Day 11: Coaches Corner

It's a pretty easy day for the coach today, as nothing is going to change for tonight's lineup. The scratches are changing (Nylander/Wiemer in, Isbister out), but that's about it. We thought about using Nylander tonight, but felt he needed a little while to adjust to his new surroundings. Plus, as a group we were very pleased with how the lines worked against the Wicked Ale. There were goals scored by the first line, the second line, and the PP, as well as a shorthanded bonus into the empty net.

One particular aspect of the last game that I was very pleased with was the PK, and I'm willing to give at least some of the credit to the insertion of Adam Hall into the lineup and onto the second PK unit. We killed off all six penalties, which had been an Achilles heel of ours through five games. Another tweak to the penalty kill was the use of Sean Hill. Paired with Regehr, Hill took some of the pressure off Chris Pronger, who had been playing pretty much the entire powerplay and entire penalty kill. While Pronger is certainly a workhorse, we were afraid that we were using him too heavily. The end result was 21 minutes for Pronger against the Ale (low, but we had few PPs) and a more balanced spread to the D minutes.

Martin Gerber will start again against the Spectres, playing his third great game of the season against the Ale. While we feel that Mason has the potential to perhaps be just as good or better than Gerber, we'll ride the hot hand until a change is needed. With no 4 games in 5 nights stretches upcoming, Gerber will be given a chance to settle in as the #1 and run with the ball as long as he can.