As great as Alex Ovechkin is, as great as Mike Green has been, and as much as Eric Fehr has produced lately, they’ve masked a somewhat worrisome fact: the Capitals are not getting much secondary scoring these days.
Consider that Alex Semin has just three goals since January 17; Tomas Fleischmann has one since January 14; Michael Nylander has goals in two games since January 10; Nicklas Backstrom has two goals since January 6; Brooks Laich has two since December 30; Viktor Kozlov has two since December 26; and Sergei Fedorov has just one goal since November 6 (!). That’s not a whole hell of a lot of production out of the guys who are penciled in on your top three lines who aren’t named in that first paragraph.
Throw in the fact that the Caps have just one non-empty net goal from a blueliner on the current roster not named Green since December 16, and you can see that there’s some cause for concern if the Caps should, say, find themselves in a playoff matchup against a team that figures out how to shut down AO (easier said than done, of course).
Point being, as the team starts readying itself for the playoffs, it would be nice if the team would start readying itself for the playoffs.