Mirtle makes the case for Crosby to kill penalties -- which should seem obvious to most people but NHL coaches, yanno?
They used Crosby on the PK a couple of times as Game 2 went on. It seems so obvious. He can be a bit of a defensive liability at times (at least against us he seems to be), but it does make their PK more dangerous and, more importantly, it keeps him from going cold on the bench, which is basically what happened in Game 1. Even the Rangers after the game talked about how they had to take notice when Crosby was on the ice for the kill. He shouldn't be one of the primary penalty killers, for sure, but he should get some shifts out there while shorthanded.
Anyway, not gonna lie, I'm concerned about tonight. The boys have all said the right things, they know they weren't good enough in Game 2, and I know that they can be much much better, especially against this particular team, but even still I'm feeling pretty uneasy about this. Aside from period 1 of Game 1, they really haven't come out and bossed the pace the way they ought to. Hopefully they can get it done tonight.
The Tanner Glass factor is really coming into play too. If you look at our series against Pittsburgh last year, you'll find that one of the ways we shut down Crosby and Malkin was by having the 4th line frequently match up against them. That was Brian Boyle, Dominic Moore, and Derek Dorsett, with Moore in particular doing the heavy lifting against the two centers. This year, Moore's line (Tanner Glass, Dominic Moore, and Jesper Fast) is averaging something like 1 minute against Crosby and Malkin. We're vastly under-utilizing Dominic Moore in this series (and in general) as a result. Instead they've tasked Kevin Hayes and the third line to do a lot of the work that the 4th line did last year, and they haven't been remotely as successful so far. Hayes especially had a real dog of a game on Saturday, and he was on the ice for both of Crosby's goals.
The only thing that we can really try, though, is to give James Sheppard a shot in Glass' spot and see what he can do. We did go out there and acquire him for a reason, I presume. I'll be pretty damn surprised/impressed if AV actually swaps out Glass, though.