Last night's 5-2 loss to Portland saw the Blazers lose a couple more forwards up-front.
There's going to be a waiting list at the trainers table as both Thomas Frazee and Logan McVeigh went down with injuries early in the first period. McVeigh did return for a couple shifts before being shut-down. Frazee went immediately to the dressing room with a knee injury and never returned. Later in the broadcast we learned it'll be an injury that'll cost him a couple weeks.
Add this on top of Chase Schaber (leg), Jordan DePape (leg), Bernhard Keil (upper-body), and the Blazers are going through their toughest injury stretch of the season.
At this point, I'm not sure who will be available for the Blazers two-game US swing through Seattle (Tues) and Tri-City (Wed). GM Craig Bonner was busy looking for a call-up or two for the trip.
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The game ended with this incident.
It may result in suspensions to F Ryan Hanes and perhaps D Brandon Underwood. For me, that would be a disappointing result.
As you can see at the end of the game, Portland G Mac Carruth comes out of his net to impede Hanes who was going behind the net to pressure the Portland defenseman. Why Carruth would choose to step-up and impede the path of Hanes is pointless with just seconds remaining. Hanes, gets his stick into Carruth which resulted in a major for slashing. That's a bit of over-kill from the officials there.
Carruth has a history of some of these antics. In the end, Craig Cunningham - a pretty straight-up honest player, has to come to the aid of Carruth and ends up eating a pretty big right-hand from Hanes which ended the fight. That's careless from Carruth's standpoint. I hope the WHL factors in everything here.
That's a pretty bad deal for the Hawks too. They were content to ride out the 5-2 win and head home. Instead, you have a brash goaltender in the Portland crease who ends up causing a mini-brawl at the end of the game (with help from Ryan Hanes of course) and having one of the best players in the WHL and his teammate getting KO'ed. If you're Portland GM/Head Coach Mike Johnston are you pleased with that result? Do you want a guy like Cunningham getting involved for a teammate on such a silly thing like this?
D Brandon Underwood and D Joe Morrow also scrapped just as Hanes/Cunningham was wrapping up.
Just my perspective... something to ponder...debate.
Jon
6 comments:
Ok, I'll admit that Carruth is a clown and that I hope next time he taunts someone that they absolutely unload on him. However, Hanes should have the book thrown at him for his lapse in common sense. How many times this season has Hanes taken dumb penalties? We can judge Carruth all we like, and I hope his GM makes him walk back to Portland, but Hanes deserves the same fate. He has quickly become an imsult to the team.
I don't agree with your assessement of Hanes. He's fought 15 times for this team, he's an honest player who makes the most of his minutes (which some nights isn't a lot)
He's a character player who plays the game pretty honest.
A better question Jon is why would Hanes escalate the situation in the last two seconds of a 5-2 game by going full bore at Rutkowski. I watched Hanes and he looks at the clock sees just a few seconds and then takes a full sprint at the Hawk trying to run out the time.
Carruth may have made a motion but it may have been to try and slow Hanes from running at his d-man in what would have caused just as big a ruckus, IMO.
You play to the whistle but it was a wrong decision to make that run down three by Hanes.
and I don't really disagree with you there either Andy... it's open for interpretation.
I would say though it doesn't look very good for a team to allow another team to rag off the final 10 seconds of a game behind their net. Not forcing the issue may be the bigger mistake.
Carruth has done that all season, and did it earlier to Barnett.
We all know there's a lot of chatter on the ice between Carruth and his opponents.
Any thoughts on the Ams game?
I didn't get a chance to blog about the Ams game, we were home at 7am and it was right into another gamenight.
I don't want to commit to blogging daily and or every game, this is just something extra for the fans I do when I have time.
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