Pre-season game observation

[Goatwhacker]

It seems like coaches are holding players out of the pre-season much more than they used to. In years past the final pre-season game was regarded as almost a "dress rehearsal" for the regular season and starters would get almost all the playing time. Now, looking at the stats from last night, that seems to be the exception to the rule - almost all teams held out most of their key players, apparently in fear of injury.

To me the last pre-season game isn't the time to be "taking a good look" at fringe players, you should pretty much know your roster already. Looking at when the starters were playing last night, I was still seeing a lot of penalties. This indicates to me that maybe they're still not in regular season form, and maybe the coach was worrying too much about injuries and not enough about getting ready for the season.

[Dorny]

Seems to me it has always been like that. The second to the last preseason game is what is usually the dress rehearsel and the last game is mostly for working out kinks and evaluating the players on the bubble of making the team.

[Mercer Boy]

Yeah, they don't want anyone on the first team to get hurt, so they barely play at all most times unless they need some more "seasoning." Apparently they didn't put enough pepper in their salads in the first three weeks.

Otherwise, it's mainly a cutdown performance evaluation for the lower guys.