Coach Claude’s Stream of Consciousness After “Poor Game.”

 

Sometimes there is no sense trying to analyze things. Sometimes you just have to let the angry guy vent.  

Thursday night at MTS Centre, the Winnipeg Jets lost 1-0 to the Washington Capitals. With the loss, the Jets fell from 10th to 11th in the East and watched as their five-game home winning streak came to an end.

It was a 0-0 game when Alexander Ovechkin scored the winner, after the Jets turned over the puck, with one minute and 14 seconds left in regulation. It was a bitter loss for the Jets who were shut out for the third time this season.

The fact the Jets allowed Washington to beat them and then jump over them into seventh place in the East angered the Jets enough, but it was the way in which the Jets lost that drove head coach Claude Noel around the bend.

In fact, we’ll just let Noel — the finest example of pure stream-of-consciousness post-game news conferencing in all of hockey — describe his feelings about Thursday night’s loss:

"We didn’t play well, we played poor. We played the way Washington wanted us to play. They lulled us into this game where we wanted to be cute. We played sideways, not north and south. Itr’s not like we didn’t skate. We just didn’t skate in the right direction. I’m extremely mad right now.

"We didn’t play to win, we played not to lose. Especially in that third period. The power play wasn’t very good and we didn’t deserve to win. I wouldn’t say Washington was better than us. It was close. It was a 0-0 game. You make adjustments or you don’t. We didn’t. They played a good road game. Look, we might have lost the game anyway, but we didn’t do the things necessary to give ourselves a chance to win. 

"I didn’t like us in the first. There was no comfort level. I was never comfortable the whole night. The first period wasn’t good. Sure, the shots… or whatever. Shots on goal is for losers. Whatever. You do the things necessary to win. You put yourself in a position to win the game. We didn’t do that. It’s a bad two points we gave that team. It’s stupid. We deserve exactly what we got. We gave up four points. That’s bad. This isn’t our first day at this job. We’ve done it the right way of late. But tonight we played reckless, but it wasn’t just one play that cost us the game. I just wasn’t comfortable at all. But that’s the beauty of this thing, there are no easy solutions. If there were, everyone would play or coach or manage. Everyone would do it.

"I’ll look in the mirror first and ask what am I doing wrong that I’m not able to communicate properly to these guys. There werre things we didn’t do very well, but we still had a chance to win the game. In my case, you try to find a way to win the game and then you try to communicate that to your players. For some reason, that didn’t happen.

"This ruined my night. Not that I have a life anyway. I’ll get up in the morning and I’ll be bitter and mad and then try to get through the day. Then on Saturday, we’ll get back on the horse and get going again. I still love our players. They still work hard and they care and they don’t like losing any more than I do. This is what you have to go through. I’m just not happy."

‘Nuff said. Really. That summed it up completely.