Recap: Capitals 2, Senators 1

One player wasn’t going to change the way the team played after JoJo scored.

I think King was only in there because Zenon Konopka was on the opposing bench.

And amazingly, he’s still 20th in sv %. Some of those above him are in no way sustainable. I think.

They were the only line that generated any kind of zone time after the first, but that’s about the best you can say.

Nicky is the Alzner of his line. He’s doing a great job, but it isn’t nearly as noticeable as when his partners have great games.

Its a bit of a stretch, I know, but..yeah…I’ll just go with it.

Nicky needs to learn to pull the trigger a little bit more. I counted two times tonight he is in the high slot, wide open, no one around him and he chooses to pass.

Greening definitely didn’t see him coming.

I thought it was clean, but close. In the GDT someone mentioned CBC was adamant it was a headshot.

Thanks – it seemed to get brushed under the carpet, and I wanted to make sure that wasn’t presumptive.

how is that even questionable?

Clean, though really really close. If it’s clean, it looks like Greening is trying to play it up. Thanks, Dimagus.

Looks pretty solidly on the chest and shoulder to me.

Great GIF, as always, Dimagus.

That’s certainly the most questionable angle. Still, pretty clear shoulder-to-not-head to me, but if the Sen had leaned in, Hendricks would be missing a couple of games or more.

They had another angle which showed pretty clearly that he didn’t hit the head.

I think.

I wish I could pause a gif. I think the initial contact is shoulder to chest, but it looks like there might be a frame or two where he hits chin. Oh man is that close.

Clorox clean. If the powers that be ruled that kind of hit illegal, they might as well take all the contact out of the sport and call it something else.

Yeah, two minors. I think both were HHT.

I was there — and yawning through the second and third periods. I think the four shots on goal in the second period and eight in the third had something to do with it.

I thought Green made a good pass to Knuble to start the sequence. It looked like it was off his backhand. Good to see puck movement and activity near the net on a power play.

You will never see that out of Ovechkin, at least from that side of the ice. Ovechkin is a right-handed shot, he can only make that play off his backhand. He would have to start that play from the right wing.

Judging by the top gif, he may of only been 10-12 ft from net, ~8 from Vokes

It’s a good question, and tough to answer. I don’t know BB’s scheme, so I’ll base my answer off of what defensive systems generally look like and simple logic.

In hindsight it’s easy to say Carlson should have stayed in the slot and waited for Alfie, but when Michalek was driving the slot he was the only threat there. It’s tough to ask Carlson to move off of Michalek even though Alzner was on him. If the puck goes down to the corner then Alzner is going to have to slide over and Carlson will have to cover Michalek. But as it played out there was an open shot from just inside the hash-marks, and the weak-side D generally needs to cover that area.

There’s also some responsibility on Chimera’s part. The weak side W has the responsibility to collapse down to cover the slot area in basically all NHL D-zone coverage systems. The youth-style “W covers the point man” isn’t really how it’s played anymore, and hasn’t been for at least a decade. I remember in HS my dad went to Roger Nielsen’s coaching camp and Kevin Konstantin gave a talk about how wings need to cover the slot because at the end of the day you need to prevent the more dangerous shots, and point shots are just not as threatening as a shot from the slot. So unless BB has some sort of system that bucks the trend of the last 12 years, you’d expect Chimera to be covering that slot. Watching the Caps, it’s pretty clear that BB wants his weak-side wings to cover the slot (I believe D’oh showed this in his D-zone breakdown), and watching Chimera demonstrates he thought he had that responsibility as well. Chimera was late (watch as he coasts into the screen, pretty inexcusable given his speed) and took a poor angle. The angle critique is a hindsight critique, if Alfie settled down at the top of the circle maybe Chimera’s angle would have been perfect. The coasting isn’t hindsight, though.

But in the end, you have to give Alfie a lot of credit. Great offensive players find holes in defensive zones, and despite his age and declining skills, Alfie is still an exceptionally smart player. I’d say the blame probably starts with Chimera, has a little bit of Carlson, but you have to recognize that it was a very good play by Alfie, and a great/lucky pass by Spezza. Alfie’s ability to dish the puck and then sort of float through the coverage really can’t be overstated, but it’s also fair to say that the slot should never be a soft spot in the defensive coverage.

well crap, I didn’t realize he was badly hurt. Obviously I don’t wish harm on anyone. Once Gonchar left the Caps I just blocked him out.

I remember him claiming he wanted to go to a contender, and a couple of months later, he signed with league-worst Pittsburgh (who were in the lotto his first season there too, IIRC). I dislike him for that.

I was only talking about PP pairings on the point. D pairings were the same at 5on5.

Or Chicago could have had a lackluster game and not done that. As much as I do think there are a lot of areas we can improve upon…the acting like any real contender would have out shot every team we play against by 20+ and won every game 5-1 just isn’t true. Even good teams don’t do that all the time. They just look really good when they do it, and they usually have had postseason success or at least not as much perceived failure as we have.

Yes, I had to bold that. If we had made it a round or two further in the playoffs last year, I bet the negativity over how we’ve gone 4-0 to start to season would be about 1/10th what it is now.

And regardless if Chicago or any other contender would have hung up +30, I’m looking at the fact that Backstrom and Ovechkin had the best combined Corsi/Fenwick on the team and comparing it to the rest of the team. I thought the 3rd line and Alzner/Carlson looked okay tonight, and yet they all had subpar numbers in Corsi and Fenwick.

I guess one thing we can be happy about is that GMGM has built a team that, regardless of what’s going on, has a chance to win every night even if the vast majority of the team doesn’t show up. Whether that’s Ovechkin or lucking into Vokoun, who knows?

The “60 minute effort” is a little more elusive to quantify than a lot of people think though. Whether we’re playing Pittsburgh, Detroit, or even Ottawa, opposing teams will have pushback at times and look like the better team for portions of the game. I dislike how we’re on our heels as much as we are, but to think we’re just going to roll a team for all 60 minutes is completely unrealistic, and I feel like there are times when effort is given, results just don’t show up every time.

Godsmack or Cage the Elephant?

Boooo! Ha. Thanks!

Yeah… wasn’t really expecting to find any fellow insomniacs here this late :-p

Thanks for this nugget. I was trying to figure out why it looked different.

Lat night’s power play goal was so deja vu: a quick cross-ice pass between Nicky and Sasha down low on opposite sides of the goal. Use to see that so often in 09-10.