Sunday Caps Clips: West Coast Sting

Steelers/Patriots is rooting for the meteor.

Hate Big Ben with a passion; the rest of his team I don’t really care about, it’s not a Penguin level of hate, it’sone-player personal. As for the Pats, eh, they’ve had their turn, just go away.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the lack of prospects in the pipeline right now. Orlov, Kuznetsov, and Eakin (not to mention Holtby) seem to grade out as NHL players and Galiev seems to have a chance. Counting chickens is dangerous, of course, but given the number of quality young players on the NHL roster, that’s not too shabby.

I do expect GMGM to re-stock the system a bit in the upcoming draft, and I expect he will continue to take the best players available. If the Caps need to replace a D or two (hopefully not including Mike Green), they will hopefully have a ready Orlov and can supplement in FA. I very much doubt the picks from COL/BOS will be in the lottery, but hopefully they’ll be in the middle of the round.

2011 is supposed to be D-heavy. From 2008, Doughty, Bogosian, Schenn, Karlsson, Myers, Carlson, Pietrangelo, Jake Gardiner, Luca Sbisa, Michael Del Zotto, Slava Voynov, Roman Josi, Travis Hamonic, and Marco Scandella are all NHL-caliber already, I’d say (that’s after 3 seasons of development) and have all already played in the NHL (save Josi, but Nashville goes slow with their D prospects usually). If this draft is anywhere near that the Caps should be able to draft two guys that turn into quality D rather quickly—the first one being NHL-ready within two years and the other within another two.

I don’t know that you have to put all the NY area teams together. Honestly, NY is closer to the teams in that divison (other than possible CBJ). Throw a bone to PIT by putting them in place of, I don’t know, the Islanders? That pretty much pleases Washington, PHI, NYR, NJD and PIT. Might not please NYI, though.

The one real problem with the four division alignment, of course, is that you need two more teams to even it out.

I could see that alignment as well.

I was just looking at this issue. In general, I think the 2nd line was playing well, but these last 2 games have not been Sasha’s best. He’s assisted on at least 2 of Mojo’s goals, but Mojo did not assist either of Sasha’s, and in fact has only 1 assist. I don’t know what the stats say, but it appears that that line starts a lot in the D zone, then the D have trouble breaking out if/when we win the face-off, hence rarely get down for much time in the O-zone before a shift change. The 2nd line has had some good shifts of sustained pressure in some games, but little to show for it. I hope it’s just a matter of Sasha getting his groove back. He needs to be scoring. He’s now below last season’s points in the first 9 games. I’m not sure Knuble is a good fit with him, but we’ll see.

I’m chalking it up to sophomore status, how young playmakers don’t trust their wings enough and tend to shoot more than pass

While Bruce should certainly hold players accountable for bad play, if he benched every player who’s recently taken a bad penalty, there wouldn’t be enough guys available to dress.

Granted, Chuck didn’t explicitly suggest any particular “sanction” for Ovi but did say that Bruce should hold him accountable.

Guy who’s been writing on hockey for more than two decades isn’t allowed to express an opinion like the rest of us?