Re: Northeastern Huskies 2014-15: Release the Hounds!
Everybody should write a letter to NU and to HockeyEast to protest the idiotic media timeouts every 4 minutes on Saturday night. Nobody goes to the games to watch the players stand around and college kids "clean the ice" four minutes into a period.
If they want to mimic tv games, break when the tv timeouts would be, which do not happen every 4 minutes. I rather have two stoppages at 1:30 each, then four stoppages for 1:00 each.
Anyway, great crowd and atmosphere Saturday night. Perfectly fair result I thought for two teams who struggle in just about every facet of the game. While it has been pointed out numerous times how good the PK was Saturday night, please keep in mind UNH is 3 for 33 to start the season. We do not give other PK's props for shutting us down, we should hold off on the gold stars until they stop someone good. Oh look, here comes Merrimack with the 2nd best PP in the conference. Shut them down, we can talk improvement.
Can we stop complaining about Roy and playing defense? He is not here to back check. He is here to score goals. He just needs to find a way to start doing that again. Playing with a center who can get him the puck would be a start.
McMurtry is still a TO machine, so why they put him with the #1 unit on the PP is beyond me. Every time the puck went to him, it went back out the zone. J. Stevens plays his best hockey when playing with his brother. Quietest game of the year for Szmatula who was way more active Friday night. He did get hamstrung with Snydeman though, that may have been a reason, along with never playing along side Adam Reid before as far back as I can remember. I really like watching Collier, especially away from the puck. He knows what he is doing out there. He gets into the right positions and never stops moving, he just never seems to see the puck. I do not like to rag on freshmen the first 3 months of the season, but Sikura is invisible out there for the most part. I would sit him and play 8 dman. They would get more out of Sauce on the wing then they do Sikura.
This is not a diss on D. Roy, but the only reason they got a win, and the game was close on Friday was because of Witt. They would have gotten killed in both games if Roy was in there. He is not a Hockey East caliber goalie. Being defeated was not his fault, not at all, that is not what I am saying, but the idea that they could use him as a viable backup if something happened to Witt is mindboggling to me.
Good for them in getting a win. Much stiffer challenge in Merrimack this weekend, a team that plays a defensive system and plays it well. Not to mention the top special teams unit in Hockey East.