GDT Canadiens @ Flyers - Nov. 25th, 2011

[lazy26]

What angers em most about Cammalleri is that he plays selfish. What I mean by this is his effort. On way too many occassions the opposition separates from him because his feet are not moving. Secondly he bails way too often when someone exudes some physicality. He plays as though he is afraid to get injured again instead of getting the puck out of the zone or making the difficult play.

I wouldn't call his play selfish, as he is playing a very team-oriented game (more so than past years, in my opinion). But I do think that you're correct in identifying his play as being afraid to get injured again. He has stopped engaging in battles along the boards, and as a result, his forecheck has been awful and is likely part of the reason his line has stopped scoring; there is hardly any time spent in the offensive zone.

If he's playing through an injury, we have to ask what's better: Cammalleri playing at say half-ability, or a scrub from Hamilton playing in his stead? As long as he's not exacerbating his injury, I chose the former. You know he'll get better as he heals and I feel even his decreased performance is better than what's available from the team roster. But if he does need time to heal properly, it might be worthwhile to sit Cammy a few. The thing is, points seem so important even this early on, I feel like both management and Cammy will elect to have him play through injury.

[Willey101]

Our system demands that players sacrifice along the boards and via puck blocking in order for us to be successful so if Cammalleri is not doing that then he is hurting us. He is obviously afraid of re-aggravating whatever is ailing him but the problem is that we don;t have a player in our farm system ready to fill that void.

Either we live with a player who is our best pure goal scorer but struggling offensively and defensively or like you said we play someone else more regularly.