FIVE QUICK THOUGHTS
-Thought Kyle Turris looked great through forty minutes. Mostly matched up against Shea Weber, Turris did a good job of creating offence through the first two periods. Like most of the team, he seemed to fade in the third. He was the only forward with more than 20 minutes in ice time.
-Piling on Jared Cowen is obviously going to be a theme this year and there were probably a couple plays in last night’s game he would want back. Overall, I didn’t think he was terrible though. I actually thought he looked OK through the first two periods. He’s certainly being asked to play too many minutes on that top pairing. Although somewhat surprisingly, he played almost 11 minutes less than Karlsson on the night.
-Speaking of the top pairing, it wasn’t exactly a banner night for Erik Karlsson either. At even strength anyway. He’s still a treat to watch through the neutral zone and on the power play though. Expecting him to get better with each game.
-It was a pretty quiet debut for Curtis Lazar with the most noteworthy moment coming when Anton Volchenkov caught him with his head down at the Preds’ blueline. MacLean certainly showed a lot of trust in the kid though, throwing him out for the first penalty kill shift of the year and giving him more than 15 minutes of ice time. That total had him ahead of Smith, Neil, Stone and Hoffman. He went 62% on draws, had three hits and two shots on goal.
-Something I read a lot last night is that the Senators made the “same” mistakes as last season. I mean, I guess that’s true but it’s sort of how every hockey game works. One team ends up making more defensive mistakes than the other. But outside of an ugly 8-10 minutes in the third period, I thought the Senators actually played a pretty solid road game. Yes, that’s the type of game they’d like to be able to close out this year but overall, I didn’t think it was that bad of an effort. There are some things to clean up but I think we need a bigger sample size than 60 minutes to assume this team is doomed to make all the same mistakes as last season.
