Well I set my expectations low for that match, given that it's pre-season, but I was a bit underwhelmed. I try to make it to the first games each year just to get familiar with the new names, so I'm at least comparing apples, so to speak.
I was sat at the end where Belfast warmed up, so I was watching Jones in their net a bit. My immediate thought was that this guy is beatable because he seems to drop early on every shot, but of course then we didn't exactly pepper him with quality shots (the shot totals were awful). Interestingly he seems to move very well laterality for a big guy. Meanwhile I still have concerns about bowns. He gave up a couple of horrible rebounds and at times seemed to lose the puck completely. Hopefully it's just a case of shaking the rust off.
Without coughler, Cox and Sanford seemed to struggle. I wonder what's happened with him. It seems odd to be injured for the first match. Hopefully he'll be back next week.
The new defencemen seemed to look solid. Jardine seemed quiet in the first, but logged lots of ice time, then seemed to grow into the game. I'm expecting big things from him.
I've commented on the two way players elsewhere, so I won't rehash that. Suffice to say there's a lot of potential there.
Up front of two big problems were still puck retention and getting position in the slot. Belfast know all about Reid getting set up, so we're going to need to vary that a bit. It's good to see the face off percentages being better (with the exception of Davies), but we have to turn it into something useful. I think there's going to have to be some tinkering with the lines to get the right balance.
Brittain impressed me. With the right line mates he could do a lot of damage.
I imagine that over the next week a lot off work will be done on things like break outs, and the pp. I'm confident things will improve for manchester, but will have to be an awful lot better against Nottingham.