PLAYOFFS - HCB 2/7

The game experience began with the ICE awards going to TJ for MVP of the entire league and Meyer for the 'most efficient player'. I know I've been on a generational run of veteran-bashing (see what I did there?), but you can't help but love those two. Also, my issue is not at all with the players themselves, it's with the philosophy of the import signing process, as I hope is fairly obvious.

Reid McNeill fully dumping a HCB player into their bench, head-over-heels:

https://makeameme.org/meme/this-is-sparta-l6e3mc / https://www.eliteprospects.com/player/45609/reid-mcneill

Takeaways? Well, apart from my Ragu di Bologna from Vito Maccheroni last night, here you go:

• It was probably the loudest I've experienced in Tivoli, at least without there being some aggravating factor (e.g. scummy opponent). 
• Tokarski had some big saves.
• Harvey, the HCB goalie, was like a brick wall. Shots were 44-23 in our favour and yet they seemed relatively comfortable with him between the pipes. HCB were more clinical with their chances than we were, which helped that comfortability.
• Our PP looked better than the last game and hit the post, but we really needed a goal on the man-advantage and we did not get one. If the refs are going to continue to make a show of themselves, making special teams count is going to be even more important than usual.
• Essentially this was the same game as the last, but we did not get our deus ex machina late goal. Both home teams thus far have probably deserved to win, but neither did. I assumed it would be a classic playoff series, with home wins standard and away wins very hard to come by. The beauty of sport (and the reason you should not gamble on it) is the kind of narrative unpredictability we are witnessing here.
• Looks like my original game 7 prediction might have been better than I thought after our stealing game 1 gave me extra hope. Maybe it's a home win that we need/will decide it?! 
• We are reset back to square one. It will take a Herculean effort to go back to Bolzano and come away with a win, but it has such big implications for the rest of the series. If we can get another and a home win after, it puts us firmly in the driving seat. If Bolzano find the home victory, suddenly we might be the New York Jets' Sam Darnold (current SB champion with the Seahawks 😝) 'seeing ghosts' of Italians knocking us straight out of the playoffs, like the past two years.
• JB put it succinctly when I saw him at the end of the game (which was nice, I hadn't seen him in a while!) - "They played well! 🤷". 
• ED - "We were better. PP was good/dangerous. Their goalie (and 2 posts?) made a difference, shots were 44:23. They scored on two good passing sequences on our only 2 bigger D mistakes. We are back to needing an away win."

 

Edit: I forgot to say, they also did a better job of defending Harvey's net front than we did defending Tokarski's. That was a big difference in goals going in for them and not for us.