Quick post to put the news out there….
Pekka Rinne is hurt again….Dexshow is on his way back to Nashville.
Haven’t been able to find details about Pekka’s injury, so I can’t speculate if this should be considered a temporary move, or if we should get used to Jeremy Smith and Chet Pickard as our netminders for awhile.
(photo credit: Scott Paulus)
Welcome home indeed.
After a rollercoaster of a ten game road trip, the Admirals played their first home game in almost a month on Wednesday night. They spoiled the return of Claude Noel and Jonas Andersson to the tune of a 6-3 victory.
After the long power play drought on the road trip, this marked the second game in a row with a power play goal. 3:18 into the game, Jamie Lundmark got the goal just in front of the goalie, but Andreas Thuresson and Kelsey Wilson deserve a ton of credit as well. After an offensive zone dump-in, Wilson won the chase to recover the puck. He found Thuresson by the right goalpost, who backhanded a perfect pass to Lundmark by the left goalpost.
Coach Lambert liked the way they came out at the start of the game.
47 seconds into the second period, Gabriel Bourque took a long feed from Jon Blum, and cashed on a beautiful breakaway goal. He picked up the pass right at the offensive blue line, deked just in front of the crease, and beat Tyler Weiman with a backhand up top.
And then in a 3:06 minute span, both teams scored twice. Chris Mueller scored his ninth of the year on a great second effort, after his first shot was saved by Weiman’s right pad. Mueller took a couple wacks at the small rebound, and was about to give the Admirals the three goal lead.
That lasted for 19 seconds. Former Admiral Jonas Andersson (pronounced Joe-nus these days, apparently) deked Ryan Thang out of his skates, and had way too much space to operate on a delayed penalty call. His shot beat Dex low.
Jordan Schroeder scored 1:18 later on a goal that I think Dex wants back. Might have been re-directed en route, but it looked like he had a tough time picking it up.
Linus Klasen finished a rush with Chris Mueller to give the Ads their two goal lead back. It was a great hustle play to get behind some out-of-place defensemen, and it’s great to see Klasen score his second in as many games.
In the 3rd period, the Moose found some of their legs, and outshot Milwaukee 12-3 in the final frame. They scored a power play goal at the 9:56 mark on a play that would never have happened if the Admirals defender had been able to clear the puck out of the zone. Instead, the puck was kept in at the point, and Evan Oberg’s shot found the top left corner of the net, past a screened Mark Dekanich.
Mueller got his second of the game, scoring into an empty net. And then Mike Bartlett beat Weiman on a shot that he didn’t seem too interested in stopping with 21 seconds left.
NOTES:
– Steve Begin was a late scratch with an upper-body injury.
– What else does Chris Mueller need to do to get an NHL contract already? Here’s Coach Lambert on his hottest forward right now.
– Sooooooo while we were getting ready to come to the game today, we found out about the Admirals signing center Andrew Lord to a PTO contract. Lord had been playing with Wheeling of the ECHL, and he made his debut tonight. And Dan Gendur made his home debut. Here’s coach Lambert on the new guys.
– Admirals were outshot again, this time by a 30-20 tab. Getting those numbers flipped around is something that coach Lambert says the team needs to work on.
– Our friend “Sutty” was back in press row tonight, and he gives us this great description of the Ford/Maxwell fight. Enjoy.
“About 2 minutes later Ford and Maxwell (not the pig from the Geico commercials going wee wee wee all the way home) got into a fight. Well, they were mostly standing around and they looked to be running their fingers through each other’s hair. But all in all it was called a fight and they both went to the bin for said infraction.”
Welcome back, Sutty. You paint a picture like none other.
OK ROUNDTABLE! Here are some items for discussion:
1. You may or may not have read/heard that Klasen got called out by coach Lambert recently. Seeing him tonight, do you think Klasen played with more detail than he has been?
2. Who had the better deke — Bourque or Andersson?
3. Give me a haiku about Chris Mueller.
4. Simply put — did you like the way they looked? I think it was a pretty good effort considering how shorthanded the team is right now. What do you think?
5. Do you have a favorite Claude Noel moment?
Offense (B-): Clearly, coach Lane Lambert has some work to do with Milwaukee in making the Admirals a more dangerous offensive hockey team. Other than Linus Klasen and a few other players, Milwaukee isn’t blessed with an abundance of firepower. Therefore the offense has to come by way of committee effort–a Nashville trademark. Prior to the road trip, the Admirals got goals from players on their top three lines, but that dried up some in Texas and Oklahoma. Milwaukee averages 2.55 goals per game, which is not going to cut it long term.
Defense (B+): This might have been the hardest grade for me to judge. 90% of time Milwaukee has really impressed me in their own end, preventing their opponent from getting quality scoring chances against. Allowing just 2.36 goals against per game is a testament to the Admirals efforts in the defensive zone. However, lapses at bad times have proved punishing for Milwaukee.
Goaltending (A-): If this only had to do with the performance of Mark Dekanich, I would state it as an A or A+, but No. 2 slot has hardly been reliable so far for Milwaukee. It’s nice to see Jeremy Smith picking up some much needed wins for the Admirals, but Milwaukee really needs Chet Pickard to elevate his game to the higher level he seems more than capable of reaching, but for some reason hasn’t found yet.
Special Teams (C-): Carrying a power play ranked 20th in the AHL at 15.8% and penalty kill ranked 18th working at an 82.1% efficiency just isn’t going to cut it long term. The power play in particular went cold as the Admirals headed south on the road. For a team that struggles at times to score goals, special teams could prove to be a decisive weapon for Milwaukee competing against more offensively gifted clubs.
Final Grade (A-): Milwaukee has far exceeded my expectations through the first quarter of the season, which is a credit to Lambert efforts and the efforts of the team as a whole. The Admirals were a young and unproven club to start the year, but prior the extended road trip the club was starting to form solid identity as a tough team to play against. But don’t mistake young and unproven for a lack of talent. There is plenty of talent in Milwaukee to build a winning hockey club, and so far Lambert has the Admirals heading in the right direction toward to a berth in the AHL playoffs.
So Roundtable, What are your grades for the Admirals so far?
The Admirals finished their ten game road trip with a win Sunday afternoon in San Antonio. The three week trek ended with a 5-3 victory over the West Division leading San Antonio Rampage. Milwaukee finishes the four state journey with a 5-3-0-2 record leaving them with a 11-6-1-4 record overall, good enough for 4th in the West Division and four points out of first.
Chris Mueller finally snapped a nine game power play drought when he scored at 15:54 of the first period of Sunday’s game. Milwaukee had gone 0-32 in the first nine games of the road trip until they scored thrice on the PP Sunday.
Linus Klasen scored on the PP at 16:55 of the third period on for the GWG. Klasen had an adventurous road trip with his new team and coach but still leads the team with ten goals on the season.
Jeremy Smith collected his second victory of the season Sunday turning away 33 shots.
For the scoring recaps here are the links for the Admirals recap, Rampage recap, and the box score.
With the season long road trip ending, what is your grade to this point?
Are you satisfied with the road trip results?
Game nine of the ten game road trip found the Admirals playing the Houston Aeros for the first time this season. Battling some bad puck luck, the Ads were able to salvage a point in a 2-1 shoot-out loss. The box score is here. The Admirals recap is here. The Aeros recap is here (although the intern author isn’t quite sure who went first in the shootout, and the sequence of events is out of order… Pesky details…). The Third Intermission blog recap is here .
Through the first 40 minutes, things looked similar to last night’s game against the Texas Stars. Some good chances, with both goaltenders standing tall to deny every shot.
But different than last night, it was the home team that was awarded the first goal. I say “awarded” because the Aeros got credit for a goal that looked like it hit the crossbar and kicked back out. A Jared Spurgeon shot from the near face-off dot hit metal, and the goal lamp went on after Spurgeon started celebrating (insert Derek Jeter joke here). Referee Koharski-du-jour was trailing the play and called it a goal. He spoke with the goal judge, and then pointed to center ice. Meanwhile, the arena kept showing the replay over and over again, and it looks like they may have missed that call. In the end, it doesn’t matter where it hit — it was a goal, and the Admirals found themselves trailing 5:12 into the 3rd.
The Ads did answer back with an Aaron Johnson goal at the 13:15 mark of the 3rd. The Aeros failed to clear the zone, and after Johnson was able to fully control the puck, he sent a backhand shot from the near circle that beat Anton Khudobin five-hole.
So the game went to overtime and a shootout. Casey Wellman went first in the shootout and deked Dex out of his pads. There was some question from Koharski whether it was a goal or not, as he appeared to waive it off and also point to the back of the net. But the goal stood. Chris Mueller scored for Milwaukee, but then in the sudden death section of the shootout, Spurgeon slipped the puck just under Dex’s left pad. Jon Blum had the chance to send it to the next round, but he was not able to beat Khudobin.
——————–
Can’t blame the loss on the questionable goal. This was the second straight game that the Admirals could only muster one goal in regulation, and as great as Dekanich has been, we can’t expect him to win every game 1-0. Yes, it was their 6th game in 9 days. Yes, they are banged up a bit. But the offense needs to reappear.
– Linus Klasen was not scratched for a second straight game — instead Dan Gendur was a healthy scratch while Coach Lambert dressed seven defensemen. Aaron Johnson spent some time on the left wing, and did a nice job.
– The Admirals are still zero-for-the-road-trip on the power play.
– Do you prefer your hockey games with lots of goals? You should have been in Rosemont tonight. Check out this box score (and the happy ending too)!
Ok Roundtable….regardless of what happens tomorrow afternoon in San Antonio, the Admirals will be coming home with at least 10 of the 20 possible points on this road trip. Can we call it a success? An okay trip? A failure?
(Photo Credit: Scott Paulus)
After setting the league on fire in October, Linus Klasen’s production has settled down a bit. On this roadtrip, he has only produced one goal and one assist. And on Friday night, Klasen found himself as a healthy scratch against the Texas Stars.
This may come as a surprise to many, that a team would bench their leading scorer. But there’s a lot more to the story.
In Lane Lambert’s pre-game interview with Aaron Sims, which will be broadcast before the game against the Houston Aeros tonight on Sportsradio1250 WSSP, Coach talks about a lot of things….Faceoffs, Steve Begin, Dan Gendur, penalty killing, Houston scouting report….oh, and what’s up with Klasen.
Here’s a clip from the interview.
“Well he’s got to raise his compete level. He’s got to be a lot more detailed. It’s not pond hockey here; we’re playing under a team system and a team structure. He’s a terrific individual skilled player, and we need him. We need him to be on our team and we need him to be playing well. And he’s going to score for us yes, but at the end of the day, Linus has been more of a liability lately on the ice turning pucks over and in the defensive zone, than he has been putting up any numbers. At some point in time when we’re asking our team to be detailed and be committed, the players or player that isn’t has to sit and watch and get on board. And that’s what happened to him last night.
This sounds like it could be Peter Olvecky part two, here. I hope not….because we all know how that ended….and it wasn’t well.
No word yet on whether or not he’ll be scratched again tonight in Houston.
I’ll go on record saying that I support Lane’s decision 100%. There’s no room for players in such a structured system at this level to just do their own thing. The question now is going to be how will Linus respond on the ice and at practice.
Again, catch the full interview in the pre-game show of tonight’s broadcast on Sportsradio 1250 WSSP.
No Linus Klasen. No Matt Halischuk. No Mark Van Guilder. No Blake Geoffrion.
No problem.
Steve Begin scored the only goal of the game 13:26 into the 3rd period, and the Admirals snapped their losing skid Friday night just outside of Austin, Texas. 1-0, Ads over Stars.
Full disclosure….didn’t get a chance to hear the broadcast…so I’m working off the box score, the game recaps, and a couple horrible rounds of bowling… (started with two splits…and that kind of set the tone for the evening)
Mark Dekanich (only your SECOND star of the game) turned aside all 29 shots in the win. It was his 3rd shutout the year, which ties him for the league lead in that category. Think he’ll get the start Saturday night in Houston?
Dan Gendur did make his debut, and had a team high four shots on goal. And the Ads dressed seven defensemen, so Grant Lewis was able to get some game time. Good thing too — he was the primary assist on Begin’s goal.
While the Admirals power play woes continued (0 for 4), they kept the Stars off the board on all seven of their power plays, including another late game penalty….(And it wasn’t Begin this time either!) Kelsey Wilson was guilty of a high-sticking infraction with 1:04 left in the game.
I’ll sum it up like this…..great to get these two points to get them back on track. Just what the doctor ordered.
(Photo credit: Scott Paulus)
This concept was brought up in the comments section of another post, but I think it would be worth an entire post.
A Preds blogger had mentioned that it might be good for the Preds to swap out Wilson and Nick Spaling for Steve Begin and Jamie Lundmark.
I’ve presented the scenerio to some of the folks over at Ontheforecheck.com, and I’ll cherry pick some of their thoughts throughout this post.
Colin Wilson has two goals and four assists on the season so far, playing in 20 games. Obviously, expectations were higher for Wilson this year and one could look at that stat line and suggest that maybe he’s not ready yet. Seth Lake offers this summation of Wilson’s season so far.
“My thought was (and still largely is) that Wilson has been the most displaced player on the roster this season due to the injuries that have plagued our lineup. In the season opener he was on the wing with Lombardi at center and Erat on the wing. Within two games both of his linemates were out of the lineup with injuries and Wilson started to get shuffled as the other lines simply moved up and he slid backward. After Goc was injured, Wilson got switched to center where he was very inconsistent, then when Goc returned he was again moved back to wing until Legwand went down and he was yo-yo’d back and forth from shift to shift as Trotz tried to find some chemistry.”
In the last 12 games, Wilson has just one assist…November 3rd at Phoenix.
Now, last season, Wilson had two goals and two assists before a groin injury sidelined him after a Halloween game. Less than a month later, Wilson was sent to Milwaukee on an extended conditioning assignment. 40 games later, Wilson was almost a point per game, and was starting to play with the confidence that you’d expect from such an elite prospect. We watched the change right in front of us. He had points in 11 of his last 12 games in Milwaukee, and knew it was only a matter of time before he’d be recalled.
Would it be beneficial for his development to spend some more time in Milwaukee, getting minutes on a top line?
Seth thinks so.
“It’s a long term development and asset management issue more than anything else for me right now. I think Wilson’s not being as effective as he can be at the NHL level with limited minutes and not really having any consistency in his role from game to game and needs to get back to playing bigger minutes as a top-six forward to avoid stunting his development.
“Is it realistic to expect the Predators to make these moves? Probably not, but to me…I don’t see a real reason not to right now.”
Chris Burton, from OTF has a similar take.
“I think that the idea of swapping these players out is a good one, but unrealistic. Spaling will be sent down eventually, when Lombardi returns, but I don’t think Wilson goes anywhere. Would it help his game to center Klasen and Thuresson, or whoever? Most likely. The Predators are struggling right now, and so is Wilson – but Trotz isn’t putting him in a position to succeed. Nine minutes a game is NOT giving him the best opportunity. Maybe he’s not showing Trotz what he needs to see, but its impossible to do so alongside Spaling and Kostitsyn. Wilson is very much a top six forward. At any rate, I’d say there’s an outside possibility Wilson is demoted for Lundmark. Jamie would provide hustle and a “Swiss Army Knife” type ability, but in the end, nothing’s gonna happen.”
So Roundtable, what do you think? Obviously, from the Admirals perspective, we could use any kind of offensive jump-start possible right now. But from the Preds perspective, and from the perspective of Wilson’s long-term development, do you think this move would be beneficial or realistic?
1) The Admirals Team Speed. During my preseason chats, a one word description from defenseman Scott Ford on his early impressions of Milwaukee really stood out. The 2010-2011 Admirals would be–Dynamic. It was a surprising thought, but watching Milwaukee play that is exactly the description I have for team so far. The youthful Admirals play an up tempo, high speed game that is a joy to watch when it is all on the same page. Sure Milwaukee suffered through plenty of growing pains in the early going, but when everything is clicking, the Admirals pack a high octane punch.
2) Mark Dekanich’s Goaltending. There has something in Mark Dekanich’s eye this season, a look of determination that says the puck just isn’t getting by him. At 24-years old the maturing goaltender is off to a fantastic start, allowing just 21 goals against in his first 13 games of action. Even more impressive is the work load Dekanich has taken on. Playing nearly every night in Milwaukee, Dekanich has been between the pipes in all but one of his team’s wins. If Dekanich continues at numbers in the ballpark of his current pace, expect interested calls from NHL teams to start raining in Milwaukee’s ears.
3) The Wow Factor of Linus Klasen. On opening night it didn’t take long for me take notice of Linus Klasen on the ice—about one shift. From that point, Klasen has been joy to watch and follow. Every time the puck is on his stick, it seems like some electric is about to happen. Perhaps Klasen in Swedish means instant offense, because that is exactly what the 24-year old has provided for Milwaukee this season.
4) The Candor and Color of Coach Lane Lambert. If there is one person qualified to be annoyed with me this season, it would have to be Lane Lambert. But credit to the Admirals coach, he has put up with my questions no matter what mood he is in, including the days where Milwaukee’s practices were driving him crazy. All kidding aside, I really appreciate how generous Lambert and all of the Admirals players have been with their time and their comments.
5) Admirals Fans. Through the first quarter of the season, Milwaukee’s faithful supporters have been a pleasure to interact with. I love seeing your comments, your thoughts and your critical assessments. It makes churning out my weekly posts that much easier. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Round Table faithful.
So Roundtable, Regarding the Milwaukee Admirals, what are you most thankful for?
The last time the Admirals played in Milwaukee, it was a feel-good 4-1 drubbing of the Chicago Wolves. The Ads scored twice on the power-play, and outside of the Blake Geoffrion hit that has knocked him out of action, it was a great send off for the team as they embarked on this 10-game road trip.
The Admirals have not scored on the power play since. That’s zero for 24 with the man-advantage in seven games on this road trip.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday night, the Oklahoma City Barons scored three power play goals of their own, en route to a 4-1 victory over the Admirals.
The first goal came after a 5×3 power play expired, with Kelsey Wilson still in the box serving a hooking penalty. Credit to the PK unit for killing off the 5×3, especially since one of the Admirals skaters was playing without a stick. That unit was out there a long time with the Admirals unable to clear the zone. And while Mark Dekanich made a spectacular save on Linus Omark’s first shot, Omark was able to score on the follow-up.
Colin McDonald deflected a Taylor Chorney pass in the 2nd period for a power play goal while Linus Klasen served a high-sticking penalty that was called behind the play.
Liam Reddox scored an even strength breakaway goal for the Barons after Mark Santorelli giftwrapped it for him in the neutral zone. Made it a 3-0 lead 54 seconds into the 3rd period. A backbreaker.
Linus Omark scored his second power play marker of the game later in the 3rd period just after another 5×3 power play finished up. Mark Santorelli had just come back on the ice when Omark’s backhand shot lifted the puck over Dex’s pads.
Chris Mueller answered back, finishing a 2-on-1 rush with his 7th goal of the year 50 seconds later. Santorelli got his first assist of the year on the goal.
Memo to the rest of the team — whatever Chris Mueller is eating for breakfast on this roadtrip, make it your business to do the same. Whatever music he’s listening to to get ready for the game, make it your business to learn the words. Outside of Mark Dekanich, Chris Mueller has been the MVP of this road trip.
———
NOTES:
– Linus Klasen was able to play after leaving Sunday evening’s game. Blake Geoffrion is still out.
– Dan Gendur did not make his Admiral debut.
– Seven games into the ten game road trip, the Admirals have outshot their opponent just once — the 4-0 win over Lake Erie.
– In these two games against OKC, the Admirals gave up 5 power play goals on 12 chances.
-QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION:
Hopefully you aren’t hitting the panic button just yet…..but in light of this southern swing, what are you concerned about the most with the way this team is playing?
Admirals Roundtable 