Friday Roundup - Caps 5, Isles 2

Congrats to Brooksie on his 100th NHL point, to Alzner on his first NHL point, and to Brash for his first goal of the season.

If he keeps making plays like that, Alzner is going to be hell on wheels on the blueline in a couple of years. Keep him.

I’m not entirely mollified, though. I want to see a consistent effort like that for both games this weekend. We need to get our work ethic back and bring it every. single. night, particularly on the road.

I’m beginning to wonder if maybe it’s time to pull Clark’s C? May sound horrible of me, but …

1) Lepisto seems to have good offensive instincts for a defensemen, but it must be a bit troubling that he seems to get physically man handled a bit more than one would like. Does he need to work on his upper body strength?
2) Did Nylander play? Hard to be invisible when you play with Ovechkin, but he managed.
3) So do the Islanders have a goaltender controversy when DiPietro returns? ; ) McDonald who is older than the Isles ‘goalie for life’, has played extremely well so far this season.

For all the penalties called last night I was surprised the Brashear-Weight knee-on-knee (just before Brashear scored) wasn’t called. I thought the contact was above the knee but with the calls last night….

There had to be a good 2-3 second delay before the ref’s arm went up on Alex’s boarding call. I was as incredulous as Alex was on that call. He plainly let up before the hit and, given Sutton’s size, the call was a joke.

It also appears Alex isn’t throwing his body as usual. Perhaps not a good sign in the long term.

On SI’s Kennedy: That is the biggest unwarranted slurp I’ve ever seen.

I watched that game on CI. The whole game. And I’ve never seen as much Crosby-falling-down-and-whining-to-the-refs/etc. I mean, even by Sid standards it was a remarkable performance.

Worse: He made fools out of his teammates and his coach. In the first period, Colton Orr delivered a clean hit in the PIT D-zone when Crosby passed the puck. On his way down to the ice, Sid went out of his way to get his stick up in Orr’s face (making contact, too). Then Sid took his sweet time getting up, and yapped at the refs for several minutes. (Over. A. Clean. Hit.) When he got back to the bench he incited his teammates to yap at Godard, and even got Mike Therrien to make a spectacle of himself by yelling at the NYR bench. (Classy, coach.)

Finally, naturally, Eric Godard had to go out and fight Orr because his ‘star’ had done so much sniveling. Orr kicked his butt, and not for the first time.

And so it continued.

Yeah, whatever you say, Kennedy.

Since when did NHL refs start using a five-second delay? On that absurd boarding call on AO, the puck was taken into the corner by a Cap and passed into the slot before the ref’s brain computed it was a penalty. And you know the guy knew he screwed up because he was still explaining the call to Alex before the START of the next period. Have I mentioned how much I hate Andy Sutton?

“It just bounced there and I went to the goal, and it looked like a big piece of cheese to me,” Brashear said. Not sure exactly what kind of cheeses hang around in Brash’s refrig (or for how long), but whatever works for him works for me. Bravo, DonDon!!

“Brashear went to the net, defenseman Karl Alzner intentionally fired the puck off the end boards, knowing it was going to kick back out front. " This sounds a litle fishy to me. A bit of a re-write of history. (”I just smacked it down there in a panic, hoping something interesting might develop.") How does Karlito gain such an intimate knowledge of the rebound directions and velocities of various spots on the VC boards in so short a time? Hmm.

Except for noting some mass disappearances in the second period, I liked this one much better than the stink-pot on Tuesday evening. (Speaking of black cheese. . . . )

I’d also like to suggest some additional love for both Kozzie the Big Dog, who is playing great, and Fehr, who is right on the edge.

Finally, I missed ‘Full Metal Jacket’ (surprisingly) — JP, although I think I can imagine the gist of the line.

"Brashear went to the net, defenseman Karl Alzner intentionally fired the puck off the end boards, knowing it was going to kick back out front. " This sounds a litle fishy to me. A bit of a re-write of history.

Alzner made a play some other defensemen would not have, shooting wide rather than into the shin pads of the forward standing in front of him. Perhaps the “knowing it was going to kick back out front” was a little more credit than was due (I blame Joe B. and Locker’s praise of the play for that), but it was a lot more than him just smacking the puck randomly.