Wednesday Caps Clips: Firing Blanks; Caps @ Habs Game Day

Well, we’re at 12-8-1 right now…what happens after a loss tonight???

Hunter’s record?

Same record under Boudreau and Hunter. Six o’ one…

You can make stuff like that up… boys, boys, you used to be teammates, for cryin’ out loud!

I’d suggest “drawing a blank”

We all knew the Caps were terrible at generating chances inside, but now, they can’t even get their perimeter shots to get near the net (assuming they haven’t spent the entire shift in their own end and are just dumping the puck for the change).

The Caps fired fewer blanks than a 21-gun salute.

I’ve gotta remember to use “wang-wang-doodle with Winnipeg” next time they play the Jets.

Or, they could just both be wrong coach fits for this team.

Yes, specifically to the latter.

generally, a player only stays behind if they are injured. A player who is very close to returning with the team may go on the trip to get practice in. otherwise, they stay and work with the strength and conditioning coaches, within the limitations of their injury, and receive treatment.

I agree with a lot of this, but not the causal chain. The man to man D isn’t hurting the breakout, bad passes and personnel are doing that.

Shorter shifts are a good thing, so I’m not going to blame them for anything. J.P. has also been harping on the fact that you have to change right away if you get pinned in your own end, and that started before DH so it’s not a new problem. That’s just how it is, if you’re tired after playing D you can’t carry the puck into the O zone and set up.

Cycling isn’t going to lead to great chances all the time. It wears teams down and ends up creating chances at some point, but it’s not going to generate any firewagon chances, it’s a more conservative offensive approach.

…although I do want one, just as a conversation piece.

But….

There is something that the Caps may be lacking in 2011-12 that they didn’t have in 2010-11, and that’s a guy who doesn’t give a damn about anything on the ice other than busting [Avery] and taking names: Matt Bradley. Remember him? He who only scores goals against elite goaltenders, is good in the locker room, works hard at practice, games, and gets other to work hard as well (If he’s making so much less $$ than I do, I need to work as hard as he does).

No coincidence either that the team the Caps are chasing are Brads’ new team…

Sure the Caps have a lot of guys who work hard (Ovechkin, Backstrom, Ward, Hendricks, Alzner, Neuvirth, Vokoun, Halpern…) but there’s no one on the team that has Brads’ attitude and work ethic. And Brads’ work ethic is contagious…

I’m growing concerned that Hunter is so focused on preventing odd-man breaks against that he’s willing to sacrifice practically all offensive zone presence to achieve that goal. I know his OHL teams were pretty stacked, including at goalie the year they had Steve Mason (their championship season?).

Having players like Patrick Kane in the OHL perhaps allowed him to win with this style, since some of those guys were so talented offensively that all they needed was a couple rushes in transition the other way against Joe OHL goalie and D-pairing, who were helpless.

Perhaps the playing field is too level for his style to work in the NHL. Hell, it may have even worked two years ago when Ovie was his old self and the team had more firepower. But it doesn’t seem to work for this group of forwards.

I think the lack of shots is that they still have terrible puck awareness. The cycle often seems to stop because they kick it around and there’s no Cap there. And they never seem to be in position for rebound shots (assuming the guys actually get a shot that actually needs to be stopped). All of which has been a problem for a while. Heck, I think that was Flash’s major strength, the odd way pucks just landed near him.

Plot that against Vokoun’s YTD SV% and everyone will realize that when he cools off, this team is b-o-n-e-d.

Hey, how did you get a look at my retirement portfolio? It looks like that!

Something needs to change and quick.

Also, I want Nick back. Now.

wow that’s flat out ugly

Dale Hunter’s portion looks like the Microsoft Access logo.

Wow that is ugly. We (and I use the plural first person here advisedly) are in trouble.

I’m just going to go cry in the corner now.

Sigh!

Let’s not forget that Backstrom departed after Game 38. Granted, the differential had already dipped into the negative at that point, but surely that exacerbates that drop-off in the last few games greatly.

And, essentially the differential flatlined after Green went out under BB.

That dip between games 27 and 38, however, is quite worrying.

And then we can have another Russian winger!

We destroyed them in shots on goal from the neutral zone.

That’s domination, holmes.

Caps didn’t so much as breathe in Nabby’s general direction. All that cycling means Auger if it doesn’t press against the crease now and then.

he way I see it is that if everything doesn’t go right and the team isn’t playing full speed under Hunter you will have games like last night.

this is what really worries me about this team. A team should be able to win every when everything isn’t clicking absolutely perfectly. I haven’t seen that so far.

The 7-3 record is a mirage created by otherworldly (and unsustainable) play by Vokoun, and to a lesser extent, some success on the power play (hopefully more sustainable but I’m not getting my hopes up).

woah sorry for the all caps, don’t know how that copied in like that.

New content, y’all.

This is JP’s polite way of saying “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here!”

See, already a reply fail on my part. Granted, i have that problem anyway.

Yawn.

We actually have a roundtable coming up this afternoon regarding Bourque and related issues, so everyone be ready to discuss around 1…

For Kundratek, or?

Somewhere Rene Bourque makes sure he has extra underwear in his locker for tonight…

I think that commemorating everything you’ve ever won is more palatable when you’ve actually won something.

Eh, that’s a big bowl of “who cares” to me. Clearly anything short of a Stanley Cup banner is dissapointing, but all teams hang banners when they win something significant like a division. It’s an accomplishment and not to be overlooked, but at this point in the team’s history, it’s not something to be celebrated either. So quietly hang a banner commemorating the feat and move along. The team hasn’t made a big deal of this, which is good. IMO, I’d just assume they hang one banner for the year with all the accomplishments listed on it.

Reality is that until this team wins a Cup, anything and everything they do to to highlight their accomplishments is going to be met with a “yeah, but”. So be it. There’s one way to resolve that.

…they indicate an accomplishment that took a lot of hard work. And to get the top seed in the conference or Presidents’ Trophy you have to win a lot of games. The Caps won a lot of games in 2009-10 and 2010-11.

I picked the wrong day to stop huffing glue.

We seem to be making progress as a fanbase. We’re at depression, just one more step until acceptance and burying the 2009-2010 Capitals.

Fascinating. I hadn’t actually seen what the Flyer’s did in response to TB’s 1-3-1, but oh my that was pretty static. Although similar to BB’s (and Bylsma’s) tactic of not advancing the puck, the players stayed in motion. Greenie as I recall was passing the puck back and forth to his partner.

Oh and I did laugh.

Crosby has been a ghost since an errant and entirely accidental elbow from the Boston Bruins’ David Krejci

I thought this sentence was going to end " Washington Capitals’ David Steckel." Was going to be surprised that it was called “accidental”.

Primeau’s comments were interesting but I cringe when people force Probert into the “darkness swallowed him” camp. He died of a heart attack.