Friday Caps Clips: Caps Rookies 4, Flyers Rookies 3

That’s something I noticed, too. He ran into his own net a lot.

I couldn’t fault Bobrovsky for that (although a lot of folks around us seemed to). He was just aggressive at planting his skate at the post most of the time. I wasn’t seeing any intent to move the net off its moorings.

Amen

Okay, fair enough. Whether he does it consistently, I had a hard time telling as I was pretty close to the glass.

No idea on my part. Had a car disaster, so I couldn’t go to the game, and the streaming feed wasn’t working.

Well, the comment was made by a Flyers fan.

Galiev also looked like he need a cheeseburger (or six). Just scrawny. If he doesn’t pack on some muscle and get better at protecting the puck in a couple years, then it’s time to worry. But for now? Eh. I’m excited to see him develop.

Do we know whether he learned something or not?

The playoffs are completely and totally a crap shoot.

Really? It seems to me as though a lot of people picked Chicago and Philly to be the two teams in the finals before the season. It didn’t happen exactly how people thought it would, but things rarely do. Still, it’s not as though the outcome was completely improbable. With the exception of Carolina in ’06, and maybe Tampa in ’04, can you think of a totally out of the blue Stanley Cup Champ?

Well, when the quote makes you throw an entire season out the window, I think it’s fair to say you’re not happy with it.

Sorry about the nested reply fail…

"Maybe we’re better if we score 20 goals less and give up 20 less," he said. "We have to be better defensively. We’ve been flashy and played for the fans. We have to be more soldier-like.

"When good teams play with the lead, they take you out of the game. They don’t let you off the floor. We had teams down and we let up. (Changing) is not going to happen right off the bat, but by February or March, you have to know how to play the right way. The last two months of the regular season, you really have to have your identity down and know how to play to win in the playoffs."

What else am I looking for? I’m looking for that speech to come from the coach. How they play in April is built on how they play in March, Feb, and so forth back to September. And how they play is built on how they plan to play, and how they practice how they plan to play. That comes back to the coach. Granted, the players have to execute, but they have to know what and how to execute — and that comes back to the coach.

Do I think they played their hearts out, and they were the victims of bad luck? I think they played their hearts out, but I’m tired of the bad luck argument.

Sure, wacky things happen, that’s why they play the games. But the Caps, too often, have been the "whackees" rather than the "whackers" I’d like to see them prepare, so they can overcome wacky things (aka "hot goalies", "bad power plays" "not being able to score"), and so they can make the wacky things happen to someone else.

Because when the series is, in essence, a complete and utter statistical anomaly where otherworldy, insanely wacky things happen, there’s not much more you can say than “I don’t know what we learned”.

I agree, that irked me. By game 7 it was pretty apparent that Bruce’s approach wasn’t guaranteeing wins, and I’m pretty sure everyone around here was calling for certain changes to be made (cough PK cough). But he didn’t. The fact that even now, 4 months later, he coming across as bewildered really bothers me and doesn’t give me much confidence should we face another situation like last year’s playoffs.

Probably. That was just the first meme that popped into my head.

Everything about him seems to be very what you see is what you get.

It’s not for nothing that he’s called Gabby.

That quote leaped out at me too.

Sometimes when things don’t go your way, the coach has to be the difference. Clearly this did not happen last year.

And if he isn’t being coy and really didn’t learn anything, I’m betting that’s not going to be good for business.

Bruce sees fires and he’s really good at using water to put it out. However, come April, he keeps getting unlucky match-ups against chemical fires. Bruce keeps throwing water on it instead of finding a different way to extinguish the flame.

Brilliant analogy.

It seems to me that Bruce’s methods have always been offense first, let’s try to outscore the opponent. His thinking in the MTL series was just to keep throwing Ovi, Green, Semin, as much offense as possible and sooner than later the pucks would start going in. That never happened. He didn’t adjust. I guess he figured that at some point something had to give, and it did, a Caps loss in Game 7 and a first round exit.

It irks me too that Boudreau seems to acknowledge that some sort of adjustment should have been made during that series. One of the adjustments should have been benching Flash earlier.

It seems weird if BB can call out his players at times during press conferences (IIRC) and then not call them out here too.

A flimsy argument at best. :)

thanks.

Good heavens.

Don’t teams have people who’s entire JOB is to manage the salary cap and CBA? Did the Flyers miss out on that?

you beat me to it. (darren dreger with the report btw, for those that don’t click through.)

plus, even without dreger’s report, why the hell would any team give pronger that many years if they knew it was a 35+ contract? or bother to structure the deal in such a front-loaded fashion? since the guy’s going to get paid either way, and it’s going to count against the cap either way, i’d think an ownership group would want to do it the other way around if all else were the same (with more money in the later years so they would have some delay in paying out).

Yeah I emailed A LOT in response to his horrible piece after Ovi’s first suspension. I took the high road meaning I didn’t call him an asshole but I wreaked havoc on his points one-by-one and suggested that he take Ted up on his offer to come and watch Ovi and Caps play at the Phonebooth.

I believe you’re legally required to call him “Big Joe Finley.”

Yeah, seriously. That Sean Collins contract reminds me of so many that I’ve signed in NHL ‘09 and ’10 where I forget to set the offer as a “two-way” contract. Only here, it means that the organization’s paying Collins 600k to play in Hershey.

And they’re both awfully big, and definitely too beaucoup for HER to take both of them at once…

I thought that I was the person who told you what to like! Huh… must’ve been a breakdown in communication somewhere.

[Source]

I’d change your description just a bit to say that a Left-Wing Lock is a 2-1-2 that, if played correctly, very quickly transitions into a 2-3, with the “high man” dropping back alongside the defensemen in the neutral zone. At least that’s how we always played it.

The Caps’ system has all three forwards below the blue line, even if the other team has clear possession. It can flow between being a 1-2-2 and a 2-1-2 based on positioning. One constant is that the high man/men very rarely drop back to the red line alongside the D. This is why you see so many 3-2s and 2-1s versus the Caps. The forward who’d normally be back helping out is up forcing the play at the blueline. It’s awesome when it works, but it does surrender chances the other way.

Ah, I missed that they were going 1-3-1, and I thought they were looking to forecheck 2-1-2/2-3 if the left D could move up into the zone. 1-3-1 leaves a hell of a lot of open space for the breakout, which is what was said above. Got it, thanks.

Breakout spacing isn’t as big an issue. If they want the top-6 to get the puck then you lose your breakout concern once they get it. Those are the guys that have the skill and creativity to make it up as they go along. There is some concern that two D in one corner can get scrambly, but if the puck pops loose to MSL I think the ’ning will be comfortable letting him play it by ear.

Can we end the stupidest fucking argument in the history of this site now?

You’re not exactly endearing yourself to the Rink faithful.

I thought it was a Judy Blume reference.