Updated at 10:46 AM: MLive’s Ansar Khan penned a 7 AM-posted article regarding the Red Wings’ 3-2 OT loss to Buffalo last night. Khan addresses the Wings’ anger with the “good goal” call on Evander Kane’s marker despite Jason Pominville’s presence in Jimmy Howard’s crease:
“I thought hockey ops had done an unreal job the first part of the year of making a gray rule as black and white as they could,” Blashill said. “Basically, if you went in the blue on your own and you made contact with the goaltender and kept him from being able to play his position, it was going to be called back.
“Then there was a meeting at the All-Star Game and there was a feeling too many goals were getting called back, so they want to go back to this term ‘egregious.’ What’s egregious mean? It means something different to (everyone), so now we’re back to ultra-gray.
“All I know is Pominville had no reason to go into the crease. He stood literally right in front … right on the goalie. … So, I don’t know what goalie interference is now.”
Neither does Howard, who said Pominville’s stick prevented him from getting his own stick out to cover the post.
“That’s a pretty big part of the equipment there, especially on the wraparound,” Howard said. “You lead with your stick and hoping to cut that off and that was taken away.”
Khan continues, duly noting that the Wings have a horrible 12-13-and-8 record at home…
And Fox Sports Detroit posted its post-game videos in slightly belated fashion, posting comments from Henrik Zetterberg…
“Nobody wants goals called back because we want more goals, but now we just have a rule that’s grey as grey can be. … I don’t even know what it is. If we don’t want goals called back then take the rule out, just take the challenge out. I have no problem with that,” said Blashill.
Short of that, Blashill suggested levying penalties against teams for incorrectly challenging a goalie-interference call, as the league already does for failed offsides challenges. That would force coaches to be sure that the infraction in question is egregious.
Blashill remembers his time on the Red Wings’ bench during Tomas Holmstrom’s final season. He watched the shot-deflecting maven lose a number of goals due to goalie interference. Back then, they were waved off right away, and that seemed fair. These days, questionable goals are rarely disallowed live because officials can typically bank on a video review. Then they go searching for indisputable evidence, and often come up empty.
“They’re not calling them (off) because they have the challenge in play. No chance that Tommy Holmstrom’s interference was way worse than all these things,” said Blashill. “No chance.”
And The Athletic’s Max Bultman noted that even Evander Kane wasn’t sure whether his goal would count:
“I don’t know. I don’t think anybody does,” Kane said, though he did not believe Pominville interfered with Howard. “I think it’s more of a — if you’re the team that got scored against, you just call and hope maybe somebody makes a mistake. I really think that’s the case now. Hopefully there’s some more clarity to the rule moving forward here.”
Congratulations to Mrazek for allowing 1 goal in his debut.
Also congratulations for Jimmy Howard losing to Buffalo with is usual 3-goals against.
Sorry. But you do everything in your power to get rid of Howard. If that means only getting a 7th round pick, you do that. If that means taking back an ugly contract, you do it. Then you ride Mrazek down the stretch so he can actually get in a groove. Then you qualify him for 1 more year. If he’s still inconsistent, you can dump him next year and probably get a 4th rounder. It’s just asinine that we gave away the younger and cheaper goalie. Save me the explanation that we got something for a guy who was going to leave anyway. He DID NOT need to leave. That was Kenny’s choice.
Mrazek WAS going to be let go by the Wings’ management. There is no doubt about that, regardless of whether he needed to leave. The beat writers were saying that Mrazek wouldn’t be given a qualifying offer this spring as of a year ago. Something happened that facilitated the divorce, and while I have a BIG problem with the way things went down…
I would argue that the Wings did their best to maximize return for an asset that the management rather stupidly diminished.
FWIW I don’t like how it went down, either, and I don’t expect you or anyone else to like the way things went down, but shit happens and we have to deal with the reality, even if it’s dumb.
Yeah no I don’t like it. I don’t like our GM pissing away a younger, cheaper asset that had more potential than the player he retained. Many of the players hated Shanahan and Chelios and Fedorov…but the organization made sure everyone got along, rather than say just giving away Shanahan because he rubbed some people the wrong way. If we were so certain that Mrazek was NEVER coming back…then why did we squander the first 40-50 games of the season playing him so sporadically that it was virtually impossible to get any rhythm or momentum. Play Mrazek 3 out of 4 games. Let him play through his mistakes. Give him a chance to get some confidence. Maybe instead of a conditional 4th, you’re looking at a Frderick Anderson return of a couple of 2nds, no conditions attached. Kenny effed this up. And yet the media is giving him a passing grade for getting something rather than nothing. Total BS.
I don’t expect you to like it, and I just want to make sure you know I’m not trying to insult you here.
I do know that Ken Holland’s grudges have resulted in players not being re-signed before, although I can’t say much about that, and that is a big problem.
I remember Mrazek looked better than Vasilevsky at World Jr. and Vasilevsky was doing very well. Both were dominant and confident and looked like automatic NHL starters.
Now Vasilevsky is probable Venzina winner because Bishop(who is still better than what we have), was traded… The older awesome goalie was traded… making room for younger talent.
I get this feeling that our prospects assume they wont get a fair chance to play through the learning curve and still be trusted with ice time. BAD motivation for most who need confidence to succeed.
That would apply to anyone in almost any job. Not Red Wing hockey tho?
One could argue that Petr’s problems included not really getting rid of his WJC-era tendency to throw himself around his crease instead of working on positioning, and it took Petr a LONG time to start buying into the kinds of skills being preached by his goaltending coaches, to the point that the Wings changed goalie coaches to accommodate him. There were two sides to the strained relationship between Petr and the Wings, and not every prospect goes through the kind of willful disdain that he did.
Hes definitely no Hasek. I guess i wish he was ,and his exciting intuition and complete confident style would be allowed then.
I feel KH REALLY wanted to make the playoffs this year and sacrificed Petr’s value.
Petr probably got to the point were he wanted to be moved. Once Holland woke up and realized the Wings were NOT going to make the playoffs.
When the Cap came in KH struggled a lot to get any top players. He is still struggling. Looking at the cap before this season started, you could see a big problem.
Would he have kept Petr if he had Decent cap space, I think he would and probably Green.
KH really can’t get rid of Howie and will resign when his contract.
KH should be let go before he creates more damage (I think he stays).
Mother Illitch should give the older son a swift kick in the A$$
My understanding is that the relationship between player and team soured to the point that the Wings really weren’t going to submit a qualifying offer to keep Mrazek’s rights. It was apparently bad enough–though we don’t know why–that Mrazek was promised that he would be traded.
I really think this was about Petr’s relationship with KH and the organization, but the cap space was definitely an accelerant on the fire!
Petr had only one bad year, see google link. I think it was playing time that got to a promised trade.
I didn’t look at Howard’s 2016/17 but they were running close Stat wise. The team start a downward trend during that year, maybe a bit sooner.
The rest of “He did this or He did that was not substantiated” IMO
After he asked for a trade his playing time went up as he was being show cased, imo
I had to laugh when I saw the replay of Aby’s goal. I had to look a couple of times but Lehner looke about 1/2 way between his right face off circle and his net.
I Think/Hope Petr only uses his wild unexpected movements out of his net as very last resort.
Like I said , Petrs ugly year was still a bit above .900, .901 to be exact, LOL
This all got blown out of the water but Coreau is here now (please stay off your knees) but he is a very Big young man. Will the Beat writers give him a chance. I hope he gets some game time soon. I thought Buffalo would be a good start but with the Wings there is really no “Good ” starts