Friday Roundup - Kings 5, Caps 4

The Kings were just flying last night, and Quick was excellent. The Caps looked like they were from another league.

+1 on the Norris talk – for the year. If there’s hardware for best offensive defenseman then he’s locked it up but there isn’t.

Schultz’s great job of screening the JT on Kopitar’s first goal. Holmstrom couldn’t have done it any better.

After the third or fourth time the Kings had a player break untouched down the middle of the ice, I asked myself, “Self?…why don’t the coaches go find a white board real quick and draw out a way to stop this?”

And you’re the guy (who must be a lurker and not a regular) who left his very cute girlfriend to storm off after it was 5-3 even when she was calling after you that her cell phone was dead and to please just wait the two minutes….
that was not very nice.

Some nights you are going to come out flat, and not click. Last night was the night. I think Kozlov does a nice job with the puck between the blue lines, and it was missing quite a bit.

The Kings also seemed to have quite a bit more jump. Chalk it up..sell out and win Saturday night vs. a team we must keep distance on.

There is also some good time off next week for practice, so I if can get a win Saturday it will be a VERY successful busy week for the Caps.

- The first two periods of last nights game reminded me of my adult league games where the defense plays offense and there are more odd man breaks than clean breakouts. Ugly stuff.

- Laich had a pretty good game I thought. Hopefully he is getting back on track.

- The Fehr experiment didn’t last long and I hope that that isn’t the end of it. That said, he was not very good in the little time that he had out there.

- Semin had a great game, and gets a grinder’s assist on Ovi’s goal. That turnover was due to Semin’s pressure against the boards.

…is one that I’m afraid might be true. We’ll show up for the big games all the time, but the great coaches, make sure their teams show up for EVERY game.

And like some dude on Tarik’s blog keeps posting, every day since before Xmas, the last 21 games of the season are against ‘weaker’ teams (not sure that’s the exact wording he uses – but he means non-playoff teams). Well that right there is a bad sign for us -cause we only show up for BIG games.

I will say, I believe coach will fix this issue.

I’d like to see BB stick with similar lines for more than a day instead of shuffling them up every period.

I’d like the defense to play smart, simple, easy defense. The boys from Hershey would have done a better job than that — maybe they will get the chance after last nights debacle.

I would have liked Theodore to make that last save considering the Caps at least made sure in the third that he only had to face 3 shots up till then and it was obvious they were going to score in the next minute.
I was sitting right behind the net and it was an easy save. SURE, he kept them in it at a lot of points but you’re only as good as your last save.

On a plus side.

Those $5 Capitals knit caps selling outside Verizon are a steal!

I am not sure that there’s anything he can do or is willing to do that he’s not already done. He said that his style doesn’t include incessantly ragging on guys. Do you think he ought to turn to that? More in the way of punishment and so forth? I’m not sure that will work with this bunch of hooligans twentysomethings. I just dunno!

The LA forecheck had us pinned consistently. That and their speed killed us. Heck, I thought we had ways of overcoming those tactics (Excuse me, Mikey? If you have two forwards all over you behind your own net it MAY indicate that your partner is open and waiting to help you out.) but for some reason we didn’t deploy.

I would also suggest that ShaMo and Flash utterly sucked as well. No, Flash was not a “non-factor”. He actively stunk. FleshMan gave the puck away about four times in ONE SHIFT. Furthermore, the Greenie Norris Talk Moratorium ought to last longer than just one day, in my view.

And Joe-Zay choses the very day that they announce he has no credible backup to play one of his weakest games in months. [shiver]

Ted ought to give all of us our money back for this one. This is the earliest that I have left a game all year.

B=L=E=H

The good news is that once we get to the playoffs, we don’t have to worry about playing down to non playoff teams.

damint, I should have read JP’s post before posting.

And Joe-Zay choses the very day that they announce he has no credible backup to play one of his weakest games in months. [shiver]
Which of those LA goals would you consider weak? The 5-3 screened goal first goal, the 2-0 tap in for the last goal or the three clean breakaway goals? Keep in mind that he stopped at least 3 or 4 other breakaways. If it weren’t for Theo, the score could have easily been 9-4.

Backstrom played ok in the flow of the game, but he is downright atrocious on faceoffs. It is a really glaring deficiency. It’s almost like sending Gilbert Arenas to take the tap every game. He may win a few, but it will be by accident.

Props to the Kings goalie. He let up 4 goals, but it was on 45 shots (and something like 20 of them were in the 3rd). He made some really good saves, especially on AO.

Fedorov can’t give Backstrom some faceoff tips. They should take an hour after every practice just taking faceoffs against each other.

“My guess is that the first fifteen seconds of Our American Cousin was pretty sweet, too.”

That was hillarious and eased the sting of getting out peformed last night in the first two periods.

Thanks JP!

Good news.

As seen in section 421, I can’t recall a game when so many pucks were let go at the blue line on the attack. It wasn’t just Schultz, but Poti missed a couple and at least 2 by Erskine led to odd-man rushes. The entire defensive corps really deserves most of the hit on this game. Sure Green had a goal on a great shot and an asisst, but this was the worst game I’ve seen Erskine play since he’s come back from injury, ditto for Schultz. Hopefully Schultz will get it out of his system. The only defenseman who seemed to be playing well was Morrisonn, who I didn’t notice all night (which means he’s doing his job).

Of the 5 that got by Theo, none were his fault. And when a guy is in front of your net with 2 minutes left, you have to do what Locker says, put the “El-Kabong” on him…

The only defenseman who seemed to be playing well was Morrisonn, who I didn’t notice all night (which means he’s doing his job).

To be fair, he committed the DoG which put them down 2 men in the 1st and eventually led to Kopitar’s goal, and then committed that slash in the 2nd.

Its been a much discussed topic recently, but why was it Brads, not the Donald?

I never like the idea of Erskine with Green and last night it was painfully obvious why it isn’t a good idea: Green needs to be able to pinch at times to be at his most effective and Erskine simply doesn’t have the footspeed to compliment that.

Bradley does his job every night. There’s only player on the Caps who works harder, plays harder and leaves more out there every night than Bradley, and that’s Ovechkin. No shame in being second to Ovie in that…

Coaches love players like Bradley because they know that when they’re out there, the effort won’t be an issue.

care bear line?

I wasn’t able to watch the game last night, but I did read some of the play-by-play on my phone- it looked as though the Caps lost practically every faceoff. I was curious as to how the Fehr on the first line experiment went, but from the comments it appears that the jury’s out on that.