While I am learning the finer and strategic aspect of hockey, I do know a good bit about modern sports science/ training. Hockey is a considered a speed endurance sport….meaning your muscles are working in an anerobic (no oxygen) environment alot of the time. The subsequent build up of lactic acid will eventually cause metabolic acidosis which will effect evey level of your game: less strength, poor reaction time, poor coordination….The end result if there is not enough recovery time is sloppy, one step behind the opponent play. The speed element requires the “fight of flight” neurochemistry of the central nerous system. It’s depletion results in poor decision making, poor reaction and perception time ….. Typically a day of rest, possibly 2 is needed for recovery, but not always. Most competetion/training cycles have a point in the recovery phase when the body overcompensates for what it has lost…that is it overproduces muscle glycogen, hormones, neurochemistry, etc. Depending on what point the speed endurance athlete is in his cycle they might hit that overcompensation phase and play back to back games effectively. It’s pretty difficult for athlete’s in team sports to always hit this phase and I don’t know how much of Hockey in general follows this philosphy. All I do know is that the work in the field was pioneered by the USSR and eastern bloc countries…one of the reason behind the era of Soviet Hockey dominance. How much of that trickled down to the NHL I don’t know. Also my primary sport is baseball and they are hardly out of the dark ages in terms of modern sports science. That’s a whole other discretation. Hockey players are well conditioned and not everyone sees the same amount of ice time so fatigue levels vary. A player might not understand this science but they know their body and what to expect for the second game for back to back games and perhaps adjust their intensity levels accordingly.

I had a well thought and typed response until I hot the cancel key by accident. Very unfortunate.

I’ll say this: you know the sport of hockey very well. But goddamn your negativity and pessimism overshadows that knowledge, to the point where your posts are informative and well written, but I found myself wanting to ignore them because of that negativity.

Positive Criticism – the Flyers won against Carolina today despite their best efforts to help out the last place Eastern Division team. It is fair to say that if they have a repeat performance of today’s game against pittsburgh tomorrow, the results will not be as fortunate. No pessimism, but I still convey what you said, but in a READABLE and UNBIASED manner.

I think it was more like Carey Price gave it to us, but I get your point.

He may not have “stolen” the game, but he did clinch it with 2 or 3 huge saves in the last 3 or so minutes of the game.

Mario -
I mentioned Emery’s lack of stituational awareness during the Rangers game when he left the goal and you reminded me of his lost ice time and his unfaimliarity with this new system. It cost us a goal today but i attributed to the aforementioned reasons. What was impressive is how well he moved making those saves in the last minutes of the game and I believe it was during a Carolina PP. Excellent display of flexibility so soon after a surgically repaired sportsman hernia.

it banked around the glass took a hop and went off the refs head landed back in our zone instead of being cleared.