Rangers/Lightning 10, Caps 4

All of them. But it’s a team effort. I’d say Hendricks is probably the least culpable. Alzner took a poor angle and gave Dubi too much of the net, freak bounce followed. Green had his stick in the air and wasn’t prepared (after getting schooled a bit behind the net). Hannan’s was the ugliest (and most perfect deflection), but I don’t think he was all that culpable either.

Common theme among them is that in each case we a) had a chance to clear the puck and failed and then b) got caught running around out of position.

On the first one, you don’t see it in that clip but AO and Hannan had a chance to clear the puck right away. AO let Dubi erase his advantage to the boards and then Hannan didn’t take advantage of a brief two on one and got distracted by Fedotenko. Then everyone stood around and Dubi charged the net. Great effort by him, poor effort by us, Rags rewarded with an incredibly lucky bounce.

Second one is the only one we didn’t have a clean chance to clear the puck, but we were running around nonetheless. The D zone structure/discipline was lacking and you could see us chasing the puck/Rags around. Hendricks tries to follow Anisimov behind the net and the puck goes in off his shin pad.

Third goal, what the fuck is Schultz thinking? Earlier I said he was victimized on his plus/minus by the bad bounce, but that goal is on him more than anyone. Neuvy stops the clear and moves the puck around the boards. Schultz is there in position for the clear but he tries a cute no-look stop. Who the hell is Schultz to try the no-look stop? He needs to make sure he grabs that puck and does something with it. Puck gets by him, we’re in trouble, bad bounce, puck in the net. Ridiculous. I want to see Neuvirth snap his stick over the next Cap to put a puck past him.

Fourth goal Baxter has the puck under control and doesn’t do anything with it. MSL strips him, then we get caught running around, Mike Green is wondering if he’s got enough Muscle Milk to last him through the week (hmmm…. three nights on the road… wait, two nights because of the back to backs… oh shit…) and then despite being in perfect position he lets the puck go off his skate into the net. If his stick is on the ice, that’s not a goal. Either he intercepts the pass with his stick or at the very least is able to clean up the rebound off his skate. Backstrom absolutely has to get that puck out of the zone. On 3 of the 4 goals against you have a fundamental breakdown/failure by the Caps. Sometimes more than one, depending on how you define your terms.

If I was a conspiracy theorist, or believed in hockey gods, I’d find it odd that the own goal that we were least culpable in was the game we won. The goals that were most directly attributable to our failures cost us the game. Funny how things work out sometimes.