Stars-Bruins thoughts

All I can say is this looked like a frustrated team by the end of the night. Judging by some of the quotes coming out of Boston, they sounded like a frustrated team too. And some finger pointing is starting to creep in there too. It’s a mess.

The bottom line is they are 4-6-2, are allowing 4.17 goals per game, have a poor penalty kill and a power play that short-circuited big time the last two nights and ended up being a big factor in why games turned out so horribly wrong for them. In short, nothing is going right for them. That’s why the frustration and the finger pointing.

For all the finger pointing after the game (Modano’s talk about stupid penalties and guys getting too caught up with the refs and fans and Turco’s gripes about how people are playing in front of him), the most substantive thing said after the game was Dave Tippett talking about how important this coming week was and he mentioned evaluating players.

Although there is not there is a lot they can do because of the cap, they are going to have to make some moves because of the cap. Sergei Zubov should be back and if all goes well with Jere Lehtinen, he could be nearing a return too. I am not going to hold my breath on Lehtinen, but the possibility exists. That means some of the players on this roster right now are going to have to be moved because of cap reasons, specifically Zubov coming off long-term IR, and I think in the team’s current state they are going to have to make some tough decisions.

They are going to have to move a defenseman off the roster and do something at the forward spot too. That means they are are going to have to look at these first 12 games, which haven’t been pretty, and decide which players they want to go forward with here with Zubov and Lehtinen back in the lineup. Then, I would think, they have to look at that group and decided if they upgrades and how they could do that under their current cap situation.

I think that will be the most interesting thing to come out of the next week.

As for how much Zubov and Lehtinen will help, time will tell. Some veteran savvy sure wouldn’t hurt and both players make those around them better. They aren’t going to be some kind of magic cure, but they can help and this team could use any help it can get right now. 

Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.