1. Make no mistake about it, this was a terrible play…
#pens score in OT pic.twitter.com/r8cNs1DPBW
— CAPITALS HILL (@CapitalsHill) May 5, 2016
Trotz on Weber: “It was more an unlucky play than anything.'”
— Zac Boyer (@ZacBoyer) May 5, 2016
[Sorry, Barry, I stand corrected] … by a guy who probably shouldn’t have been in the lineup:
Who would you play?
— Japers’ Rink (@JapersRink) May 4, 2016
Why benching Nate Schmidt for Mike Weber may not be the right move https://t.co/6q0YLLp0j2
— RMNB (@russianmachine) May 4, 2016
But the reasons you don’t play Mike Weber is that he’s a terrible possession player and a bad-penalty machine. He was neither last night. Weber is an easy target (and still probably the wrong play), but the whole team needed to be better, from the net on out. When you let a Kris Letang-less Pens team take you to overtime, you get what you get.
Great entertainment. But this was an opportunity a championship team should have capitalized on https://t.co/brBtRZ9o1I
— Dan Steinberg (@dcsportsbog) May 5, 2016
Barry Trotz: “Those are always tough. That’s why it’s sudden death. That’s what it feels like. We’ll have to deal with it.”
— Brian McNally (@bmcnally14) May 5, 2016
***
2. And now the Caps find themselves on the brink, facing the prospect of coming up disappointingly short in the spring once again. It’s not a fun place to be.
John Carlson says #Caps situation “not ideal.” But believes they have what it takes to win 3 in a row.
— Brian McNally (@bmcnally14) May 5, 2016
#Caps F Jay Beagle: “Not shocked” to be in this position. Knew #Penguins were a good team. But called Game 5 “The biggest game of our lives”
— Brian McNally (@bmcnally14) May 5, 2016
Maybe this team is at it’s best with its back against the proverbial wall (though, arguably, they were at their best when this series was tied 1-1). Guess we’ll find out.
***
3. Playoff history is history and doesn’t have an impact on present or future events. That’s what we’ve been hearing for as long as any of us can remember. But the history (at least the recent past, which is all that would matter if anything did) shows a team that has gagged up 3-1 series leads:
#Penguins have held a 3-1 series lead 13 times in a best-of-7- have lost 3 of those: 2014 vs NYR, 2011 vs TB, 1975 vs NYI (a 3-0 lead blown)
— StatsCentre (@StatsCentre) May 5, 2016
You were expecting someone else?
The odds are still long, of course, those teams aren’t this one and so on. But impossible it ain’t.
Take a coin. Flip it three times. If you got three heads, that’s the Caps winning this series. It’ll happen roughly one in eight times.
— Japers’ Rink (@JapersRink) May 5, 2016
— Japers’ Rink (@JapersRink) May 5, 2016