Dayton Musicmen - Things I Think I Think...

Some things I think I think...

*Dayton went 2-2-0 on the week, beating Niagara Falls and Wisborg and falling to Parry Sound and Fort Erie.

*Next week, despite setting the Simon Scheduler to avoid 3 games in 3 days, our schedule looks like this:

MON - off
TUE - at POR
WED - off
THU - CGY
FRI - POR
SAT - at NIA
SUN - GIL

That's four games in four days. We're not the only team this is happening to and we'll really have to watch our player's fatigue ratings. I suspect Pekka Rinne will play Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, with backup Corey Crawford playing on Friday and Sunday. Laurent Brossoit is a possibility for one of the Crawford starts.

Then again, don't be surprised if Rinne is in the nets against the still unbeaten Gillam Sharks next Sunday. The best team in the league should be challenged by the "Men's #1 goalie...

*Dayton sits tied for 3rd in the Corfield Conference and tied for 6th overall after nine games.  Our hope this season was that we'd be slightly better than average through the first twenty games and we're on pace to exceed that.

*Evgeny Malkin has fit in nicely with the team, playing with Evgenii Dadonov and Jake Guentzel. Four points in four games (2+2) and a +1 with just 4 pims in four games is a solid start for him with us. Playing less physically than how he was playing in Sudbury seems to agree with him.

*Evgeny Kuznetsov, with 1 goal and 9 assists for ten total points after nine games and a +3 leads the team with points.

*Taylor Hall leads with six goals on the year.

*Blake Comeau leads the team with a +8 on the season.

*Jake Guentzel leads the team with 21 hits, well ahead of everyone else...

*Roman Polak leads the team in PIMS with 24 in just four games, which explains his benching last week. His replacement in the lineup, Adam McQuaid, has just 8 pims in 5 games.

*Matt Niskanen leads all dmen with 6 points in 9 games.

*Surprisingly, Erik Gustafsson has zero points in his first nine games this season. He's getting 8 minutes a game and plays on both Power play units, yet so far, he's got nothing to show for his work,

*Gustafsson joins Polak, McCann and Bellemare with zero points on the season on the squad.

*TRADE TALKS: GM Corfield is thought to be looking for an upgrade to his blueline and ideally he'd bring a solid 2-way blueliner into the fold.