Team Canada

The game started pretty much as predicted with Canada getting an early goal on the power play off the stick of Edmonton Oilers prospect Jordan Eberle. After that, the rest of the first period was scoreless although the Canadians dominated much of the play but were unable to solve Swiss goalie Benjamin Conz. Conz was one of the main reasons the Swiss beat Russia yesterday as he had 50 saves on 52 shots. Both teams had powerplays throughout the remainder of the first.

Canada came out flat to start the second period and gave the Swiss a couple of early power plays chances to even the score but the Canadians ended up with a great short handed goal by Marco Scandella. This was followed less than 2 minutes later with a great play by Taylor Hall to make it 3-0. Canada continued to play lazy and soon after took their third penalty of the period. The Swiss finally capitalized to make it 3-1. The Canadians still didn’t learn and took their 4th penalty of the period but they were able to kill this penalty off and were able to close out the period with a 3-1 lead.

Canada came out strong to start the third period and pretty much salted the game away just less than 3 minutes into the period as Brayden Schenn scored an even strength goal to lift Canada to a 4-1 lead. A very tired Swiss team started taking penalties during the middle part of the period but the Canadians were unable to score but did continue to take time off the clock. Finally with under 4 minutes to go the Canadians finally put the game to bed with goals by Stefan Della-Rovere and Taylor Hall and 6-1 was the final score.

The game did end on a nasty note though as Swiss forward Jeffrey Fuglister took Canadian defender Travis Hamonic into the boards from behind deep in the Canadian zone. Hamonic left the ice holding his left arm and his condition was unknown at this time. Fuglister received a 5 minute major penalty and a game misconduct for the hit and could be suspended for the bronze medal game on Tuesday. The final shots in the game favored Canada 44-21.

Canada plays in the gold medal game for the 9th straight year on Tuesday against the winner of the USA vs. Sweden to be played later tonight. The Swiss will play the bronze medal game earlier on Tuesday against the loser of the same game. Canada will need to play better than they have the last 2 games though if they are to make it 6 gold medals in a row. Both Sweden and the USA will be a tough opponent and with Canada already beating the USA they could be the tougher of the 2 opponents with the USA having lots to prove and avenge.

UPDATE: Canadian defenceman Travis Hamonic will indeed miss the finals with a suspected separated shoulder.

Saturday night the Oilers started the 2010 portion of their schedule with a 4-1 loss to the Sharks in San Jose. Same result, one big difference. Again, the Oilers offence didn’t create the kind of chances that win many games but today they didn’t have the goaltending to give them any chance to win. While he stood on his head to make the saves against Calgary, Deslauriers appeared to be sleeping through portions of the game and 3 of the 4 goals should have been saved. Yes, as usual there were defensive breakdowns but fluff shots should not go in no matter who is in goal. Critical saves need to be made at critical times in order to give your team and chance to win and this happens to infrequently.

There are many problems with this team but the lack of an experienced goaltender is a big one. Play Khabibulin 50 or so games and have Deslauriers play the other 30, that was the original plan. This plan allows a young goalie to play some games and get experience and learn from a proven veteran. With Khabibulin on the shelf, who is Deslauriers learning from? Certainly not from a goaltending coach whose 17 years were mostly spent in the minor leagues. Frederic Chabot only played 32 games in the NHL during those 17 seasons.

Now it has been more than goaltending that has lost games for the Oilers but I will get into that as I go along with my posts. Maybe it is time this season to shut the “Bhulin Wall” down and start rotating the young goalies. Devan Dubnyk has been up with the team since Khabibulin went down but has only had a minor amount of playing time. He is in the same situation that Deslauriers was in the past few seasons. In fact Dubnyk has been sitting around so long that he was sent back to Springfield to get some playing time and Bryan Pitton, who was toiling in the ECHL was called up to back up Deslauriers. This season is already gone and it is just a matter of how low can they go so maybe it is time to give Dubnyk some additional playing time with Deslauriers obviously not able to handle the load (at this point of his career anyway) and Devan being touted as the goalie of the future for this franchise.

It appeared in the post game interview last night that Pat Quinn has given up on this team recovering (as I think most fans have). He used terms like “battled hard”, and the “guys had try”. Quinn literally sounded defeated, much as Craig MacTavish did much of last year. I think most fans would agree now that it is time to get rid of some of the older dead wood and start a full rebuilding. The team rebuilt the coaching staff after last season and it is now time to start with the team. There is too much uninspired play by many of the team and that is being lead by a veteran core that looks like it could care less. Mike Milbury (who has proven nothing as a coach or GM) said last night after the game that the current Oiler team was the worst team in their 30 year history. I am not sure it is the worst, but it is definitely in the top (or is that bottom) 3 Oiler teams for sure.