ARTHUR:
As I said in the last gamethread, no one course corrects their season in one night. And let's not start talking about "turning points," either. The broadcast crew did that way too often last season. Selanne beats Philadelphia by himself: turning point. Joffrey Lupul scores a couple of goals: turning point. Evgeny Artyukhin looks good on the second line: turning point. Dan Sexton scores a couple of goals: turning point. Four turns and you're going around in circles (y'know, unless you're turning left then right then left like that light cycle game in Tron *sigh* Oh, Tron...).
Point is, I set some reasonable expectations as a fan last game: a lot of shots, multiple goals, and a shots-against total around 35. Did I demand the Ducks win? No. Did I demand the Ducks play competent defense? No. Did my low hurdle still manage to hit the team in the forehead? Yes.
I'm again not shooting for the moon tonight, home opener be damned (though I hope some of you are enjoying the red carpet this afternoon and the new food tonight). Just shots and goals, people! Shots and goals!
The Ducks, being professionals, have loftier expectations of themselves, bless their little hearts. To that end, the meetings have begun. Carlyle discusses the extended, video-laden sit-down in the clip above now below. And according to Eric Stephens' of OCR, there was even an open forum for player suggestions. Again, though, no one course corrects in a single night so, as a fan, I don't expect to see results from this meeting in the first game following it. Just show me some life, people.
Possible signs of life? Eric Stephens has tweeted that Sbisa and Sexton are in and Voros and Festerling are out. And Fowler is quietly making his way to Game 10, though the one-way contracts are starting to pile up around him.
In decidedly negative news, yesterday it was confirmed that Andy Sutton will be out 6 to 8 weeks. It's discouraging, but it's also the first concrete number for a team that is still waiting for Joffrey Lupul's infection to clear, still waiting for Lydman to be cleared just for a physical and even still waiting for the resolution of Andreas Lilja's visa issues.
And that's the theme here. NOTHING is fixed over night. Not injuries where you've completely identified the problem, especially not injuries where the source of the problem is still eluding you and really everything that involves bureaucratic oversight. So why would flagging effort on a hockey team be any different?
And so we wait...
FOWL!