Wednesday Caps Clips: Blue Debut

Considering Sjogren’s agent’s activities on twitter recently, this is no shock to me at all.

The irony of Sjogren leaving is that the Caps could probably have used a big, physical 4th line guy like him rather than Cody Eakin, and with the recent coaching change, that Gallup was likely to happen sooner rather than later.

Prior worked with Neuvy before. Both goalies have had bad games and some decent ones. Obviously Vokes can be dialed in like he was for Nashville and Neuvy was a Pens killer last year. I don’t think you just unlearn a fundamental part of your game, so with Neuvy it might be just some discomfort, rust, or a bad night. With Vokes, I saw rebound control issues from the beginning. I like the way he plays (Neuvy too) but he isn’t as good at rebound control as I would have liked.

Since Ken Hitchcock took over the Blues have allowed 13 goals in 11 games. They’re doing a lot of bottling up of other teams. I don’t know that I would read too much into last night. One team is on top of its game, probably playing as well as it can given its roster. The other has been playing poorly and is breaking in a new coach. If this is a problem a couple of weeks from now, it will be a problem. Right now it just impresses me as something to work through.

The shifts seemed pretty short last night, so if the Semin play you’re talking about was late in the third, the rest of the line was already changing, I believe.

Puns, puns are the lowest form of humor. Which is so patently untrue it’s purely obvious that Mr Johnson had zero sense of humor to start with.

Anyway, I’m with Peerless on this one. Although the loss was disappointing and I was a bit annoyed, the Blues are just not a fair comparison right now. They’re clicking on all cylinders and maxing out their abilities. The Caps, rather obviously, are not. In retrospect, keeping it close is not half bad.

Those 5 shots on goal they mustered did result in one tally; not a bad percentage.

It was their only scoring chance in the period. Very good percentage.

And SportsClubStats projects us now into the 8th playoff spot, just ahead of the Devil, Canadiens, and Bolts. We have a 43.4% chance of making the playoffs!

Of course, we’ve only played 25 of 82 games.

Winning record by exactly one game. 12 wins, 11 losses.

I think the Caps problem wasn’t only lack of effort and discipline under Boudreau. I really believe there is a problem with the structure of our current roster.

The team made a decision to change head coach and now an assistant coach, but it seemed clear from McPhee’s comments on Monday that roster moves are a possibility. However, he also thinks that he created a pretty good roster over the summer and that it’s underperforming.

I’m probably wrong, but I have to believe that you won’t see any major roster moves for at least five to ten games, as Hunter installs his systems and philosophies and waits for the team to respond.

Varly and Holtby are adventures in goaltending. Vokoun is calm as a cucumber compared to them, though Neuvy is much calmer than Vokoun, mostly because he’s much better at rebound control and freezing the puck for the whistle.

You are intimating that, if roster changes are coming, then they are coming before December 19?

No, they’ll all just accuse him of lying, sugarcoating, and trying to save face. This reminds me…anyone read French? I like renhockey, but it’s all in French and I just can’t translate every tweet. Apparently there was some stuff last night about Bruce’s abilities in the locker room and how there was a country club atmosphere (we knew this) and that when he taught with video, he was unduly harsh on most of the guys but very apologetic to the stars like Nicky. Not sure how accurate my paraphrasing is or how accurate renhockey was.

The heart-warming sentiment is all good and well, but if Ovechkin had such a great relationship with Coach, why didn’t he bother to make any adjustments or skate as hard as he did last night?

I interpreted that to mean that he thinks that they’re going to be adjusting to the systems he puts in place for the rest of the season… to go along with Brooks’ comments, you have to undo some of the things you do by instinct after playing for a guy for four or five years. It’s a major adjustment.

The quote I found from Whyno’s timeline was “For us the rest of the year, it’s going to be such a fine line between winning or losing.” And looking at the other tweets around it, it seems that the question of the moment was about adjusting to Hunter’s system.

I think you can say that about most teams who are going to focus on defense. Not too many players are going to say, “yeah, I think were gonna blow guys out night after night”. I think these days the margin for error is slight and their gonna have to play 60 minutes to win. Sounds like playoff hockey…

I don’t know how apparent it was on TV last night, but the team was using a fairly passive 1-2-2 forecheck last night (a.k.a. the trap.). If that continues beyond just Hunter making initial adjustments (or playing against other trapping teams like the Blues) then we’re going to see a lot of one-goal games with tight defense.

Why is it an issue? Because media needs something to whine about.

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

If the Caps still lost 6-1 or something we would be worried, but it was 2-1 with some bad bounces and only 20 seconds of PP time. We’re looking for what changes are made across the next week or two, not the next day.

From what I read, MoJo had a stinger on his hand from blocking a shot.

Marcus Johansson didn’t take the ice for 15 minutes following one of the longest shifts of the night — 1:34 for the Eakin-Johansson-Semin line. During his absence, his line was skipped twice, centered once by Backstrom, once by Halpern, and once by Eakin (with Knuble at wing) during his absence. Equipment issue? Minor injury? Or accountability for taking such a long shift?

Minor injury. He took a puck off the hand during Brouwer’s penalty and didn’t return to the ice until the third.

I wanted to punch Brouwer in the face for that penalty.

Speaking of accountability, Troy Brouwer took the dumbest, most pointless penalty I’ve seen all season when, while on the penalty kill, he tried to whack Jason Arnott’s hand with his stick and instead caught him just under the eye

Disagree on the optics. From my eyes, it looked like he took a whack at Arnott’s stick, which caused Brouwer’s to ramp up right into Arnott’s face. It was one handed, fwiw.

It was probably a little reckless and he needs to keep that stick under control, but I’ve seen worse. Bad luck.

Also, that timeonice site is completely awesome.

One more point — except the 15 minutes when Johansson was hurt, the top three lines got about 2 shifts for every 1 shift of the fourth line.

Free Mike Knuble!

Speaking of accountability, Troy Brouwer took the dumbest, most pointless penalty I’ve seen all season when, while on the penalty kill, he tried to whack Jason Arnott’s hand with his stick and instead caught him just under the eye, drawing blood.

It wasn’t quite as bad as you’ve portrayed. He hit Arnott’s stick, and his stick bounced up and got Arnott’s face. Still not to be encouraged, though; not sure what he thought that check would accomplish if it “worked”.

First game and two days of practices with the same assistant coaches?

Hold off on evaluating just yet.

It’s one game. One game. ONE GAME.