Howard keeps us in the game, Hank hits the inside of the post once and scores twice after Pasha's highlight reel goal, and we force game 7 in Disneyland despite ANOTHER spectacular late collapse! Doesn't help when the ref chooses to simply ignore a trip behind the net to gift the Ducks a GTG after we were leading 3-1 with less than 4 to go in the game.
Honestly guys, I'm surprised that we've come this far with this depleted team packed with AHLers, as promising as the have been. We play with a lot of pride but simply cannot execute well for all 60 minutes. CRITICAL defensive lapses, tentative play along the boards, terrible forechecking about 50% of the time, and lack of quality shots on goal pretty much define they way we've played all season long. Howard's stats don't reflect his amazing performance to date because the defense in front of him decides to take a few shifts off in every game and hangs him out to dry, and then tries to beat him with shots and deflections of their own! Impossible to overstate the importance of missing DeKeyser and Helm under these pitiful circumstances.
Offense-wise, we REALLY miss Tomas Holmstrom an ef of a lot more than we've been talking about. After having come into the league a poor skater with an ordinary shot, Homer learned to elevate crashing the net, screening the goalie and deftly deflecting pucks into the net into a single, cohesive art form in a puck possession team. All about courage, tenacity and in a puck cycling set up, TIMING. His game resulted in goals from his linemates and wins for his team, and that's all that mattered to him. That's why he paid the price and took the most brutal pounding imaginable to rule the crease throughout his career. Franzen doesn't have the cojones to fill that void when called upon and young Abdel Kader is developing more in the Shany mold. We desperately need a big, able bodied net crasher willing to take the abuse in front of the net to block the goalie's vision against incoming pucks. Bert doesn't fit the bill because I said "able-bodied". So maybe Andersson can play that role when or IF Helm comes back to center his line.
We know what to do in game 7 but the question is "will we"? If we do, then for "how long"?