Re: Irish hockey '12-'13: Why would you not wanna go there?
Calm down.
P.S. You were the one wetting your pants after the first three weekends even though we were 4-2 and had won the IceBreaker Tournament. Then we won all but one of our next ten games, where the only game we lost should have ended up a tie. JJ just has to get everyone back on the same page, no need for hystrionics.
Actually, we were 5-1 after three weekends. And while all wins are nice, none of them were over teams that would be included in the tournament should it start today, so not really a murderer's row.
Do you need to be reminded that last season as the Irish fell further and further out of contention you were the one railing against Jackson for continuing to start Mike Johnson and also had given up on the season before it was over? Pot, meet kettle, I guess. And the last time I checked, I haven't said anything is over. I said some things are worrisome.
Worrisome like losing despite scoring first, something that we've now done
3 games in a row after going 13-0 when lighting the lamp first. Like goaltending, which was the strongest area of this team by the time we were 14-4, but has now become mediocre at best. Johnson can not be counted on and Summerhays has become a nightmare of fundamental back-sliding. His glove hand looks slow, he's out of position frequently, his rebound control has gone to hell, and he's lost his cool quite visibly lately with alarming regularity. Like special teams. 1 for 18 on the PP while the other guys have scored 4 in the last 4 games. I know people are hurt, and this is as close as the team can come to having a legitimate excuse for the struggles, but to a great extent, special teams play can be impacted by doing fundamental things properly. 5-5 and 4-4 can be impacted to a much greater extent by your talent level, but special teams can rely on some very basic principles. Principles like puck support, positioning, hard work to establish net front presence and shooting the puck. Fundamentals disappear from this team with stunning regularity once things get tough. It's why they lost last year and why they have begun another tailspin this year.
We went from first place in the CCHA by a full game with 2-3 games in hand on the entire league to tied with games in hand on neither of the two teams we could have buried had we continued to play well. We were 3rd in the PWR after beating BG in December and now we are 10th. One more bad weekend and we will be on the outside looking in. Those are all facts. Not speculation. Not histrionics. Facts.
Jackson has his shiny new barn and a team full of NHL draft picks (12, three times as many as the teams we are on a four-game losing streak to
COMBINED) to work with. Yet we get outworked and outcoached repeatedly, especially in our own building. Our players and coaches all say the right things about the arena that they've been blessed to play in, and that arena was one very big and expensive reason for rostering more NHL picks than any other team in the league. Yet after christening it with a 5-0 start we are only 14-12 since. This program played in two Frozen Fours while calling the Joyce Center home. They played for a title with a team with half as many NHL prospects as this one, and got to the final game while missing their best player. In retrospect, when I said the teams from 2007-09 would mop the floor with this one, I was probably darning them with faint praise.
I want to see this team fix some problems for a change instead of letting them define yet another season. I've said it many times, talent is a heavy burden to carry. This team has yet to show it can shoulder the load.
