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Quinn on line-matching


Haven't seen much comment around the 'sphere about remarks from Pat Quinn in Monday's Edmonton Journal:

“I’m still in the learn stage,” Quinn said. I’ve said this before about Sam, he just didn’t show what he was (capable of) doing and what was expected based on what I had learned about him. “(Saturday) night, he did. He was getting a regular shift early on. He was getting his time and I wanted to play him against certain guys and he was having a good evening. The play of another line started to drop off and so I made a switch to put him in a different area, and next thing you know he puts one in the net. But his play up until that time had been very satisfactory.”

Which sounds like more attention to that side of the game than Quinn is generally given credit for. Btw, the line which dropped off was identified in Tuesday’s Journal:

One of the reasons Mike Comrie’s ice time dropped off in the latter stages of Saturday’s game and Sam Gagner took his spot was due to an extra-long shift in the second period. "He and (Patrick) O’Sullivan got stuck out for a 15-minute shift. We thought we’d have to pump oxygen into them to get them off,” said a joking Quinn, who was obviously exaggerating the length of the shift. "That shift killed one of our players (Comrie) because his play dropped off the rest of the night. A lot of times, you blow the tank when you get caught out in a bad spot, then you can’t seem to pull the reserve up. If you get into a lactic thing … here I am trying to sound like an (expert). I do read all that stuff, though.”

A couple of commenters had speculated during Saturday's game that Comrie had taken a nick, but it seems he was just gassed. I looked it up and he had consecutive shifts of 1:41 (!) and 2:27 (!!), with just 1:46 on the bench in between the two. Not quite a 15-minute shift but taken together (4:08 of a 5:54 span) I understand Quinn’s feelings on the subject. POS was out for 2:06 (!) on the first of those, but managed to get off after “just” 1:08 the second time. That’s just freaking ugly, however the heck it happened. The long change bit them on the ass twice in a row.

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