Bowns is not in form, the D-unit are out of position, the forward lines aren't clicking and discipline is poor. You can get away with one of those, maybe two if you're lucky, but not all four, and it came home with a vengeance tonight.
Having said that, it's not as if this team hasn't played well, so we know it's in there. Definitely need that D man, the gamble to see whether we needed to replace Parisi doesn't look to have paid off (although to be fair, a couple of weeks ago I thought it had). I think it's fair to say that Blood leaving will have unsettled the team while it was being negotiated also. With mid-week games every week that has provided little opportunity to work on tactics. So, maybe it can be addressed this week. Richie carrying an injury also means the D is exceptionally frail at the moment which causes uncertainty throughout the team.
We have to give credit to the Giants though, they were excellent tonight. There are the usual complaints on here about lack of physicality, but that didn't seem to be the problem to me. We landed hits, but we were just soooooo slow. It was as if every player was suffering from a headcold and playing through a fog. At one point Pope had the puck in our zone, with time and space, and was just so casual and laboured about making a pass that it was intercepted easily and we were back frantically defending (not singling Pope out, it was just a small moment that was symptomatic of the game).
Officiating was fine tonight - we should save booing and abuse of refs when they have a bad game that affects the result (last week's performance for instance was bizarre and definitely influenced the outcome). We gave away stupid penalties, for instance Reddick shoved a player down three times, looked at the ref, and then did it a fourth, then got called. We looked like we might get some momentum in the second, but squandered that with the continual penalties, and only have ourselves to blame for that.
A week of hard work and reflection lay ahead, next weekend is one that will go a long way to defining the season.