Panic! at the Can
| 07 Jan 2010
Last night the Isles beat the Avs in a 3-2 game Recap: (Anyone but Detroit, Mile High Hockey, Lighthouse Hockey). I thought it was an okay played game. Both teams played pretty well, although you could tell both teams are young teams who made some glaring mistakes. Overall I was pretty entertained and my thoughts after the game were "Bummer. At least we've got Carolina Friday". Then I went to bed.
I mean the Avs played ok, and were victimized by a couple lucky/skill goals that are not commonplace. Sim scored a goal that bounced off of his ass and went directly to his feet. Shremp had a beauty and deserves a ton of credit. I don't want to say it was flukey, because that would disrespect Shremp's abilities, but that's not a goal the Avs are going to have scored on them all that often. And Roloson was a beast last night. Even Okoposo's game-winning goal came partially because Cumiskey fell down. I don't want to say the Islander's got lucky, they played well enough to win, but I just didn't find all that much discouraging with the Avs game last night.
I was pretty shocked this morning when I went to blogs, papers and comments to look at the reaction to last's nights game. There's a lot of frustration, and in some corners it has turned to almost borderline rage... and I just don't get it.
No one does overreactionary misguided uninformed pessimism like Mark Kiszla of the Denver post. (Nobody). He's like the Dealin Doug of overreactionay misguided pessimism (if you're not from the Denver Area, you won't get this joke). Kiszla didn't disapoint with a "THE WHEELS ARE COMING OFF" column that Chicken Little thinks is too much. While he goes back to October 30th to make his stretched point, and the Avs had a miserable November, he seems to miss that the avs have won 9 of their last 13. Somehow winning 9 of 13 translates to wheels falling off the bandwagon.
But it's not just Newspaper columnists that watch their first game of the year since the Broncos season is done so now they desperately need something to write about and the Nuggets didn't play last night that that are being, in my opinion, a tad over reactionary about last night.
Mile High Mayhem, a blog I like and a guy whose Avs opinion I respect, also had two overreactions that I just don't understand. His first one is semi-understandable as it's an immediate post-game reaction, and emotions can always be high. I don't understand his second one, at all, where he calls out Foote, Tucker (okay that I get) and most perplexing Paul Stastny (who admittedly had an awful game, well for him.)
It's not just him, as there seems to be a sudden abundance of Stastny critics coming out of the woodwork today, (and the MHH comments are no exception) and frankly it just absolutely baffles me. not the critiques of his game last night, but of insinuations of being overpaid, having no heart etc. First the Overpaid: Stastny is the 25th highest paid player in the NHL... he's 20th in scoring he also kills penalties and is superb defensively, and a good portion of the 20 above him can't same the say thing. He's the Avs top scorer. In fact the top line (nominally Wolski-Stastny-Hejduk) is 1-2-3 in scoring. The other common member on the top line: Chris Stewart, is tied for 4th. In fact Stastny's GFon/60 is second on the team, behind only Stewart, and his GAon/60 is respectable 2.8. which is even more impressive when you consider he takes a lot more defesnive zone draws than offensive zone ones. The idea he isn't earning his pay is preposterous.
I think Avs fans have been adding too much importance to single games recently after falling to 5th in the conference (despite going 3-2 and getting 60% of their possible points), after being in 3rd for most of the season. And there's a sense of panic setting in. With only 2 games in the last 7 days, and 5 in the last 2 weeks, combined with the feeling like the Avs are sinking it's easy to place way too much importance on one game, which leads to too many players getting called out for bad seasons, when it's really a bad game or two.
So everyone, calm down, relax. The Avs are going on a 3-game road trip, ending in hated Calgary. Let's see how that goes before filling ourselves with rage. After all there's 38 more games to go here, getting the pitchforks out after one mediocre game, when the season has been pretty enjoyable so far, seems a bit over the top.