Wow, two different games tonight. The first ten minutes or so were dominated by the Wheat Kings. After that the level of play dropped off quite a bit.
Hayes had to make a few more important saves in the first half of the game than he did the previous two times the Blades were here. The young man shows potential and I'd personally choose to remember those saves over how the game unfolded in the third.
You'd call me crazy a month ago (and might still call me crazy
) if I said this would be Nathan Green's team in mid-January, but he was again the best player on the ice IMO. Continues to make nice plays and create offense and was deserving of his first star choice.
You get the sense the struggling powerplay is just going need a good break or two to get the confidence back.
Blade coach Molleken sure wasn't happy with Cowan scoring the fourth goal after what he thought was a penalty behind the Brandon net. He must have been looking past the unpenalized two-hander that Gillies gave Aulie to the back of the leg ten seconds earlier?
The Blades did pretty well in their Justin McCrae deadline trade IMO. One of the players they got, Chris Langkow, looks like he's going to be a player if this game was any indication. He played with a lot of jump and made a few nice plays.
I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on how the late third period activities were called penalty-wise (Scott Glennie was given a boarding major).
The boys now hit the road for five important games against everyone but Medicine Hat in the Central.