Coach Trotz Comes Down Hard On Predator’s Forwards

Added on Apr 29, 2011 by J Merrill in

NHL

Coach Barry Trotz of thew Nashville Predators was extremely mad after they were defeated 1-0 to the Vancouver Canucks, but he wasn’t mad at the loss itself. The coach who earlier in the season referred to his team earlier in the season as resilient and tough, spared no feelings about how he felt his team played on Thursday night.

More specifically Trotz was disappointed in the way his forwards played. The Predators were out shot 30-20 and that included 26-11 in the first 40 minutes. In the first period they won just 3 of 25 faceoffs, and for the game they lost 40 of 66. Trotz has a reason to be a upset as these are not the numbers of a Stanley Cup Championship team.

The Predators were outshot by 30-20, including 26-11 in the first 40 minutes. They were outworked in the faceoff circle, losing 40 of 66 draws – and winning just three of 25 in the first period. Trotz initially said he was disappointed in the way his Preds before, but then the media asked him if it went beyond disappointment or even anger. Trotz said “Yeah, I am, and I think there is a lot of guys in that room that should be ticked off. We always talk about winning as a group, and the biggest disappointment you can have is when you have an expectation from someone who you want to go forward with every night and they’re letting you down. We had too many passengers, not enough guys pulling on the rope. We are in the conference semifinal. Are you kidding me? Not acceptable.”

Trotz said when it came time for the Predators to compete, they didn’t. Trotz said he was happy with the way the defense played for most of the game. He also said that it made it that more frustrating to see the forwards not do the same. He said “To me, the biggest disappointment is we had some guys that played great. I mean, Pekka Rinne was fantastic. I thought our group of six defensemen was actually pretty good. Our group of forwards was not good at all. It was a frustrating, frustrating event for two periods.”

Pekka Rinne played a fantastic game for the Predators, and he stopped 29 of 30 shots to keep his team in the game until the last minute. Rinne gave up very second shots in the game, and when he did he was able to get back and stop the shots. Rinne said they said they need to take the good parts of the game, and use it to motivate them for game 2. Rinne chimed in “We still played well in the third period, but we can’t be happy with the way we played the first 40 minutes. That was just unacceptable. But I thought with our third period, I’m sure that gives us a little bit of confidence moving to the second game.”

The third period was all Predators, and it was probably the only thing that kept Trotz’s head from blowing clean off his shoulders. That is when they won a majority of their faceoffs, and outshot Vancouver 9-4. Trotz concluded that there was no magic fix for what they need to do to beat the Canucks, and all they need to do is play as hard as they are able to. He concluded “The bottom line is at this level you’ve got to bring your ‘A’ game and we had a lot of guys that didn’t bring their ‘A’ game. I don’t think we’re satisfied, and that’s why I was surprised that we weren’t as good as we thought we might be. I know this group is not satisfied. Our goal is to win this series. We’re going to have to reset. We’re behind the eight ball.” They will face off for Game 2 on Saturday.