This is embarassing

[Udog]

I do not like ragging on players, but this is ridiculous...we need a change in net. We need a goalie who can come up with a save when we truly need one to be made. I give credit to the guys for coming back from three deficits, but when your team bails you out that much...enough is enough. We need a quality backup, one who the team can feel confident will do he supposed to do. Pavelka has shown flashes of being able to make spectacular saves, but is all over the place and gives up too many juicy rebounds. Sorry, but that just is not cutting it right now. I realize it's a tough thing to come over here to a foreign land and play somewhere where you don't know anyone and you're far from home, but if you want to become a professional hockey player it comes with the territory. I apologize for this rant, but I am a passionate IceDog fan, and at the moment, a severely frustrated IceDog fan. I have never had a team that I loved so much be so close last year to winning a conference title and fall so far. Yes, I realize it's early in the season, but losing points at any point in the season can be costly towards the end of the season. Finally, I HAAAAATE the fact that the Majors are without a loss right now...we always seem to be behind someone else...Brampton, Mississauga, Barrie. I still love the Dogs' no matter what, you know what they say: love hurts.

[Phil Margonis]

maybe the dogs should evaluate talent better during training camp, because Sakeropolus was clearly better than pavelka then. and he's younger and doesn;'t use an import spot. i haven't given up on gallardi, he's young. maybe pavelka wil ladjust, it's still early. but sakeropolus was the best goalie in camp in my opinion other than Visentin, mcGrath

[pez3145]

We need some better tactical coaching. The wingers and the defence are dribbling pucks through the slot and considering that a breakout. I suggest Mississauga has been trained as a team and all four lines pull in the same direction. We have collected alot of talent - so hats of to the general manager - but they are organized like they are playing pond hockey. I am missing Van Ryn he is the biggest hole missing from last year.

[hockey123]

The former GM who stock piled talent and picks or the one who traded Shaw, Petgrave and picks for the laziest player on the team and traded Fritsch for an overrated, overage goon that refused to fight and scored a lousy 18 goals playing with the leagues best play maker? Brown is the guy who put this team in a position to contend.

[61jr]

Guys, before completely ridiculing the goaltending, let's take a step back and look at the situation. The team defense needs to improve and improve significantly. We are giving up way too many quality scoring chances, it seems just about every shot on net is a quality scoring chance. I would estimate, on average, a team would give up 6-8 good scoring chances in a game based on an "average" number of shots in a game and the Icedogs are giving up probably double that a game.

To look at it, let's start with something that we know to be true, Mark Visentin is a DAMN GOOD goaltender. He has a GAA close to 5.00 and a Save % of .833. Granted it's a small sample size, but it's still a small sample size for all goalies. If quite possibly the best goalie in junior hockey doesn't have great numbers, with the overall team defense we have, how can you expect his backups to, and then blame the backups. Has Jaroslav and Gallardi let in goals that they should have stopped, possibly a few, but most of the goals have been from a team breakdown.

Let's take a look at our experience on defense, Dougie has played 137 career regular season games, Rover has played 133 career regular season. The rest of the defense combined has 136 career regular season games played. Also consider the experience on defense that we lost, Tim Billingsley has 265 games played, Mike Schwindt has 190 games played and Simon Gronvaldt has 168 games played. Add in the fact that we are on our third different defensive coach in the last three years, which means another new system for everyone to learn.

Before judging any of our goaltending, let's see what it looks like with Brock is back in the line-up, which gives us another veteran defenseman, and also will reduce the responsibilities of our current defenseman as they move down the depth chart.

[rabiddogfan]

Schwindt experience means nothing he was an outright crappy defensemen...everything else I agree with.

[AlphaDog]

61jr - I dunno... a lot of those goals scored last night looked like pucks simply flicked at the net and managed to find their way in. I didn't see a lot of tic-tac-toe passing plays from Barrie, or breakaways, etc.. I seem to recall a lot were just straight shots to the net. (ie: not really scoring chances)

Either way, we can't be letting 43 shots on net no matter who's in net. Hopefully that was just an odd defensively-lax game, and not a sign of us being a defensively-weak team.

[rabiddogfan]

One game the first three shots go in ....the next game the first two go in....sorry that's weak goaltending

[conchar]

It is also poor defensive play by our team. Granted, when we get in the hole so early on in the game it is quite an uphill battle to recover from that. It is still early in the season and we have lots of potential on this team...let's see where we are two or three weeks from now.

[gallantfan]

??? mark has played one game...? you can't base stats on that....this post makes no sense...if this was midseason then maybe..but really you are distorting numbers and making a meaningless point ...