Okay, well both Byflugien and Ladd scored 17 in the regular season, which is what Brouwer had last year. That's pretty well 20, especially when you consider that Ladd put up something like 30+ assists.
My point, irrespective of a few goal difference, is that those guys scored, or were at least a THREAT to score, and these new guys seem to not have that kind of punch. If they aren't going to get that done I'd at least like to outhit someone...
And to the other point, why the hell does everyone going against us in a shootout look like they have at least one Datsyuk, and we get stoned every try?
No, that is 17 ... there is no rounding up. And the point is that last season the team was not hurting for goal scoring -and incidentally, they aren't this season either.
They could use a little better belt tightening in some defensive situations where they have given up goals where they probably ought not to have -like say have led to 2 shoot out losses.
Face it, all it takes is one guy getting a goal if no one puts one in during a shoot out... that doesn't make one Brett Hull or Wayne Gretzky. Although if the point is that scoring none in the 2 shootouts they have had makes it impossible to get that second point -well, ok- point made there ... pretty impossible standard to overcome.
As to why the skate up and a wrister? Well, that one is fairly obvious - in that you can actually deke the damned puck off of your own stick and get no shot off at all - so a lot of guys don't bother -they are going for the speed, and hoping for an open spot (obviously it hasn't worked up til now)- but it is a valid way of going about it. Although I am willing to bet that almost none of you have ever been in that position (on any level), meaning that I doubt my saying it will convince you. I do know that I found that fancy stickhandling was a really unnecessarily showy way of potentially screwing up (come to think of it - I am thinking of the coaching I got for breakaways ... same sort of idea though). No stickhandling- skate right at the goalie, pick your spot and drill it there. You'd be pretty surprised how well it can work (however I suppose if you don't know the book on the goalie - it probably works less well than if you -the shooter have an idea about a specific guy's tendencies... (scouting comes into play there).
I don't know how much time that coaching staffs spend on practicing penalty shots -during regulation it doesn't happen all that often... if you are doing it to prepare for shoot outs- it might be viewed as being less worthwhile than trying to manage a game for a regulation win -so I would not be surprised if coaches may not put a lot of priority on that aspect of the game. But listen to what the coaches say on that one -as it is only my educated guess (I do know back in the day -before the shoot out -- that it was said no one practiced that -as the penalty shot was so rare as to make it pointless... therefore the goalies had the advantage).
All of that is fwiw.:shrug:
