Watson Rink
Registered User
Set Lines?
Set Lines?
Let's not overlook the flexibility shown by the forward lines in the last couple of games. This was brought home to me after reading a post on the BU thread excerpted below.
Let me make clear that this poster has made detailed and perceptive analyses of other BU games and that his comments about last night's game were made objectively, not offered as excuses, any more than we on this thread were making excuses, as distinct from objective commentary, after Christina Kessler's injury last year. What he points to is how an injury to one or more top-line players throws off the chemistry of established forward lines.
Let me also say that if the coordinated play and tape-to-tape passes I observed the BU lines making last night were noticeably below BU's normal standard, then those lines' normal play must be a real thing of beauty. (As Harvard evidently found out in the BU game, which I missed).
Money quotes from the BU post are: "top three lines were all new due to the injuries to Holze and Poulin. For the third straight game a different player filled in for Holze, while Poulin�s and Lorms� lines were completely mixed up. With only two days to practice this showed, as many passes were off the mark throughout the game...."
We've often wondered on this thread why Harvard's line combinations have changed so frequently this season. Reasons we don't know about -- nagging injuries and illnesses, characteristics observed in practice, disciplinary issues, indiscreet tweets about opposing coaches (sorry, wrong sport) -- obviously affect players' playing time and they, combined with things like matchups against specific opponents' lines, affect line combinations. (Recall at the end of last year when the well-balanced second and third lines were restructured as a specialized production line and a specialized checking line, respectively).
So hats off to the team and the coaching staff that Wheeler, Fry and McDonald were able to share duty seamlessly and productively on the Buesser-Chute and Ryabkina-Dempsey lines last night. The team would have been sunk otherwise.
Set Lines?
Let's not overlook the flexibility shown by the forward lines in the last couple of games. This was brought home to me after reading a post on the BU thread excerpted below.
Let me make clear that this poster has made detailed and perceptive analyses of other BU games and that his comments about last night's game were made objectively, not offered as excuses, any more than we on this thread were making excuses, as distinct from objective commentary, after Christina Kessler's injury last year. What he points to is how an injury to one or more top-line players throws off the chemistry of established forward lines.
Let me also say that if the coordinated play and tape-to-tape passes I observed the BU lines making last night were noticeably below BU's normal standard, then those lines' normal play must be a real thing of beauty. (As Harvard evidently found out in the BU game, which I missed).
Money quotes from the BU post are: "top three lines were all new due to the injuries to Holze and Poulin. For the third straight game a different player filled in for Holze, while Poulin�s and Lorms� lines were completely mixed up. With only two days to practice this showed, as many passes were off the mark throughout the game...."
We've often wondered on this thread why Harvard's line combinations have changed so frequently this season. Reasons we don't know about -- nagging injuries and illnesses, characteristics observed in practice, disciplinary issues, indiscreet tweets about opposing coaches (sorry, wrong sport) -- obviously affect players' playing time and they, combined with things like matchups against specific opponents' lines, affect line combinations. (Recall at the end of last year when the well-balanced second and third lines were restructured as a specialized production line and a specialized checking line, respectively).
So hats off to the team and the coaching staff that Wheeler, Fry and McDonald were able to share duty seamlessly and productively on the Buesser-Chute and Ryabkina-Dempsey lines last night. The team would have been sunk otherwise.
