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After winning the NHL’s most extravagant regular season game against one of the NHL’s best teams, a Sunday matinee against the Florida Panthers smacked of trap game. But the Caps came out buzzing, and production throughout the lineup ensured the Caps stayed on track with their New Year’s resolution to never lose another game ever.
Final Score:
Florida 3
Washington 4
Sunday afternoon’s Plus/Minus:
- Plus: Gotta love the secondary scoring. Goals at evens from Brooks Laich and Karl Alzner is a hell of a way to supplement scoring from the big guns. The Caps dominated play at evens all day against a top-10 Corsi team. They hovered around 60% for most of the game, and with 3 5v5 goals had the production to show for it. No Winter Classic hangover here.
- Bonus Plus: Penalty killers. The parade to the sin bin needs to end, but this unit— maligned for much of the year— has come up huge of late. Without back-to-back Herculean efforts from the Caps penalty killers (Braden Holtby very much included), 2015 could be looking a whole lot different right now
- Minus: That first Panthers goal was just brutal, from start to finish. The collision between Hillen and Green was brutal. Evgeny Kuznetsov getting tangled up in the wreckage was embarrassing. Holtby stopping the 2-0 was great. Everyone in a red sweater— besides Marcus Johansson, who was spinning in circles in the crease— loafing down the ice while the Panthers hacked away was the worst.
And now, this…
Because why shouldn’t a team owner wear his team’s jersey in his box? I mean, it’s not like Ted needs to disguise who he’s rooting for…(h/t to @TedStarkey for the screengrab)
Ten more notes on the game:
- Until Braden Holtby’s career-long start streak ends, he’s a story. Holts saw a fair amount of rubber today, and he performed well, as he always seems to do when the shot counter ticks up. You can’t really hold 70 accountable for the first two Panthers goals— and the third was a wicked shot from Nick Bjugstad—and Braden gave the fans a little bit of a strip tease to thank them for coming out on a Sunday. All in all, a good day at the office for the Caps’ workhorse.
- Speaking of goalies, coming into this one Roberto Luongo had picked up 15 victories in last 16 outings versus the Caps. Yowza, that’s some Justin Peters type success! Luongo mysteriously sat out the third period, and when Bjudstad picked up that third goal late, he absolved Luongo of the loss. That’s one way to keep your numbers gaudy, Lu (but get well).
- Like Tom Wilson and Jason Chimera before him, Andre Burakovsky was ushered out of the press box and into first line duties alongside Alex Ovechkin and Nicklas Backstrom. Bura notched his fifth goal (game winner!) of the season, and this line dominated the possession game. Goal aside, if the youngster does his part in helping 8 and 19 stay in the offensive zone, it’s probably at the very least worth continuing the experiment. Nice one, Bura.
- Hard to believe that just two games ago Brooks Orpik was writhing on the ice, it looking almost certain that the veteran blueliner would miss some time. After skating a team-leading 24:44 in the Winter Classic, Orpik was back out there playing big minutes again. He was on the ice for a goal against (which caromed off Orpik and into the net), and one for, on which he picked up an assist, and he and John Carlson again took the lion’s share of ice time. Great to see Orpik humming along as normal.
- The Capitals need to stop taking penalties. The game was barely two minutes old when Jay Beagle marched off the ice for taking an interference after winning a faceoff in the offensive zone…which is about the worst place and time ever to take a penalty. It was fewer than two minutes after the Caps killed that one off that Mike Green and Sean Bergenheim took matching roughing minors. Before the end of the game, Matt Niskanen, Karl Alzner (awful call), John Carlson, and Brooks Orpik (awful call) had all given Florida power plays. You play with fire…
- Alex Ovechkin, who with 11 goals in his last 11 games against Florida doesn’t mind seeing the boys from Sunrise, and he made sure that both those 11s went to 12s today, firing one past Luongo on a beautiful passing play by Marcus Johansson and Nicklas Backstrom. That’s 2 PPG in 3 opportunities, after 2 PPG in the previous 21. Good to see.
- Well if you ever need a definition for “goat rodeo”, why don’t you go ahead and point your audience to a replay of the Panther’s first goal. I’m not sure which hit was harder: Ovechkin on Luongo, or Jack Hillen on Mike Green? Big ups to Braden Holtby for making a huge stop on a 2-0. Big downs to everyone else on the ice for gliding back into the play while Florida hacked around the net until the rebound found paydirt.
- Man, how about that peanut-butter netdrive combo from Brooks Laich and Joel Ward to knot the game up at two? Perfect execution, and that came after regrouping on a great tip-in timing play from that same line. Fun fact: with Brooks Orpik picking up an assist on this, it’s probably the only goal in NHL history scored and assisted by a guy named Brooks.
- The year’s not even half over, and with his third marker of the season in the second period Karl Alzner set a new career high for goals scored. Before the season Barry Trotz did say he wanted to generate more offense from the blueline. Pretty sure this is exactly what he had in mind. Fun fact: Karl Alzner and I share a birthday.
- Per our buddy Mike Vogel, this 10-1-3 run is the Caps best run since the ’12-’13 season (which when you consider last year is hardly a surprise). Hell yeah.
Game highlights: