The Americans struggle to find their rhythm

[Eudaldkp 160]

With the season already twelve games in, we're starting to see the standings take shape and we're starting to see the contenders separate from the pretenders.

Our focus in today’s article is going to be the New York Americans, a very promising young team, that started off pretty hot but they have been having problems with consistency so far.

 

The first game was a dominant 5-2 victory against Toronto, the team that is above them right now in the standings (although they do have one more game played). They outshot the Legion 47-25 and rookie Carles Puigdemont had a great first game recording three points, which included two goals and an assist. Their next game was against the Menace, the new team, in which although they outshot them 41 to 27, it wasn’t as dominant, and Ylonen had the game winning goal in overtime.

Their next game was against the Seattle Bears, one of the best teams in the league, they trailed behind the whole game and managed to tie it in the 3^rd, but ended up losing in the shootout. The following game was a very weird one, where Puigdemont got his first hatty but the Americans fell flat after the 1^st period and ended up losing 6-3. They recovered in the next game against the Titans but then they lost twice against Seattle. While they managed to win the next game against against the Wranglers, the Americans lost their next game against Helsinki, who has also been struggling this season.

As you can probably see, New York is having problems staying consistent, getting into a rhythm and playing great hockey for more than a week. What could be possibly wrong with the team?

 

· Young, inexperienced team

While they have a very promising roster, they are lacking the veteran presence of a long tenured players. Teams such as Seattle, who are at the very top right now, don’t struggle with that problem.

For example, Carles Puigdemont, their youngest player, has had very great games, but in other games he has struggled to get the offense going and hasn’t really been able to contribute to the team.

 

· Their defense and goaltending

The Americans right now are one of the worst team in that aspect. Kingfisher, their goalie, doesn’t even crack the top 10 for SV% and is allowing 3.28 goals per game as of right now. If they want to crack the top 3, they will have to up their defense and intensity levels, and Kingfisher has to get back to playing great. We know he can do it, last season he posted a 0.919SV% and this season he is just under 0.900

 

All in all, the Americans have showed great flashes of potential, we have seen two games in which they only lost by one goal against the Bears but on the other hand we have seen them dropping games they shouldn’t, against the Titans for example. On the bright side their new rookie Carles Puigdemont has been posting great numbers, averaging a point per game right now. He looks like a star in the making and I'm sure that when he gets a rhythm going, he and the team will do even better.