Can't read too much into last weekend. Good teams win the games they should and Lowell did that. Very obvious by play of team and Coach's comments that he wasn't real pleased with Fri effort and consistency in play. Felt Sat game was a better effort. Overall take some positives away from weekend and hopefully some developed a little more confidence after getting onto scoresheet and getting some points.
Keys to weekend, I believe, will be establishing physical presence against a good skating NU team including a strong forecheck and placing pucks where Lowell has support and opportunity to track and retrieve loose pucks. Puck management and reducing the number of turnovers is always key with this team. One area that surfaced last week was a lack of width and depth to their attack on the entries into the offensive zone. Numerous times we had 3 forwards all in a straight line horizontally inside the dots on their spacing crossing the blue one. This becomes easy to defend and leads to odd numbered rushes if the puck is turned over. In the offensive zone, we still need to see more puck rotation east to west and from low to high and high to low. This should spread the defensive zone coverage more, open up both shooting and passing lanes and allow more shots to the net coupled with being able to get to the hard areas in front of the net for second chance opportunities. Also need to see tape to tape passes, better sequencing on power play with puck movement and then rotation as opposed to skating the puck around in the offensive zone and then moving the puck at last minute or when options have been reduced under pressure.
This will be a big weekend where we need to see Lowell continue to build some momentum and consistency in their game where they win the puck battles, wear teams down shift after shift, reduce the number of mistakes and be dominant for longer stretches in the game. I am curious to see if Coach Bazin will begin to solidify the line-up and see less movement of players in and out. Obviously a win or loss on Fri will play a role in those decisions. Those are my observations.
