Yes.

A few bullet points because Black Label has treated me well tonight. Not all inclusive obviously (TCY will be here later for that), but a couple things I would like to touch on.

The Ugly

• Clear the puck up the boards. Seto and Pavs had two lackadasical passes to center ice that burned us for goals. That being said, the feed to the center is instrumental to getting the breakout humming. I trust the players will make the right decisions in game four./

The Bad

• The last eight minutes we needed more pressure on the forecheck. Throwing one guy in is fine, as long as that man disrupts the Ducks breakout. It didn’t happen, and Anaheim was able to move the puck up the ice quickly. My friend and I were saying it looked like Ron Wilson hockey out there at one point. More focus on putting the body on the puck carrier, because that support defenseman is going to cheating up the ice.
• Anaheim is doing an excellent job of finding that soft spot in the center of our defense. I like the pressure we put on their defensemen (Whitney, Niedermayer, and Pronger all have boomers), but wouldn’t mind if the puck-side forward collapsed a bit from time to time. Pressure the majority of shifts, keep them honest and ease off on the pedal every now and then./

The Good

• Dan Boyle. Moving on…
  Torrey Mitchell was a workhorse tonight. Between winning puck battles and getting behind Anaheim’s defense with his skating ability, he did a lot of positive things. I’d have to dig through some comments I made to find a link, but over the course of the past month I have said something to the effect of, “Throwing Mitchell out there with no game experience would be a mistake.” Dead wrong, Plank. Dead wrong.
  Douglas Murray is having himself one whale of a postseason thus far, but let’s be clear- Carlyle will take a scrap with Parros every time. It didn’t burn us then, but I wouldn’t mind him refraining from dancing with El Mustachio the rest of this series. Since we’re on the defense I would like to note that it seemed Blake did a lot better job of getting his shots through from the point. Will take a look at the quantitative totals later and see if that is the case.
• Anytime Patrick Marleau gets on the scoreboard, you can feel the team get behind him. He’s been relatively quiet for the first forty in nearly every tilt, but has flourished in the last twenty. Let’s see more of that all game Captain.
• Ryane Clowe from the dot. Everytime his centerman got booted, Ryane came in and won a huge draw. What’s so remarkable about that is usually the “booted team” will lose the draw due to the fact that if they jump they get nailed with a penalty. Kudos.
• Everyone was skating tonight, and like Randy Hahn stated before this series, the way to beat the Ducks is with speed. Skating through the neutral zone was a whole lot better, and even when they dumped it in far-side, they were getting to those pucks because of it.
• Evgeni Nabokov absolutely turned it on in the third period. You can say what you want about the “softies” he’s given up this series (including the first goal tonight), but he reached another level when the game was on the line.
  The powerplay.
• The win./

Not too high, not too low. Do it.

Go Sharks.