Chairman How's Glorious Army
Significantly Lowering the Bar Since 2008.

What we saw last night:

1. A crisp, clean, quick game: The Crunch moved with an urgency we haven’t seen in the year and a half Holick has been coaching them. They were fast to the puck, quick moving with it, accurate. They didn’t dick around in their zone for an hour and a half. This was good, as the few times that was allowed to happen, Norfolk scored.
2. Players in the right place at the right time: You know those goals that happen just because a player crashed the net and was right where he needed to be when he needed to be there? We’ve seen that happen time and time again this year…against the Crunch. Last night, that changed, hopefully for good. Dan Sexton’s goal, his first in 26 games, was a thing of lucky timing, and if it wasn’t for Yawney’s emphasis on quick plays that crash the net, he never would have been in position to get the puck through that hole left by an out-of-position goaltender. Never.
3. A coaching staff that talks to their team: One of the most marked changes we saw last night was a coaching staff–all three of them, even Stone Cold Statue Holick–talking to the team. The communication was constant. The expectations were clear, both what Yawney expects from the team and what he wants from his assistant and associate coaches.
4. Consistent goaltending: Who knew we had a fantastic backup plan in Marco Cousineau? This man’s talents have been wasted in the ECHL. Absolutely wasted. He has won three out of the Crunch’s last four games. If I was the Ducks, I’d use JD as a trading tool to get something and leave a Tarkki/Cousineau tandem here. There is clearly no reason to leave him in Elmira, not any longer.
5. Big defensemen: Smaby is HUGE. Holy crap. He’s tall, and he’s good. Newport wasn’t kidding when he Tweeted to me a few days ago that Smaby is our best d-man. He was fabulous last night. He and Fraser are exactly the size and experience our blue line has been missing.
6. A team that stuck up for each other: When the not-used-to-losing Norfolk started to goon it up with the Crunch up 4-0, 5-0, and 6-0, the team went into protection mode. Fraser and Kennedy dished out hits that needed to happen. Kennedy got penalized for it a bit more than I’d like to see, but although there were no all-out fights, the players did what they needed to do to send messages.
7. A game that was just fun to watch.