Sunday Roundup - Habs 5, Caps 4
by J.P. on Jan 11, 2009 10:46 AM EST
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[AP Recap - Game Summary - Event Summary]
Prior to last night, the Caps were 20-1-1 when leading after two periods on the season. They were 27-1-2 in such situations a season ago, 21-1-5 in 2006-07, 18-1-3 in 2005-06, 20-0-3 in 2003-04, 27-1-3-2 in 2002-03, 24-1-4-1 in 2001-02, 27-1-4-0 in 2000-01, 26-1-3-0 in 1999-2000, and 23-1-2-0 in 1998-99. So in nine-and-a-half seasons, the team had carried leads into the third period 275 times and lost only nine of those games in regulation, with no more than one of those losses coming in any one season. Until last night.
I'll give this to the Caps, though - when they blow it, they blow it big, giving up four third period goals for the first time since December 29, 2007 (a game they still managed to win 8-6).
Bruce Boudreau - denied a chance to stand behind the Eastern Conference All-Stars bench by virtue of the loss - said it best: "We allowed four goals in the third period, and it is just dumb hockey."
It's easy to throw Milan Jurcina under the bus (as Boudreau did) on this one for his mistake with just seconds left, but there was enough blame to go around, not just on that play (Karl Alzner's failure to clear the puck at the top of the zone, Brent Johnson's inability to stop a stoppable puck), but throughout the game - Eric Fehr's lack of backchecking and Sean Collins' poor positioning on the second Plekanec goal, Tyler Sloan's second consecutive game with a horrible and costly penalty, Tomas Fleischmann's inability to play the point on the Plekanec shorty, the team's failure to recognize that four-on-four hockey means you can only put four skaters out on the ice, etc.
There were some positives to come out of the game - Alex Semin's two goals, Michael Nylander's second multi-point game since October 25 and his second goal since October 16 - but the game leaves a bad taste in one's mouth because of the way it happened (including the questionable officiating involved in the unravelling). Then again, with Tom Poti, Jeff Schultz and John Erskine healthy and the team's number one netminder between the pipes, some of the above-mentioned players aren't even in uniform, much less on the ice in the last minute of a tie game.
There's little rest for the weary Caps, with Edmonton coming to town on Tuesday, a visit to Pittsburgh on Wednesday, and the Conference-leading Bruins coming to town on Saturday. Last night's loss capped a frustrating weekend for the Caps and their fans in fittingly frustrating fashion, but it's important that it remains just that - a frustrating weekend. If it continues into the week...
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This week...
agreed, they have to shrug this weekend off. The streak was going to end sometime, better this weekend then next week.
Edmonton is not great and pretty banged up but we can’t look past them.
Penguins are sucking bad right now but it seems scripted that they would have a breakout game against out and “find their way” because we are the Caps and they are the penguins.
And hopefully we can use that home ice advantage against the B’s cause that game against them in Boston at the end of the month-it’s going to be intense!
Here’s hoping Feds comes back on Tuesday. And I am now ok with Erskine coming back just so I can see sloan or collins go down. Schultz would be a nice suprise too.
-shwedy
Exactly. Losing back-to-backs sucks, especially in such a frustrating fashion, but after a 7 game win streak the wheels have to come off at some point and this gives them a chance to get their stuff back together.
Edmonton is a “should win” sort of game, which always makes me nervous.
I don’t care how badly the Penguins are doing right now, those games are always charged with emotion and angst since part of me always figures that the Caps will find a way to lose. It’s just an unwritten law. No lead (or lack-there-of) is ever safe. That win earlier this season had me positively giddy. Let’s do it again!
Bruins will obviously be a challenge, and the key is having Theodore (unless something changes) in the zone. If the caps get solid goaltending, I think they’ll pull out a W.
I like seeing Semin get some goals, he needs to do that more. Some more Ovie goals wouldn’t hurt either. I don’t like seeing Jeff Carter’s mug up there on NHL.com. It’s just not right.
Laying Blame ....
Think you missed quite a few players when dishing out the blame ….. Ovechkin, for instance, had 8 shots & 2 missed shots … gave the puck away or passed to Mtl. more than once; Green had 3 give-aways & neither he or Ovi were in position to stop the shorthanded goal that occurred (could have meant the difference in the game as well). There were 5 penalties before Backstrom’s & Sloan’s — two of them very stupid penalties to take at any point in the game: 1) Jurcina (closing hand on puck) and Alzner (Team penalty for two many men on the ice) when he couldn’t make a decent line change. Sloan & the other PK D-men did a good job on killing off 5 penalties. Sloan’s hooking penalty was a crap call — he could have looked sideways at the guy & been called for something because the Ref’s decided it was time Mtl. had a 5 on 3 chance. Such BS! Let’s not forget Morrison & Collins were not effective in stopping the even strength goal that allowed Mtl. to move ahead again in the game. Wash. PP sucked — no urgency by either Green or Ovi to get the puck back in the Mtl. zone (they might as well have taken a coffee break)…. If someone else had been called for a penalty to create the 5 on 3 and Sloan was on the PK, maybe there wouldn’t have been the goals. In both the Mtl. & CBJ games Sloan was not scored on once. Alzner, on the other hand was scored on twice in the Mtl. game and 3 times in the CBJ game. Jurcina was scored on 4 times in both games. This is a TEAM sport and no one on the Wash. team had close to a perfect game …. so if you’re going to criticize call out everyone instead of being so ridiculous.
I’d be less inclined to call criticisms on Collins and Jurcina and Morrisonn if they hadn’t flat out contributed anything. And, frankly, they’ve struggled to contribute all season. I’m not blaming anyone for the loss but the team as a whole, rather, in the last thread, I was pointing out that Johnson was not who was to blame.
If being angry is what you wanna do, that’s cool, but I think you’re jumping on people without really understanding all of what they were saying.
being so ridiculous?
You can’t call something like Jurcina’s colossal fuck-up anywhere close to the same as half the things you mentioned. If everyone had a bad game, then Jurcina had the worst game any player’s ever had ever. That was just plain UGLY. You can’t put everything on even ground when it doesn’t deserve to be. Incredibly stupid defense isn’t nearly the same as simply being in the play when you get scored on. If a guy beats you, you probably did something wrong. When you do something wrong to practically hand the guy a goal, you went beyond doing something wrong into a whole new category of bad.
Say what you want about Jurcina but the Capitals did not deserve to win that game. That play was merely the icing on the cake. And for Boudreau to call him out and whine about not going to the All-Star game doesn’t look good. The team played poorly. It was amazing that they were even close. They had no chemistry, couldn’t pass, took dumb penalties, had a sloppy power play and an inept penalty kill. Fluke plays like that happen, just ask New Jersey, I seem to remember them leaving Ovechkin open on the side of net where he scored a goal with 1 second left. Even if Jurcina takes a penalty in that situation that leaves the Caps in overtime 4-on-3. With the way the Habs power play was working its still no ASG for Bruce. Hopefully, this will serve as a wake up call to the team. They are good but not nearly good enough.
They are good but not nearly good enough.
Agreed, but let’s give some credit where it’s due. That was a great comeback by Montreal and it’s a tough loss, but we’ll move on
by bigonetimer on Jan 12, 2009 10:47 AM EST up reply actions
Jurcina and Alzner should have gone down, not Sloan and Collins
by Scrabbleship on Jan 11, 2009 5:37 PM EST up reply actions
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Southeast Standings
| GP | W | L | OTL | PT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Florida
|
51 | 24 | 16 | 11 | 59 |
|
Washington
|
52 | 27 | 21 | 4 | 58 |
|
Winnipeg
|
54 | 24 | 24 | 6 | 54 |
|
Tampa Bay
|
51 | 23 | 23 | 5 | 51 |
|
Carolina
|
54 | 20 | 25 | 9 | 49 |
(updated 2.7.2012 at 3:17 AM EST)
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