They dropped back to a 1-2-2. They played their top two defense pairs, maybe, in at least one young’n’s case, overplayed. And they still couldn’t hold the lead.
Echoes of Hillen 19:50, it’s a 6-5 game at BCVMA. The B-Sens keep a-coming, they use their power play to its (almost) fullest, they skate and turn people around, they find ways. The Sound Tigers have blown 155 two-goal leads*, and they have surrendered a two-goal lead in all five games against Binghamton. (While winning four of the five against Binghamton. Good gravy.)
Lawson made lots and lots and lots and lots of saves. And the more-passive forecheck was deliberate late. “We knew they were probably going to stretch us out a little bit,” Capuano said. “We laid back a little bit, but we didn’t want to stop our F1, F2 from dominating the forecheck.” Especially with the top two lines, it almost looked like delayed-overspeed: Sit 1-2-2, then after the first pass, go after it. But Capuano said if it looked like that earlier, that wasn’t by design.
But there were good things. Trevor Smith goes to the net to deflect in Dustin Kohn’s shot. Mike Iggulden scores on a three-on-two when he gets a step on Ilya Zubov. Ben Walter scores when a pass to Drew Fata doesn’t stay on Fata’s stick.
And Jesse Joensuu goes to the net and scores two goals from Blake Comeau.
“It seems whenever I’ve played with Jesse, we’ve been pretty successful,” Comeau said. “He’s a shooter. He’s got a great shot. He knows how to find holes. I’m a player who likes to have the puck in his hands and find the open man, and it seems Jesse’s usually open.”
Joensuu has 10 goals in 20 games. Had some interesting things to say about playing in Binghamton, where he has three of the 10. And he said something pithy at the end of our chat. He had mentioned about how they’ve tended not to play great with the lead. I pointed out, well, they’ve played well enough to take leads. Joensuu agreed. Then I pointed out that I stole that line from Jeremy Colliton, what, 34 days ago, about four feet from that spot. Unfazed, Joensuu continued: “When the team does well — we’ve not done great, but we’ve done well,” Joensuu said. “We’ve got things we can do even better. I think that’s what makes good teams great. They’re hungry for more.”
I guess we see how hungry this team is over the next 56 games.