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why the heck is this guy starting, horrell is far better and so is frazee. At this point i would even take a club goalie over spratt. He has horrible angles on shots and can't control a rebound to save his life. I know he is the big time recruit but i'm starting to think coach is throwing the season in with this guy. It's horrell and frazee's senior year, atleast give one of them a shot instead of feeling like you have to get he freshmen playing time. Spratt just looks like he hasn't caught up to the college game yet. His timing looks off and position is terrible. Im sure the kid is gonna be good in years to come, but you have to start asking the question "what have you done for me lately." And in his case, not a whole lot of nothing.

Jimmy Spratt is better than he is playing right now. The coaches have decided to play him in key games for some reason I don't understand. We can second guess all we like, even when common sense says the coaching staff should play Horrell. If the truth be spoken, our defensive unit has been to slow and to passive to stop the SPEEDY forwards we have encountered, particularly in the "blowout games".
Last night was no exception. The NMU forwards were going around our defense at will. I'm no expert but that is my 2 cents worth.
In the early games the Power Play was key to our success but once that evaporated we have not been very good at scoring goals. The PP must improve for us to have success.

FalconBlue wrote:Jimmy Spratt is better than he is playing right now. The coaches have decided to play him in key games for some reason I don't understand. We can second guess all we like, even when common sense says the coaching staff should play Horrell. If the truth be spoken, our defensive unit has been to slow and to passive to stop the SPEEDY forwards we have encountered, particularly in the "blowout games".
Last night was no exception. The NMU forwards were going around our defense at will. I'm no expert but that is my 2 cents worth.
In the early games the Power Play was key to our success but once that evaporated we have not been very good at scoring goals. The PP must improve for us to have success.

Considering Horrell also had stitches in his leg as recent as two weeks ago, things like that take time to heal completely. Spratt is playing better every game. He's still adjusting to the speed, but he's not getting any help in front of him. Look at most of last nights goals. The amount of traffic in front of him, the back-door plays, the one-timers.....the list can go on and on. Coach is trying to force the team to play good solid defense by continually playing Spratt. If there is any reason to play Horrell right now, it's to make a change and see how the players react. Not to punish Spratt for his play, but to get a reaction out of the rest of the team. I'd really like to see Sinkewich back in the lineup. Sit an upperclassman for a game and show everybody that everybody's playing to keep their spot.

Sinkewich is in tonight, he's solid if rather slow on the turn. Jon Sitco is out for the night.

I know the numbers aren't there right now for Jimmy, but he's doing a good job and getting better with each game. He's allowed a lot of goals, but a lot of that has been bad defensive play in front of him where d-men are getting too far into the offensive zone. Even Jordan Sigalet wouldn't have kept BC or OSU or even ND from scoring a lot of goals in those games.
I like what Russ Sinkewich brings them though and since they put him in for Sitko the defensive play has been better and we don't have a d-man who is in the box all the time. Nice to get size out there with him and Nezzy both going 6-2 and 6-3. Russ also bring some good offensive play with him.