Friday Caps Clips: Caps @ Thrashers Game Day

he also got healthy scratched recently.

That’s a couple of the major variables, for sure. I agree we’ll see Bob start. Does he rebound? The two games before last night he let in a real soft goal in each. Then last night he was not good. Were the two softies the cracks in the dam, and last night the bursting of the floodgates?

And will the Caps put for the type of effort to exploit him, if that’s the case? They have not been good in B2B situations in recent years, imo. On the other hand, they’ve gotten up for the better opponents.

Also of interest, the Flyers had a recent stretch where everything they did was golden. Now they’ve lost two in a row in regulation. Are they cooling off or just plain cold now, or was that their little blip and they now get back to playing good hockey?

I’m more concerned they’re getting us traveling at the end of a back to back.

They got Tampa on the second of back-to-backs, as well…

I’m just hoping they try to play “Score-O” with the Caps… any team that tries that is asking for trouble (Chicago and Vancouver excepted…)

Same here.

thats what i’m thinkin. Neuvy’s seen a lot of good offense this year but he hasn’t had to deal with Philly yet. And with the way they’ve been playing, Holtby is likely to decapitate someone with an orange jersey.

so virtually the same

I have a theory that less # of players are shouldering more of the work.

I smell some research for an upcoming post on this hypothesis. Maybe I’ll bust out a graph to show the # of 20,30,40,50+ goal scorers over the past 15-20 seasons. Although I might have to normalize that data, based upon all seasons having the same number of goals per game. Might be tough but I’ll try.

It would be even more difficult to do something like this for goalies since it’s tougher to normalize their stats

Actually, I’d argue that he probably doesn’t. One of the oldest cliches in sports is that great players make terrible coaches because they do things on talent and instinct, whereas most of us mere mortals get by on effort and thinking.

Beyond that, the width of the rink is experienced very differently by a winger who grew up playing in Russia versus a center who grew up playing in Sweden. If Johansson’s going to learn from someone, it’s going to be Backstrom, or maybe even Hendricks, who played on an Olympic sheet in St. Cloud.

Why would they go back in time to ask a promising rookie who’s doing pretty darned well to do anything differently?

Because the promising rookie makes Tomas Fleischmann look strong on the puck.

don’t think you gave enough attention to "I love this move for right now, mid-November."

Fair enough. From your opening statement, I took your overall premise to be that he’s not skating 12 soft minutes, but rather 13 hard ones and that he’s doing great at it. I’d argue that his play has been very uneven and that he is actually skating some pretty soft minutes.

The phrases "uneven, trending toward mediocre" "weak" "atrocious" "poor" "glaring deficiencies" and “neuter” are a bit over the top, no? I can’t understand where your annoyance with the kid is coming from. He’s pretty much everything he was advertised to be, the good and the bad. His wheels are more than NHL quality. I don’t see the playmaking instincts there – at least I haven’t yet – which is consistent with his low-offense SEL numbers.

But he has demonstrated a real skill in preventing goals. He’s been on the ice for 5 goals against in 114 minutes of gametime. You can’t fake that, and it’s certainly better than I expected. Any bad defensive player would have been on the ice for more goals against, pretty much no matter who he was playing with. It’s like Schultzie’s +/- last year. It doesn’t prove that Schultz is one of the best players in the league, but it sure as hell proves that he ain’t a bad player. And what the solid defensive awareness means for Johansson you can afford to throw him out there during real games to work on everything else. That skill alone gives him a role in the NHL — having a guy you can throw out there for a shift in the playoffs to give your big guns a rest, with the confidence that you probably won’t get scored against, is pretty valuable.

There’s definitely a lot to work on. But with the exception of the offense, everything you hammer him for is the kind of thing that young players always come into the league needing to improve – especially the physical capabilities and the faceoffs. What you’re saying seems to boil down to being upset that he’s still 19 and hasn’t figured it all out yet. I think RMNB has it right:

Patience (tålamod), not rash thinking, is what’s important.

How much would Mackan’s Corsi be lowered by the fact that, while he was centering Chimera and Fehr, Fehr was playing terribly and Chimera was whiffing on perfect passes? Mackan hasn’t been perfect, but he’s been far better than what you’re saying.

I don’t know where you get a lot of this criticism from. I’ve seen Mackan beat defenders to a numbers of pucks and then hold onto it using moves that are almost the same as Backstrom’s. He has made quite a few great setups that weren’t finished (largely by Chimera, Knuble, and Laich) and his play has been noticably better in the last couple games. He does need to improve, but he’s already shown that he can be the 3C right now – and he’s a decent option for 2C, although I don’t think he’s quite ready for that.

Easy for your stats isn’t the same thing as easy to play. If you are with AO then you are playing against the other team’s top defenders and you have a substantial defensive burden.

We’re talking about hard minutes developmentally (or at least I thought we were). Asking a kid to keep up with Ovi is ahrd.

I’d rather him split time with Perreault this season and have each of them get 30-45 games of solid NHL experience. I’m not ready to give up on Perreault yet completely, and not allowing him to get any NHL face time would be doing him a disservice development-wise.

I don’t want to rile up the MP lobby, but I’d be happy to see him up here for 10-15 games so that Mackan could go down to Hershey and get put in some high-leverage situations and gain some confidence. It doesn’t have to happen right away, but in little while, we’re going to wake up and it’s going to be 2011 – we can’t wait forever.

I think that Hershey is pretty close to out of the question for 90 simply because there’s no solid replacement coming in return.

You’re right, and that’s a damned shame. I think he has some learning he could do at both levels this year, and I hope they can make decisions based on what’s best for him and not for NHL wins and losses this year

I absolutely worry about the depth, as well. It’s one of the few things I’ll be really pessimistic about at this time of year, because it impacts the D in the long run to be overworking them while relying on the Faheys and Sloans of the world when guys are injured.

Unfortunately it’s down to Flash and King, and as much as we’re all down on Flash it’s not really close between those two.

He can’t swap Flash and hendy because then he’d be admitting that Flash isn’t a center. Although that 14-26-16 line could get a point or two on Atlanta tonight, especially if D-Buf is still out.

Aw fuck! Oh well, there goes my credibility.

Which the rational commentators point out. It’s like CI, except the “Fire Waddell” posts are perfectly legit.

That and he’s been in the league all of 2 years.