Recap: Sharks 5, Capitals 3

Yet they’re completely irrelevant.

I’d say that about sums up the season on the roster end of things.

(coaching is another story)

Both?

Just trying to be positive.

That and Orlov are some of the bright spots we can take from this game.

Orlov is a good young D. I’m liking him more and more. He is still very raw, but he has that skills to be a future stud. Fast skater and great with the puck. I know skating isn’t everything (Sloan shout-out!) but watching him rush back to cut off a Forward is pretty. Almost like Green used to do.

And a partridge in a pear tree: Yeah, I know how this goes.

42 shots! Amazing how the ones that did have traffic seemed to find the net too.

+1

That’s crazy talk

Cripes, hopefully he gets AO to join him.

Some of the decisions defy logic…healthy scratching Knuble to give Rechliz 1:30 b/c, oh my god, another hockey player hit one of yours weeks ago?

That alone is enough to question someone’s sanity.

Yea that guy must know nothing about hockey. You Japers guys are way smarter than any Dale Hunter.

But Rechlicz fights are what will get them into the playoffs, I’m sure!

If the caps don’t make the playoff, I’ll be very surprised if Hunter is not fired

Maybe he did. Getting a misconduct from the bench was somewhat impressive.

I don’t know what you guys expect from a team without a top center or top defensemen. The Caps are straight babytown frolics down the middle compared to a large majority of this league. Look at tonight, it was something like
Thornton-Couture-Handzus vs. Johansson-Laich-Perrault. . . that’s laughable.

At this point, the Capitals need to fight tooth and nail to extend their season long enough for Backstrom and Green to get back.

At least, a 6-10 team is what it should be on paper. If you had gone on the ROW stats, the team SHOULD be better than the Panthers, Ottawa, Toronto, and NJ. But we can’t get our act together.

if a washed up jason arnott cost the caps a 2nd round pick, I hope GMGM can do better than this.

agree completely with this.

That’s what I had in mind when I mentioned trade bait. Right now we cant really afford to overpay for a 2c, which is what it would take, but with 4 1st round picks you can afford to overpay for what you need

Probably the 40th time I have said so, so please forgive, but I still maintain that 28 gives more than he takes—esp if you can’t get an immediate asset (2C) for him…plus, unless a potential trade partner has a Russian or two (Colorado?) on their roster, I can’t see Semin wrapping his head around playing well enough for said partner to take a chance.

I don’t buy that this team doesn’t have anyone who can finish. Anyway, three goals seems like a decent enough total, even if two or three of them were kind of soft. The five GA seems more like the issue here.

I guess the most difficult thing is seeing a team that should be winning more games than they are, depending on other teams to do their dirty work for them. TOR is a point ahead of WAS but play CGY and EDM in Alberta the next two nights. The Leafs could be five points on the WAS come Friday when the Caps play next.

OTT is three points up on the Caps and only have two games between now and next Monday. They play TBL tomorrow. A loss would be nice. But then Wednesday night, they play the Panthers. Logically a Senators win in regulation over the Panthers would be nice to keep the division lead within four. But that means they would be five up on the Caps come Friday night.

When you don’t do your own work and depend on others to do it for you, you are liable to get screwed with all the complications.

+1 I’m not panicking yet either, but I’m cautiously freaking out.

The first shot, Holtby should definitely have tried to get his body in front of, but instead tried to make the glove snatch and missed. He could have blocked that with his chest. The others may have been difficult, but I think when the goalie has a chance to make the save, he should make most of them. Two of the other four were bad. I discount the Pavelski tap-in and the screened goal, but the other two, he should have had at least one of, especially the one that crawled over him and was tapped in by Marleau. So I think I could have expected a goalie to have given up three goals facing what Holtby faced this evening, not five. Discounting game effects a moment, that would have given the team a shot at taking it to OT. Holtby played a game that was below what I expectfrom a Capitals goaltender. If that’s a bad game, and I think it is, he played a bad game. However, as a minor league goaltender called up on short notice, given the start on short notice, the night after having played with his AHL team, I don’t hold it against Holtby. He was far from the only one to make mistakes. It’s just that most of the time, other’s mistakes don’t directly result in goals. When a goalie makes mistakes, bad things happen.

The team played sloppy and made mistakes, including the goaltender. And the coach. I think the decision to play Rechlicz and sit Knuble was silly. But, while Knuble has been… diplomatic about the situation with the media, consummate professional but honest, I don’t know what has gone on or been said behind the scenes between Knuble and the coaching staff. But, they looked better than they have in some wins where they were badly outworked, outpossessed, outshot, and had their asses saved by Vokoun. And if Neuvirth was healthy, the decision to play Holtby is strange. I know Neuvy just played last night, but so did Holtby, so that rationale doesn’t work.

So, they made mistakes, but over the last few games, I have liked the way they looked better than some stretches earlier in Hunter’s regime, and Boudreau’s too for that matter. What I find strange is that a lot of the talk of the Caps not having the weapons seems to be based on production this year. But based on track record, even from last year which was a regression offensively from previous years, they do have weapons. They have just either misfired or, more often, left the gun on their shoulder. These last few games, they have been firing, though the PDO regression is to be expected, I don’t think a plummet is necessarily expected. I think it will rise from the last two games and if they continue to work like this, they will compete and stay in contention (and relevant). The big problem is that right now they are missing their most important weapon, and a second significant weapon. Backstrom makes this team go at 5-on-5, and Green makes it go on the PP. With both out, both units are misfiring. If this team can get Backstrom back with any season left, it should make the playoffs and could surprise some teams. If it can get both back, and continue to work like they have the last few games, they can still contend. Without either, they may struggle to make the playoffs, but I don’t see them winning a round. Even with a healthy Green back, I don’t see them as a contender without a healthy Backstrom.

Holtby was pretty brutal last night. Just looking at his posture, you could tell that he was just not ready to play. Someone needs to tell Vokoun that he is not allowed to be sick.

It made sense for a number of reasons save one.

1. Hershey-watchers can presume that French had gotten the word to get Holts more starts. He’s been working 2 out of all the three-in-threes for a while now.

2. The Caps would prolly have brought him up earlier, except their goalie corps has actually been healthy.

3. Tomas caught a fairly ugly flu, and Imma guess they want to keep him as far away from the rest of the team as possible.

4. Word at Verizon was Neuvy was also under the weather.

5. The Hershey and Caps schedules seemed to work in favor of this callup. Holtby could stay up with the Caps for a couple days to practice with the team. Both teams are headed out at the end of the week on long roadies. If TV29 or MN30 remained ill, they could keep Holtby and let Grubauer get some time with the Bears.

6. The miscalculation was the quick turnanround from the Bears’ game last night – a big emotional win over the Baby Pens and a 30+ save near-shutout. Oh, and they had the jersey auction after, and Holtby is always in demand at those things. In hindsight, they maybe should have called up Sabourin.

7. The crowd was REALLY happy to see Braden. Huge cheers for him.

While bringing up Holtby wasn’t a joke, IMHO, he was not really as rested as we would ideally want. But as for bringing up Rechlisz, that was a joke. I wondered what on Earth DH was thinking that he was really a better option to use in our lineup than either Knuble or Aucoin. I know that if I were in Knuble’s shoes tonight, I would be ready to throw something against the wall. Seriously.

Like you, I decided to leave when the score was 5-1. It was getting late and I figured there was no way on Earth the Caps would come back & win.

And now we can officially declare me a glutton for punishment since I’m attending the next two games on the road for a long weekend trip (and couple of extra days) to Florida for the road trip.

Braden, are you ready for a position change? Voila, our new first line center.

What happened?

Even still, if GMGM thinks this team is just a healthy Backstrom and Green away from a Stanley Cup before the game, its a safe bet he still thinks it now.

Everyone’s favorite scapegoats. (And to think some of the good old Canadian boys that the media loves are of Eastern European descent.)

You should throw in an “enigmatic” just for good measure

He played Friday in Syracuse, backed up Saturday in HER, played Sunday in HER, and Monday in DC with almost no notice.

I would have liked a better outing tonight, but some of that was on his, y’know, teammates. Convert a couple of those early chances and he would have been a hero.