Interesting numbers. It looks like Crosby and Malkin should be benched with Garon being the starting goalie. Brooks Laich is going to destroy MAF. You read it here first.

The numbers look typical for a small sample size. I think the most intriguing numbers were the big minues in front of some of the Pens, but also that Max Talbot was +2. He may be their version of Callahan and bears watching despite his reputation. Matt Bradley is from the same cloth as those two… should be interesting.

And yeah, they shouldn’t play Malkin at all (pleasepleaseplease…he’s scary good.)

I would rather face MAF than Garon – Garon is an unknown, and who knows what might happen? MAF is a mediocre goalie who can shine when his defense keeps the other team’s offense to a minimum. I see the Caps lighting his ass up.

I’d rather have seen PIT in the ECF but I don’t mind facing them now. You know the Caps will come out fired up in every game because they never lie down for PIT. The Caps won’t be the favorites either so they’ll play with the underdog mentality rather than the “we got this in the bag” mentality that leads to problems. MAF played well for PIT in a couple games but he also had some bad games. If Jeff Carter doesn’t pull a Nikolai Zherdev disappearing act then that series goes at least 7.

I see Fleury as a pretty typical NHL starting goalie. He’s good, and can be spectacular at the top of his game, but he’s also beatable. He’s like a Marty Turco or Nikolai Khabibulin. At his best, he can be scary, but he’s neither always at his best nor scary.

That being said, the Caps have been beaten in series by Penguins’ certain future hall-of-famers named Ron Tugnutt, Ken Wregget and Johan Hedberg, so anything can happen.

Neat, Washington v. Pittsburgh in the NHL and AHL. Hadn’t even made that connection until just now…

After the soap opera that was the Washington-NY series, I was hoping for a nice hockey-only matchup against the Devils. Now it’s going to be Days of Our Lives on steroids for the next two weeks. And of course, all the local Penguin fans who will start crawling out from under the sink. OTOH, we will get to see this a few hundred times.

Meaning some ugly games, suffocating defense, and a world-class goaltender. Our styles don’t match up well.

Pittsburgh, on the other hand, is an ideal match-up. Of course they’re scary and good BUT we always play better with more uptempo teams…also, we’ve seen throughout the season that the Caps always play UP to the competition while playing DOWN to the lesser teams. Our big players love the big stage, and there’s no bigger stage at this point than a series against Pittsburgh. No stinkers this round, I can feel it. Not saying we’re gonna walk away with it, but I see a more consistent all-around effort.

It’s often been said, a true Cup contender usually faces its hardest hurdle in that first round. Although it gave me great agita and nervous moments, I am glad that we had to eke out a tough 7-game series rather than have a ho-hum sweep like Boston. We were all concerned about the lackadaisical play towards the end of the year, no sense of urgency, etc. That series certainly woke us up (one would hope)… we faced adversity, we overcame it, and we’re going into this series with the right frame of mind.

Is anyone else here still simply stunned that we’re in the 2nd round? God, what an amazing team we have.

It took so much restraint to avoid all scores and watch that game on DVR. My wife said “how can you not just go look up the final score”. 2 minutes later Fedorov scored and i went nuts. i replied to her “Because I wouldn’t feel like this if I had just looked up the final score online”. What a great win and feeling!

Are my eyes deceiving me? Are all of our players listed really even or + in +/-? Considering how much we score on power plays, and how our high octane offense sometimes creates huge holes in our defense, I am shocked by there not being any negatives there.