Winning Ugly.
There’s really no better way to put than my esteemed partner did in the previous post: this team did not deserve to win last night’s game. They did, which leaves us with a couple of things to talk about.
I know it’s still very early on, but there is already a pattern settling itself in for this season: when this team plays a good team, it gets blown out of the building. Conversely, when this team plays a team it shouldn’t have a problem with, they end up falling behind and have to pull it out at the end. Obviously, this is not a good place to be, especially in this division, where the top three playoff spots can more or less be penciled in as belonging to Hershey, WBS and Binghamton.
I’d give some kind of detailed analysis about why this defensive corps isn’t going to get the job done, but that’s apparent to everyone that was in attendance last night. It’s been said that none of the guys in this corps is a top one, two or three defenseman at this level, and that’s probably pretty accurate. What’s glaringly absent (and again, this is just based on observations from a handful of games this year, so this is subject to change) is, as Earl Weaver so eloquently put it many years ago, “a couple of big cocksuckers who can fucking hit every once in a while.” While I would never claim to be such a wordsmith, Earl was on to something. What’s missing — and sorely needed — on the roster right now is a big, physical stay at home defenseman who can throw the body and set the tone early on. In the mad hockey laboratory of my mind, I picture this guy as having the size of our old favorite Libor U and the hitting ability of a guy like Curtis Glencross. Whether such a guy exists out there, that’s anybody’s guess, but it sure sounds nice, does it not?
Now, this obviously is not going to happen anytime soon. There’s no cavalry riding in to save the day, no gift from Santa under the tree this year. This is, as it has been discussed previously, the lineup we’re going to have all year. This is it. You can call that sad, scary, frustrating, shitty, whatever you’d like: it is what it is, and these guys are going to have to get a whole lot better in a hurry. There needs to be more accountability to each other as a defensive unit, better communication and the willingness to just say fuck it and throw the body more. To see an opposing team come in and essentially prison-bitch our defensive corps (how’s that for a new verb?) like Norfolk did last night is an embarrassment. It should only take one pass to clear the zone, boys.
I really hate to say this because I like the guy and he’s always been very cool to me personally and this site in general, but LaCosta needs to play to his capabilities. I’m not sure what the problem is, but the Danny we’ve seen so far this year isn’t the Danny that we saw last year. It’s absolutely unrealistic to expect the guy to notch a shutout every night, but letting in an alarming number of soft goals is something else entirely. I don’t know that anyone can say what the issue is, but it seems clear (to me, anyway) that something isn’t quite right with the guy. As shaky as he’s been thus far, a Keystone Kops-style defense really isn’t going to help matters much.
Through all of that, these guys still managed to pull out one of the ugliest wins you’ll ever see last night. Sure, it was a nice comeback and you can go to the “there’s no quit in these guys” card in the Rolodex of Cliches, but let’s all be honest for a minute. Norfolk, at the moment, is not that good of a hockey team. Neither is the Crunch. What we seemed to have seen last night is a game where neither team could do enough to win, but one team did just enough to piss it away. I probably should be more excited than I am about these guys grabbing two points last night, but that was just ugly hockey and there’s no getting around that. Still, it’s early, and there is plenty of time to get everything moving in the right direction. I hope that’s the case, because if it isn’t, we’re in some trouble.
