Cleveland Monsters Fall to Laval Rocket in Disappointing Display of Hockey
Photo Credit: Cleveland Monsters
After a 34-game injury absence, Cleveland Monsters Captain Stefan Matteau joined the lineup for the first time this season tonight. Typically, when a captain makes a triumphant return from an extended injury, a team will show up and play 60 minutes of good, solid hockey to welcome him back to the fold. Unfortunately, the opposite happened and the Monsters fell to the Laval Rocket, 5-0. It was, to say the least, disappointing.
Head Coach Trent Vogelhuber has spent the season preaching the importance of consistency, working hard, and focusing on the details of the game. Last week, It appeared Cleveland’s struggles with inconsistency were over and the team was finally on an incline. Tonight, the Monsters reverted to their old ways. “Inconsistent efforts. A little bit of arrogance thinking we don’t have to show up and work and still win sometimes,” said Coach Vogelhuber. “It’s the same thing we battled in the first half of the season.” Vogelhuber expanded upon this point stating, “When we show up and do it right, we win more often than we don’t. We give ourselves a really good chance to. But these games pop up and it’s embarrassing.”
Earlier in the day, goaltender Daniil Tarasov was assigned to the Cleveland Monsters by the Columbus Blue Jackets as part of a conditioning assignment. As expected, Tarasov struggled between the pipes with movements that were too slow to stop pucks from entering the net. It’s also important to note that Cleveland's defense abandoned their typical heavy net-front presence and left shooting lanes wide open for the Rocket to launch pucks down towards the net. “We talked a lot about defending our net front and then the box out. We did a piss poor job of that,” said Coach Vogelhuber.
At the end of the day, it’s up to the players to decide how they are going to approach the rest of the season. There’s only so much a coach can say and do in the locker room. “I hate to have the same conversations,” said Coach Vogelhuber. “The guys in there are just going to have to figure out how to get themselves in the right mindset more often than we are right now.”
Now, it’s up to the players to put that training into motion on the ice.
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You can hear all of Head Coach Trent Vogelhuber’s comments on tonight’s loss below:
