Friday, November 12, 2010

A Net for Catching Days

"A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time."
-Annie Dillard


Hats off again to Michal Neuvirth, who battled through a less than perfect performance last night to get a big win over a talented and dangerous Tampa Bay team. That's four straight starts giving up 3+ goals for Neuvirth, and he and the team have managed to win all four. And anytime you can win four (well, six really) in a row giving up over three goals a game, you have to be happy with a) how much offensive support you're getting, and b) that your goalie is finding ways to win even though he's not playing as well as he can.

Some disconcerting trends continued last night though...two bad rebounds wound up in the back of the net, and he (and the team) not only gave up the first goal of the game again, they blew another third period lead. That has to stop. I said this was going to be a detail blog, and it will continue to be, but all wins count the same and Neuvirth now has 10 of them, one more than anyone else in the league. Can't scoff at that.

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I've mentioned here how I'm not in love with the way Bruce Boudreau manages his goalies, so I'll offer up my opinion about how the rest of the month should probably look. This assumes that Varlamov gets 1-2 good rehab starts in Hershey over the next 5 days:

Sat, Nov 13 @ Buffalo: Neuvirth
Sun, Nov 14 vs Atlanta: Holtby
Wed, Nov 17 vs Buffalo: Neuvirth
Fri, Nov 19 @ Atlanta: Neuvirth
Sat, Nov 20 vs Philly: Varlamov
Mon, Nov 22 @ New Jersey: Neuvirth
Wed, Nov 24 @ Carolina: Neuvirth
Fri, Nov 26 vs Tampa Bay: Varlamov
Sun, Nov 28 vs Carolina: Neuvirth

The last four are sort of a crap shoot, but I have to figure Neuvirth gets three out of four there, and this way he doesn't play three in a row for the rest of the month. I'll revisit this as we go, but that's how I'd want it to play out if i was BB.

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