Monday Caps Clips: The Captain Leads in Carolina

Of course, Pierre Maguire decided to make the game as unbearable as possible by spending the entire game composing sonnets to Ryan Ellis.

From both his hockey work and his work with the Orioles, I have a strong liking for Thorne. I was happy to hear him.

I agree — I think he’s so much better at hockey than baseball, and it reminds me of watching the playoffs on ESPN in the 90’s.

I had the sound off for most of it since I was watching the Caps game on TV and the TSN2 feed of the WJC on my computer.

His voice is less nasal than I remember

it was the best Boxing Day present ever!

In fact, the US roster is predominantly offense-oriented. There’s really no one on defense to carry the mail like there was last year.

He’s okay, but looks like a doofus? Win-win, in my book.

In hindsight, the height difference is a big factor, but as you say, it’s not Perreault’s fault he’s significantly shorter than Gleason. Definitely a penalty, and I definitely thought it was blind side.

I would be very uncomfortable with the NHL saying that hit was either “lateral” or “blindside.” If the player who gets hit is up against the boards playing the puck, and the player who deals the hit is also up against the boards, then I don’t think that’s “lateral” or “blindside” no matter where the dude with the puck is looking. Everyone needs to expect hitting along the boards all the time.

This is a very different situation from boarding — where the hitter comes in from open ice behind the player with the puck. That’s blindside for sure. But if the hitter is along the boards next to the guy who gets hit, that’s just hockey.

I had the same thought—that it’s time to see a Caps player’s home life and they already have film of Knubles’ family so maybe it will show up in episode three. Besides I want to hear about how many stitches in his face he’s accumulated over the course of his career. He’s a very necessary and veteran key player and as much as I love Hendricks it’s time for HBO to show more significant role players on the Caps team.

I was expecting a visit to the Knubles as well. They live nearby on a very all-American type street – houses close together built in the ‘20s to ’40s. I’ve seen Mike out playing street hockey with the kids – did a double take, “hey, that’s Mike Knuble!”.

See also: insanity – doing the same thing (rooting for the Caps) and expecting a different result (a satisfying playoff run).

…I’m okay with being insane, though ;) One of these days, man, one of these days.

It’s not a selfish play. You need someone to go to the net, and if Knuble is working hard along the boards to continue the cycle he’s doing so with the idea that eventually the puck has to get free and get to the net.

ok, well, Ovechkin either goes to support Knuble — Backstrom is now way out of position. Ovechkin goes to get a pass from Knuble along the endboards — there’s now no one in front of the net dressed in white and Ovechkin has no outs except back to Knuble.

It wasn’t a selfish play, he read it wrong and went to a soft spot in the defense.

Basically Ovechkin got rewarded for making a bad, selfish play. That isn’t the type of leadership that is going to get the Caps into position for a cup run.

I have such a headache. Maybe it’s because I’ve been banging my head on the desk after reading this “comment”. If you took away all the goals that came from being lucky or being in the right place at the right time, not only wouldn’t you have any 50 goal scorers, you wouldn’t have any 30 goal scorers.

I guess the only knock was that the team didn’t look confident but they did show he was trying to make them confident. They gave up all sorts of goals early on all last year but it was just like they were toying with teams since they knew they could come back. Boudreau couldn’t seem to inspire them (judging by the flawed metric of “did they win any games after his impassioned speeches”) but I can’t fault a guy for that. He’s a hockey coach, not a psychologist.

All of it was on like what you said — letting the team play loosey goosey hockey and not just admitting that they need the 1st through 4th to play grind hockey and to change the game from a battle of finesse and skill to a battle of willpower and endurance.

they’ve had to play a much more disciplined game

And yet they fucked up about 6 line-changes yesterday, leading to two goals, a too-many men penalty and a boat-load of scoring chances against.

The key (or one of the keys) to the Caps seems obvious to me, and McPhee underscored it on last week’s 24/7. It’s about continuity and building the right personnel. It’s something that has been shown to work empirically in business and works in sports as well.

Empircally, it has been shown that when a business keeps employees, customers, and shareholders long term, it is more successful.

In sports, teams that have continuity of players, coaches, and fans tend to be more successful. Teams that go through constant change searching for that “right” combination tend not to be successful. The Redskins, NY Rangers and NY Knicks are teams that fall into this bucket. Even a team like the Yankees has had continuity of ownership, of managers (in recent years) and of players.

McPhee just isn’t going to fire Boudreau rashly. He is also going to continue to build a team that includes players like Erskine and Poti, because he sees the sum of the parts greater than the whole. This is not to say you can’t make tweaks, but, when you do, you look for missing pieces in terms of talents, and role, but you don’t upset the long term goal of building a team environment.

“…inability to adapt…”

The Caps have changed the penalty kill and the even strength systems this year. Seems to me like there is an ability to adapt. You could argue that he didn’t adapt quickly enough with respect to the pk, but as for the even strength system, there was no reason to change it until it failed in games 5-7 last April.

like this

I’ll bite the bullet, but it’s these 50 people coming to my house Sunday afternoon that could be the dagger.

Mapquest says that taking 68 is only a mile longer than taking the turnpike, but takes 26 minutes longer, there is no way I believe that, considering that the speed limit is 70 on most of 68, and the turnpike is always under construction.

As Irbe said, at some point the young guys have to get the experience in order to become a veteran.

He’s been yanked more times than he’s won. How about that?

He got yanked again last night against the Leafs. 3 goals on 14 shots. It’s not ALL his fault but…man alive, he is not the same goalie he once was. Sad, really, it wasn’t that long ago that he was the best.

Ha! I see what you did there :P

I feel so smug about that first NJ game when I told F&B that Marty couldn’t slam the door like he used to. He’s getting into a mental funk that may never end.

Or professional idiots, as it was the Junkies talking on 24/7.

they did. whacked in the face.

They did. He got a stick up in the face, under the visor – not sure if it hit his eye or something, maybe there was swelling. Hard to tell. Scary to see that even the visor didn’t really protect him there.

I saw that too and unless he got concussed by the stick, I’m at a loss to figure out how that kept him out last night.

Bite your tongue!

That was just mean.

Gordon has a foot infection. And stitches.

I don’t fault the refs for the call. Not at all. That’s why, in some ways, I’m glad there was no supplemental discipline.

yeah I gotta agree — snap judgement, it’s a major because the guy is bleeding profusely on the ice. Just in retrospect with 50 million angles, not sold on it being a major. Gleason definitely made an unwarranted hit by putting his shoulder up into Perreault’s head but it was just a dumb mistake, not malicious. If he was gliding into Perreault I would be up in arms, but he was coming over rather lazily for a normal-we-see-it-20-times-a-game hit along the board. Just no need for him to elevate into the hit on a shorter opponent.

We’ve seen some interesting stuff — his meetings with the assistant coaches and the GM to rate every player after every game are fascinating. We haven’t seen any parallel meetings in the Washington organization. I’m sure such meetings don’t take the same form, but I’m not sure that they don’t happen.

Wise has his talents (his feature pieces are outstanding, really top-notch work), infrequently seen as they may be. Madden? yeeeeeeeeah, not so much.

That’s funny. Good perspective. Beaver columnist talking smack about an established, longstanding Washington Post columnist. And tho’ I’m not a Wise fan I recognize that the guy does have an established national career.

you’re like a slightly more polite version than Bruce!

A lot of teams have the Caps on depth at center, though – and frankly I think it’s an area GMGM will address at or before the deadline.

But yeah, I’m not sold on their defense or goaltending being better than ours. I think we have a better goaltending tandem overall (as much as I love Johnny, there’s a bigger dropoff between MAF to him than there is from Neuvy to Varly) and I think their defense is just slightly less skilled than ours.

I still think we dented ’em a bit on Thursday. Malkin has had zero offense since Ovi lined him up.

Ottawa will hold a special place in my heart for sacrificing for the good of my mental health. Thanks for letting the Capitals claw their way back into that game, sens! Delightful early Christmas present, much appreciated.

glad to know I’m not the only one! I would have turned it off, but I wanted to see what happened to Matty since I didn’t get home until the second period started, and I also wanted to catch highlights of Detroit-Minnesota.

OTF is recorded in Toronto and populated by Canadians. I respect the hockey smarts of their panels, but some of them are definitely biased.

On the other hand, if we were counting an Ovechkin points streak, we’d probably look for the silver lining in a loss, too. But we’re fans; we don’t get paid for our chatter.

I didn’t see much of that game – turned it on after the Caps – but I saw some Pens fans talking about Elliott, apparently he was unreal.

Of course they could just be doing that thing where you say “we couldn’t score on him…gee, he’s playing well!” (we’ve all done it :P) But if he was really good, sad that OtF can’t give him credit for that.

That’s 5 and a game, IMO.

I didn’t think it was bad at all. Not much of a hit — Spezza just lost his edge. If Spezza’s feet are stable, the two of them slide into the boards together and it’s a play you see multiple times a night.

I’m OK with 2 minutes or not 2 minutes, but I wouldn’t give any more than that, and certainly no supplemental discipline. That just looked like bad luck to me. Shit happens.