One game I can understand as abberation and just forgetting about it but the team's play of late (sans the Wild beatdown) has not been very good and if they aren't falling behind they are giving up multi-goal leads. Injuries, illness and just plain bad luck happens but I am hoping they don't just slough it off and do take what is happening as a lesson to be learned.
It's almost the norm to see the defensive deficient Danny Briere barely above 0 when it comes to +/-. It isn't the norm when Claude Giroux is a -1. Last year much ado was made about Matt Carle being + 2,000 or something. He's a whole +2 this morning.
+/- is no favorite of mine as it doesn't tell you anything but a simple fact: the player was on the ice for a goal for and one against. It doesn't tell you if he was out against top flight competition or just stepped on the ice on a line change. Still, one would expect a player who has 50 total points to be on the plus side of the ledger and by a good bit too.
A collapse or death spiral isn't imminent but they all(coaches included) need to do a better job if they don't want to be in a bad position come playoff time. Then again, maybe they might want to be on the road when the playoffs start because home ice seems to be poison.
Outs
Posted on Jan 20, 2012, 12:05 PM from IP address 24.154.82.76