[AP Recap – Game Summary – Event Summary]
Last Friday, we noted that the penalty kill may be the single biggest problem the Caps need to address going forward. Since then, the Caps have played three games and haven’t allowed a single even strength goal, and yet have one regulation win to show for it.
And while the offense has provided just two goals in each of those games, the penalty killers have only been successful ten out of fifteen times they’ve been put to work. Sure, on many nights the Caps will still have enough offense to overcome their woeful kill (lord knows they’ve done it plenty of times already this season). But as the games become more and more meaningful and the margin for error slimmer and slimmer, if the Caps don’t fix what’s ailing their penalty kill, their season’s going to end up a lot shorter than they’d hoped (for more on the PK woes, make sure to check out Peerless this morning). As Bruce Boudreau noted postgame:
Then again, the Pens went to the Finals a year ago with the 23rd ranked regular season PK, so what the hell do we know?
Some thoughts on the game:
And so ends the pre-All-Star portion of our program. Forty-eight games down and the Caps have a sizable division lead, a number one goalie and an MVP who are playing like it, a supporting cast that’s getting healthy and has been producing all along, and a head coach who could be in line for a second consecutive Jack Adams trophy… especially if he can figure out how to fix the penalty kill.