digitaljohn88

IMO: Babcock has NEVER liked Ozzy as his goalie for whatever reason. Holland is the one who fights for him. Could be completely wrong. I think Oz will show something good when he gets the chance.

Good game so far, watching online at TSN - suprised they're not blocking american IP's. US team is too fast for the Canadians.

Even though he didn't get a point last night, you could tell that it was possible that he could have set something up. Nice to see one less 3/4 grinder on the roster.

Cleary-Zetterberg-Franzen Bertuzzi-Datsyuk-Holmstrom Miller-Filppula-Williams Eaves-Helm-Draper Lidstrom-Rafalski Kronwall-Stuart Ericsson-Lilja Hate to make a cliche 'injuries' post, but no team would do well in this situation. Can't wait until mid-January.

ouch.

We should have a better chance at home with Chicago on the second night of the B2B rather than the opposite like the last game, but Chicago dominated San Jose last night and didn't even get a point out of it. They'll definitely show up to play. This will either be a very, very tight win or an embarrassing blowout. Go wings.

Osgood hasn't been bad - he's been pretty average, but I can understand everyone wanting to see him in playoff form instead. He has a season .901%... fairly average. But he's barely played. Howard got hot and he hasn't really had many chances. We gave him 7 goals of support in 6 November starts, and just got shutout infront of him again tonight. Overall he's been a bit disappointing. We need him in better form. Leino had 9 points in 13 games last year. I think it's fair to expect him to be doing much better than 6 points in 32 games this year. I didn't expect him to keep last years pace... but this is just terrible. I was hoping for a 40-45 point year. He's on pace for 15 points. Terribad. Datsyuk needs to step up and put the team on his back. He doesn't seem to do that often anymore. Dallas was nice. Too bad we still lost. Lidstrom is nearly 40. He's going to fall off, that's a fact. It probably wouldn't look as bad if we had an NHL roster.

We're still good enough to beat #6-15 seed teams and hang around .500, just can't expect to compete very well with the top teams until we get guys back.

Osgood isn't a 6'2+ robotic b'fly style goalie like all of the new goalies coming up. It's kind of like how goals against Brodeur can look soft even though he makes lots of saves that others don't. They both play sort of an older style. Osgood has even more problems with soft goals because he's one of the smallest guys left in the league and has to scramble and move more. That game sucked. Hopefully we can at least compete at home after some rest.

We have........... a 1st line, a 3rd line, a 3.5 line, and a 4th line. On paper we should get destroyed in this game. We will have to outwork the hell out of them.

dominant datsyuk without zetterberg in the lineup > mediocre datsyuk with zetterberg in the lineup

well damn, it is.

I think most everyone here is reading too much into our goaltenders. Our team has been good, and we're getting points. We'd very likely be doing the same no matter when Babcockles played either guy.

I agree, looking back at the schedule Howard has faced a lot of really, really lame teams lately with Ozzy getting the occasional better teams, but Howard has still been very good in a pseudo-starter role. The important thing is that he is winning all of the games that we should win. I'm sure he'll get a chance against Chicago to show us if he can handle the big games. I think Osgood has been good too, albeit in limited time. I thought he made some huge saves against NJ especially considering he hadn't played in a few weeks, and he was stellar in Nashville. TBH, I'd rather have Ozzy in there playing great and winning games, but if Howard gets us into a playoff spot it works for me. Ozzy will just ninja the starting role and lead us to a cup anyway. Vintage 2008.

Are you a prophet?

So... we could have 5+ mil cap space in the offseason? Sounds fun.

Very true. If Osgood was at .900 at any time last year, he would have been starting most of the games. Seems like in Babcock's mind he doesn't want a 'good enough' Osgood this year. Ozzy needs to be in playoff form, or Howard will continue to start as long as he's doing well.

I agree with most of this, I think Howard will likely play most of the games unless Ozzy is playing great for more than one game in a row when he gets the chance. I don't think Phoenix is the real test for Howard though. The home-and-home with Chicago coming up should show where Babcock stands on Howard/Osgood. Of course, they could split and that would leave us still not really knowing.

3 in a row would tie an NHL record. It could happen!

Because Osgood has a 17-0-0 career record against Tampa Bay. It's not something I can back up with a quote right now, but for some reason I remember Babcock weighing in on things like that when making goalie decisions in the past.

Howard has been confirmed for Monday against PHX probably so that Ozzy can play Thursday vs. Tampa Bay, who he has a 17-0-0 career record against. Let's say he does win on Thursday night, the schedule after that is: @ DAL @ CHI VS CHI VS CBJ @ CBJ VS COL Ozzy's been getting starts against tough teams, so he could definitely play at least once against Chicago. He would need to start in and win 3 of those 6 games, so we can't expect it but it's doable.

I will admit it: I was calling the Holmstrom-Datsyuk-Bertuzzi line "Datsyuk and the Anchors" when they were together, but Bertuzzi's obviously been great and Holmstrom had a big goal in the last game. We'll need them to keep scoring with everyone else out.

Breaking 400 on new year's eve against Colorado would be ... awesome. Also, Ozzy is up above the .900 mark now. Let's hope he stays there.

What? Ozzie's been drawing the playoff teams... @ NSH (7) Oz vs ATL (7) vs CGY (2) Oz @ STL (14) vs DAL (8) vs EDM (12) @ NJ (2) Oz @ NYR (10) vs STL (14) vs ANA (15) @ NSH (7) Oz Not a knock on either goalie, just making the point that Ozzie definitely isn't being put in for easy games. He's getting division leaders and top-8 teams when Babcock does give him a chance to play. I think Babcock wants to see him do well against good teams, otherwise he'll keep riding Howard.

Hate to s*** all over the parade, but it seems like teams are just scoring one or two early on us and then shutting it down for the night because we don't score. If we had more goals I bet we'd have more goals against. Even with that factored in though, our defense is much better than last year.