Calgary certainly made more of a game of it than I expected last night. Kudos once again have to go out to the third line, who made the most out of the soft match-ups again. In addition, Mark Giordano probably had his best game of the season and was held off the scoresheet by bad luck alone.
The 4th line - previously celebrated - finally looked like a 4th line last night. Which leads me to the topic of the post: trying to decipher Keenan's decision making.
By and large, Keenan's moves make sense, or at least make sense when you understand the premises under which he's operating (Conroy is the best center for facing tough match-ups, for example), even if you don't necessarily agree with them yourself.
Every so often, however, he makes a move that is totally baffling; in the "what the hell could you have possibly be thinking??" category.
A couple of nights ago, it was putting Bertuzzi out to center the 4th line while Primeau was sidelined by equipment problems. This led to two consecutive icing calls and a goal against.
The reasons this decision was un-explainable were many:
- Bertuzzi isn't a center. Never has been. The Flames have lots of natural centers on the team besides Primeau: Conroy, Langkow, Boyd. Any one of them would have been a better choice.
- Bertuzzi has been lousy at ES this year, especially in his own end. Coupling Prust and Nystrom (the two weakest forwards on the team) with the worst ES winger (now playing center) doesn't compute.
- Keenan could have played one of the other lines while Primeau was away. Probably without incident. Fourth lines are known for missing a few shifts here or there.
It's a few days later and still I haven't the foggiest idea what Keenan was trying to accomplish with that line combination. I know what the completely unsurprising results were though - a goal against.
Anyways, something similar happened last night. Wayne Primeau took a penalty at the end of the first with the Flames trailing by one. At the tail end of the penalty kill, Nystrom fails to clear a thoroughly clearable puck during a routine play and the Ducks score just as Primeau steps out of the box. Now, keep in mind the two primaries of the 4th line have just managed to:
1.) take a last minute penalty
2.) mis-play the puck, leading to a two-goal deficit.
What does Keenan do? He sends out the 4th line almost right away (there was a brief Langkow shift intervening), for an own-zone draw, no less. On top of everything else, Nystrom has just spent the last 30-45 seconds running around his own end trying to kill Primeau's penalty...so he probably isn't that fresh. And, of course, Nystrom and co. bugger the break-out during the ensuing shift and the Ducks score the eventual game winning goal as a result.
Now...why the hell would you send put the 4th line out after a penalty kill that has the team down by two? Especially since they were the principle players in orchestrating the PK and then the resultant GA. Further, it makes much more sense to counter a PK with the good, offensive players that were been sitting on the bench for the prior two minutes, especially because the Ducks now have their best guys resting after their PP.
So, instead of Iginla or Cammalleri coming out to face Ryan Carter et al, Keenan sends Primeau, Prust and an exhausted Eric Nystrom to get scored on. Again.
The reason this is significant is that nonsensical move basically lost the game for Calgary. The pluggers didn't see the ice after that, but that's just Mike punishing them for his errors. They shouldn't have been on the ice at that point in the contest, and I can't think of one defensible reason for that decision to be made at the time.
Perhaps this is early season fiddling and things will settle down once Keenan "knows what he has" and ceases experimenting. I plan to keep an eye on this stuff as the year progresses either way.
