Recap: Capitals 1, Penguins 0

Aaaaaaaaaaand I’m still pissed at fucking Mike Millbury.

But tomorrow is another day.

2 points. I’m betting a lot of people worrying about us making the playoffs aren’t singing that tune anymore. On the flip side, we still have work to do if we want to make any noise once we get there.

And yet another game where Nicky cannot find his mojo. When he does, we’re going to start seeing 3 and 4 goal games from this offense again.

I’ll take a shutout against the Pens any time…

Given that the one loss to the Pens was in the shootout, in four games Caps goalies gave up a grand total of three goals. Not too shabby.

I liked watching Ovi in the last 4 minutes or so, knocking heads and throwing bodies in the middle of one of the scrums. Could tell he really wanted to win.

Good game. Neuvirth is still shaky.

Man, that was a grindey, grindey game. I will say that the Caps stood up to it, even though the Pens are dressing a bunch of plumbers.

1 point behind Tampa.

Doubters gonna doubt.

So we don’t get a new picture? That’s from the Buffalo one and the same one in that game’s recap. For shame.

Why did you use the Pens as the example of a great backcheck when you could have used Carlson’s?

Quietly Mackan has points in 4 of last 5 games. Definitely some right place right time going on there, but effort getting rewarded.

Has there been any word on Poti’s return? Get Green and Poti back in the lineup will be a bit of an upgrade over Sloan and Erskine.

It should be noted how well Semin bounced back from his weird penalty. It seemed to me at the time that that would send him spiraling towards a Bad Sasha kinda night, but he kept focus and looked, really, pretty good for the entire game, stats regardless.

Credit the Penguins again (sorry!)

Don’t be sorry. The VS guys were doing it all night long until Carlson’s left check on Talbot.

BTW, kudos to the zebra for getting that call R-I-G-H-T.

There’s no way that whack-a-puck strategy works against a team that can actually possess the puck and dent the twine. Against the WBS Penguins, it’s fine, but against any other playoff team, willfully giving away possession time after time is going to come back to bite you in the ass.

The Caps’ top two lines need to take a hint from the bottom two lines and start to cycle a bit more often. Keep the puck 200ft away from your keeper – don’t just gain the zone, fire a shot into someone’s shinpads and retreat to center ice. Also, dumping the puck to the neutral zone over and over again isn’t usually a winning strategy. Get the puck deep, work the cycle.

So whatever happened to Tom Poti?!

You just reminded me of something – the Caps and the Bears have now both defeated the WBS Penguins 1-0 in their CONSOL Energy Center debuts.

…did we lose tonight?

Wait, I have to throw this great BB quote out there before I retire because it cracked me up:

“I kind of think that at the end of the series if we happen to play them there might only be 12 guys on each team ready to play the next series. We’ll wait to see how it goes.”

Here’s why the Caps are staying in the PGH tonite:

@DustinJohns
  
@TPBadam @TPBderek Any idea what the holdup on the Fort Pitt bridge is? 376 W. It’s not moving. And hasn’t for 2 hours.

Niskanen’s confidence shot in DAL. Needed change of scenery and PIT wouldn’t do deal without a dman included. $$$ some factor for DAL.

I would have done it regardless of whether he was included. Extremely young 30 goal winger for Crosby versus an overrated D-man at a position of depth. Why wouldn’t PIT still have wanted to do that?

I personally, am going to be happy for one night AND bitch about the team. Sorry, having gone to my first game in 1981 and followed them from all over the world (well, Arizona, CA and France) I find it much harder to be optimistic about this team.

A 3-2 road trip has done very little to fix the problems that this team has. They were outclassed by both PHX and SJC, and despite the VS guys telling everyone the Caps have really turned a corner and know how to win the close games now, I’m not buying it.

Woohoo!!! We beat Pittsburgh and Matt Cooke got stapled to the ice a couple of times. I’m not being facetious. That is awesome and they are certainly bound for the playoffs but until they do well there, it’s all for naught. And as of right now, no matter how good your D is, scoring 2 goals a game is not going to get you out of the first round.

Got to watch the game last night… loved it.

1) Great shot by Ovechkin to score the games only goal. It looked like Fleury didn’t move until after the puck was past him. That said, that power play one timer set up where Talbot poked the puck away looked pretty damn embarassing. Green probably would have put more starch on the pass, and Ovie would have gotten it away.

2) Carlson… great game, but a couple of plays where I was saying “he’s still a rookie, he’s still a rookie”. On two occasions, at least, in the third, he had a chance to make a clearing play to get the puck out of the defensive zone and instead tried to make a different play. When protecting the lead, the blue line is your best friend and you keep it happy by giving it pucks. Thankfully the blue line isn’t so good at catching them.

3) Matt Bradley… He may have been the best Capital out there not named Neuvirth or Ovechkin. Blocking shots, hitting, and oh yeah, the Matt Cooke thing. Even non-Caps media were discussing his hit on Cooke. That was a win-win situation. He nailed Cooke and then got Staal off the ice with himself for 2 minutes. Nicely done. Then winning a fight against a minor leaguer… well, I’m ok with that in Brads’ case, although DJ King was dressed tonight, and that might have been a better spot for him.

4) I wonder if Dan Bylsma is shaking today? If not he should be. Think about this: right now his team is matched up to play the Caps in the post season, and since Malkin’s goal in the Winter Classic, the Caps have outscored his team 7-0 in 157 minutes of play. If that doesn’t worry him, it should, since the guy who has scored the only goal against the Caps for the Pens is not going to be playing until training camp this summer…if then.

So next up are three games against the two teams that call New York home and two are at the Phone Booth. I can see the Caps getting 6 points, but I can also see them going into a let-down and dropping one of the games. The Rangers look to be the tougher opponent, but the Isles have been playing like the games mean something (they do, they’re playing for their jobs…)

Of course the trading deadline is coming up too…the Caps need a center (esp. if the news about Backstrom is what it is…) Here’s hoping George does a little shopping…

Am I the only caps fan on earth to think that the Bradley hit wasn’t clean? At no point did he stop striding to “glide” before hitting Cooke. 2 minutes for charging was the right call, as was the 2 minutes on Staal. Just wondering if anyone else saw it my (and the refs’) way.