement and execution
- Major penalty called on PAP; no call when Moulson got boarded

The whole Grabner-on-the-first-line thing doesn’t work for me – largely b/c Moulson seems to be so lifeless (or at least flat-out manhandled) out there.

http://www.lighthousehockey.com/2011/11/5/2540283/islanders-vs-capitals-gameday-examining-shaken-lines#82073435

I missed the whole game and had to follow if on my phone. But goals and wins are still nice.

As a die hard Islanders fan, i would have cheered too. Ovechkin is the first real old-time hockey player the nhl has had in some time. Hes great. He does it all.

Moulson looks rough. He needs Nino’s big body. AS that guy said in the waterboy

“You can do it”

oh yeah and one more thing. Frans Nielsen…lock him up. Garth for god sakes, Lock him up!!!

…. But I’ll drop a few plusses here while i pass the time:

Plusses:
+ the whole Veterans Night is always awesome. Had five rows of Naval officers directly in front of me. Despite being from all over the country, they took to the Isles as soon as the Isles remembered how to play hockey. Except for the few Capital infidels, that is. ;-)
+ Miss USO. Wow.
+ the high school band that played all of the armed services’ songs during one of the intermission breaks.
+ My sister for using her puny car to effectively muscle SUVs out of her way. Hell hath no fury as a woman with a disdain for traffic.
+ An LIRR train full of Islander fans heading back to the city. You heard me right!

FIGs will be tallied when i get back to Brooklyn. Cheers!

So far in 4 games Montoya has the lead with a .930 S%
Nabokov is right behind with a .927.
DiPietro has 3 gp with a .904
Basically, DiPietro would have to post a shutout on Monday (would give him a .928) to be in the conversation, though there are other things to factor here.

Some shaky to sub-parish play from Okposo/Staios/Macdonald though, DP too went out of his net a few too many times, hopefully that’s just anxious energy. Other then that, he was decent in net, squabbled a puck here, and I think he guessed wrong on the Ovechkin goal because he was sliding the wrong way. And DP got the game clinching assist!

I’m sort of worried about A-mac given we’re getting deep in now, and if his hip isn’t 100% a month into the season, I wonder if it will ever be or is lingering. I’d think the rust would have been shaken off by now, huh. Okposo, I don’t know. He looked better, but still not up to par. He refused a couple checks and his 1 shot at driving the net on a fast break ended with a stupid toe drag. OOOOO, it’s frustrating when you’re given the body and strength he has but don’t use it closely to as much as you should. Staios, I don’t know. I think his problem is all foot speed and age. He’s gets caught of position because of this and is forced into bad decisions because of this. It will only likely get worse for him, but what can you do? That was Garth’s call and eventually I know it’s gonna cost us.

I described the bad, everything else was pretty much great! The 5min PAP boarding was complete BS on a questionable call, but the refs missed a high sticking on us so it sort of evened out.

+PA Parenteau – what a great game. Seemed like he was in the right place all the time.
+2nd line – Rolston scored, but played well. That line was very good.
- – Officiating. The officiating in this league is a joke. It needs CONSISTENCY! If PA got five minutes for boarding, why didn’t Joel Ward get the same for boarding Moulson. It was the same exact play in a different place on the ice. Also, Ricky gets run 3 times, the ref is watching all of it, and the official out in center ice makes the call. The NHL needs to do something about it.

-DP, enigmatic burden (although, if you wanna positive spin he does add to the cap). Will he ever return to form? Big fat rebounds, terrible puck control, unsound decisions every game. He just cant compete with Nabby or Al, plain and simple. Please don’t play him again, I don’t care if his contract runs into the next century.

+From what I heard his wife is bangin.

I think we scored an own goal on nabby too. But cmon, hes the third wheel.

+ We won
+ We scored 5 goals
+ DiPietro got the win

- I didn’t get to see that game since it was blacked out for the Buffalo\Ottawa
- The Buffalo\Ottawa game was not broadcast in HD on the MSG+ HD channel.

Short and sweet, happy as hell that we won. I still find it curious however that from the looks of it we played up to a good team while conversely we played down to a bad team like Winnipeg.

 - A BIG minus to MSG+ for neglecting to provide the Isles, once again, with some sort of postgame show but instead SHOWING THE END OF THE FUCKING RANGERS GAME!? What the fuck is that!? If I wanted to watch the Rangers game, I’d put on fucking MSG!

I hate Cablevision.

++++ for Mark Eaton tonite. He ws fantastic tonite. Blocked Shots, A 3 on the night…..His best game as an Islander by far.
+MMartin is one HIT away from me going to buy a #17 T-Shirt.
++ Jack Capuano – Based on Last Year and what we have seen this year Cappy seems to have good feel player Psyche. So far he has often pushed the right buttons

A HUGE WIN. That Major Call on PAP and the goal that resulted was the final straw for this team. They played with aggression, desperation and conviction in tose last 2 periods.

I think they win into the locker room after the first and said….“We’re not gonna get help, we need to do this ourselves”.

Tonite you saw what the isles learned from LY’s Losing Streak. They were not going to be denied tonite.

GREAT GAME.

Minus to Cap for starting Rickety – When will the torture end?
Plus to all the fans chanting Al Mon-toya in the 1st period
Minus to anyone who thinks Rickety is anything better than the 3rd String goalie on this team

+ Physicality from more places than just Matt Martin
+ The extended effort on the Martin, Nielsen, PAP goals. Sticking in for the rebounds, loose pucks, second shots, instead of just dumping it at the goaltender and running. This is the kind of effort that we have been waiting for to pay off.
+ 2 points and a huge moral victory, not only breaking the streak but doing it against one of the better teams in the conference

+/- DP. I know, he got the win, and did look solid at times. On the other hand, he also did let in some softies. I know the defense didn’t help with some of that. I’ll have to go look at some of the previous goals, but it looks like teams are figuring out that they can get him to drop early and beat him over the glove, which appears to be a little slow on those attempts.

- The 3 headed monster. It just sucks to see any goalie sit for 3 weeks. Especially after a bad game before that. It’s just tough to stay hot in that situation.

- Officials again. Blown call on the PAP boarding (really, was there even body-to-body contact on that?), quick whistles for Washington when Vokoun didn’t have full possession. At least one was on what could have a been a juicy and lucrative chance for the Isles.
- Opposing fans still getting front-row seats and filling up behind the Isles bench. We should not be hearing ANY cheers when opposing teams score. Also, am I the only one perplexed by so many locals being fans of seemingly random teams? Pittsburgh fans, Washington fans? Really? I think a lot of people on the Island only started watching hockey 3 years ago.

Minuses:

My laptop went on the fritz, so I have to catch up next morning on the old tower

The complete and utter predictability of the “OMG DP Sukz; Fire Cappy, Play Montoya b/c DP Sukz, Oh, wait, we won”, in the game thread. It’s a lot like IPB around here lately.

Pluses:

PAP — Just a great game. But, for the record, he’s really not a top notch NHL player. That much is just obvious.

(The stupidity of a 5 minute major for boarding aside, how does he GET a five minute major for boarding and not get ejected? I thought they went hand in hand?)

Fransie — Gets it started with a great effort. Plays well all night long.

DP — Played well, IMO. While he hasn’t “WON” a game for us, neither has he “LOST” a game for us yet. Goalies give up rebounds, more when they’re screened. The first goal was a deflection off a rebound that should have been gobbled up by the defence. For all the DP haters out there, a newsflash: Ovie’s been scoring on that partially screened slapshot one timer on everybody. Finally, the reality is that top shelf short side goal is the one you give up to a shooter who can hit it. There aren’t many who can.

Composure: It would have been easy for the team to give up after the first two and then after the thrid goals. They didn’t. Good for them. Good also on DP maintaining his composure and concentration when the fans started with that moronic Montoya chant. Nice Asshat move on the part of the “fans”

Cappy’s hair — love how the NHL goes to his hair after every goal against. There must be a suggestion that he’s goig to start pulling it out at some point.

DP’s assist — how many coronaries were there when he decided to play that puck?

One final thought. We have three goalies. I don’t know what Nabby’s injury situation is, but we need to keep in mind that the Isles have played the fewest games of anyone in the League so far, and most of them have been at home. There will be times in the next month or two in a three in four nights on the road stretch when I suspect we will be happy to have three. However, until someone decides they want to give up an asset to get Nabokov in a trade, we will continue to have three goalies. That’s how it’s going to be. We might as well get used to it.

THE USUAL
+ (GoalDiff) GFPG/GAPG 23(2.09)/28(2.54) =-5(.82) (D) (1-3EN)
Their goal should be +8(1.03) which is where they were in 2006-07

- (TV) Did not see the game.

- (Thirty Goal Crew) Moulson (2), Grabner(3), Tavares* (8)
Tavares nabbed an ENG to keep his 50+ pace. Moulson and Grabner will need hotter Novembers to get back on a 30+ pace.

+ (GOALTENDING) Dipietro 25/28 saves. I didn’t see the game, but his stats continue to be unspectacular. Also, in one of the positive highlights… there is Rickety making a dangerous pass up to Tavares for the ENG. Yay… but if he whiffs… game tied… and then we’d hear about "swelling" until somebody else carried them to a playoff push, and they could release him from protective custody.
I’ll still give him a + for keeping them in this game until the offense started flowing.
 
-(Special Teams) EV Special teams index is 1.03.
PP 0/2 I didn’t see the game so I can’t comment on how it was working…. But 0 for 2 is 0 for 2.
PP is at 18%.
 PK 2/3 1 PP goal vs WAS isn’t really a bad night, but the PK has slipped to 84%

+ Devil droppings (Rolston/Pandolfo/Mottau)
The CAP MULE scored a goal !!!… from forty feet out.

-(The scape wagon) No data for this, and it was a WIN… We can leave the scapewagon in the garage.
 
THIS YEAR V LAST YEAR (AFTER 11) 1-6 Loss @ PHI on 10/30/10.
+ (Record) 4-5-2(10) v 4-6-1(09) (+1PT)
- (PP) 7/38(18%) v 13/58 (22%) 0/6
+ (PK) 32/38 (84%) v 43/52(83%) 6/8
+ (AVG ATT) 12,612 v 11787 (11,922) (4 HOME GAMES)

GENERAL OBSERVATONS
POS
+ WIN
+ Matt Martin scored a goal and now leads the league in hits. He was also limited to 9:16 of TOI. From the shift chart it appears that he was playing with Bailey and Pandolfo. I see this as more of a demotion for Bailey (due to cut in TOI) then a promotion for Martin, who is doing everything right. I didn’t see the game, but Bailey and Pandolfo combined for 0 shots while Martin had 2.
+ Rolston-Nielsen-Parentau. Three goals, 7 points. It appears that they drew the Semin line most of the night, so this may have been because of "somebody" taking a mental health day… but Nice work just the same.
+ Line changes in general. Cappy has stuck to his line combos for almost about ¾ of a season now without any major shake ups. It appears that this was a good response. Sure, there could be a talent upgrade, and there could be a general philosophy (Bailey, shoot v pass) upgrade… but this seemed to work for the time being. From the shift charts it looks like these were the NEW combos
Moulson-Tavares-Grabner. I’m not sure I like the three left thumbs, or having the whole thirty goal crew on the ice together. Maybe there will be more shuffling.

Rolston-Nielsen-Parentau. Maybe this is what Rolston needs… a RW that wants to stay on the RW, and a C that keeps him from having to backcheck. I didn’t see it, but it looks like it worked… but I’d guess that it was mostly PA and Frans doing the right stuff.

Comeau-Reasoner-Okposo. 5 shots isn’t bad, but I’d have to have seen their play to make more of a statement. The Corsi for this game made little sense to me.

Martin-Bailey-Pandolfo. I’m not sure I get it. You’re never going to get any offensive output from Pandolfo… that door has been locked for ever. I thought that Bailey might have needed an upgrade, like Grabner work better in the transition game, and not be so reliant on particular spacing to get a shot off. I think Martin-Bailey-Grabner would have made more sense… I don’t think this lasts for too long. Martin now needs to see the ice more.

NEG
- I missed the game because SOMEBODY recorded the blacked out center ice channel instead of the local coverage.
- The special teams are slipping. Not in panic mode yet, but this will need to be addressed if it continues.