- Veteran Jamie Benn wore the 'C' on his jersey in Saturday's 4-3 shootout win over the Giants.
- Colin Long was wearing a different number against the Giants. Instead of wearing his familiar #11, he was sporting #9. Long told me after the game he is not changing his jersey number, but against the Giants his number wasn't available on the Rockets home-white jersey.
- It looks like the Giants have, for the most part, established their team. All of the Giants players had name bars on the back of their jersey's. You still needed to look at a program to identify the Rockets players.
- For the second straight game, Dylan Tait and Adam Brown shared the duties in goal. Brown allowed three goals on 13 shots, while Tait shutout the Giants on 12 shots, including three in the shoot-out.
- European forward Stepan Novotny had two assists in the win, including the game winner in the shoot-out.
- The Rockets ended the game 1 for 6 on the power play while the Giants were 2 for 10 with the extra man. Two of the Giants three goals were scored on the power play just 17 seconds apart in the first period.
- After the game the Rockets sent 16 year-olds Brett Bulmer and Max Adolph back to their midget teams. That leaves the Rockets with just one - 16 year-old on their roster. On Monday I will have a video interview with rookie Spencer Main.
- It was great to see Mikael Jung get some quality minutes in last night's game. The younger brother of Rockets goaltender Torrie Jung saw power play time and played a good portion of the game with veterans Evander Kane and James Wright. Jung is small, but skilled, and is attempting to crack the Giants lineup as a 16 year-old.
- The biggest hit of the night came when Giants forward Evander Kane crushed Rockets rookie defenseman Curt Gogal into the boards in the neutral zone. Gogal quickly got up, but the hit could be heard clearly from the broadcast booth.
- The Rockets sat out veterans Tysen Dowzak, Cody Almond, Kyle St. Denis, Collin Bowman, Kyle Verdino and Torrie Jung.
- The Rockets face the defending Memorial Cup Champion Spokane Chiefs in a pair of exhibition games next weekend.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Exhibition After Thoughts
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2 comments:
Great game. I thought it was all over when the Giants scored the two quick goals on the 5 on 3, and 5-4 PPs (By the way that second call on Myers was bad, against someone bigger it would've been a perfectly legal hit but because of Myers' height it looked like he elbowed the guy in the head), but it was nice to see such an entertaining comeback.
Tyler Myers looked great tonight, taking the puck a couple times end-to-end, while still using his speed to get back on defense in time, as well as laying some big hits.
Dylan Tait looks like the better back-up. In addition to shutting down the Giants, he also did two other important things Brown did not. He clapped his stick on the ice to warn of penalty-time running out. And he played the puck behind the net.
Agreed. Tait played well and look the more comfortable of the two goaltenders Saturday night. But I didn't witness Friday's game in Vancouver where Brown may have been the better of the two? It will be interesting to see who the coaching staff choose. Either way, I don't think they can go wrong with either.
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