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Ek’s Early Returns… Today: Claude Giroux and Marc-Andre Fleury… |
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It’s very early, but I have always said there are essentially two different impacts a major deadline acquisition can have on a team…One comes from success in the playoffs of course, but the other comes from the excitement that player brings to a team immediately. There is a new excitement on the surrender rooster and there is a general shot of adrenaline into the fan base…
Starting with Fleury.
Marc Andre started and won his debut last night. He was not spectacular but very soliid, at points he showed off his quickness and a definite sense of awe could be heard throughout the Wild arena, as they got to play with their new toy. This is a fan base that understands hockey completely and has shown they can support a team WITHOUT big name dropping type of players…so having a future hall of famer in their net was pretty damn exciting..
The building was electric and you could tell the Wild players REALLY wanted to get Flower a win in his first start as they dominated the third period trailing 2-1, until pullin their goalie and scoring to tie it and then go on to win it in Overtime overshadowing the great performance Columbus got out of Elvis…
Fleury’s weekness has ALWAYS been his tendency to want to do too much to help his team and when he is “off” it’s usually because he is sliding too far across or being too acrobatic and knocks the puck into his own net as he did on the first goal.
The difference is as Fleury has matured he is able to correct and control his emotion way better than he did way back in some of the shootouts witnessed in Penguins/Flyers playoff series.
Fleury will have too get used to facing less shots than he has in a long time and if there is any concern I have it rests in my feeling that he has always been a better goalie when he got more shots than he is likely to see from a team as strong defensively as he now has behind him..
The initial impact on his teammates and the fans is A* through…FOR SURE..
On Giroux…
I have seen Giroux play in many of those 1000 flyers games and so far in his two Florida games he has looked nervous and trying to maybe do too much to show his tricks off to his teammates…He has lot of tricks…and I think he showed maybe 3 too many on his shootout attempt that rang off the post…
He has also struggled in the face off circle, although in typical Gioroux fashion he cleanly won the most important face-off of the night last night helping Florida to tie the game with their keeper pulled. He takes many of the face offs despite technically playing the wing on his line with Barkov centering. This is very reminiscent of his most successful year spent on a kind with Couturier in Philly, but Barkov, while similar to Couturier in defensive ability and hockey IQ, is more of a natural goal scorer…Giroux has to get used to playing the wing with Sasha Barkov and a few times in the first two games he was cheating a bit more towards the assignments he is I used to okaying Center..
All that said, he has 4 assists in two games and were it not for a remarkable game from Anton Forsberg last night, Giroux would have notched a few goals…It’s been good so far, but great is coming…Also, Giroux’s starting his time as a Panther with three road games…so the excitement he could infuse into the building….that too is on the way…
What say you?
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