[AP Recap – Game Summary – Event Summary – WashingtonCaps.com Postgame]
A hockey team dressed in burgundy and jaundiced yellow gold football jerseys trounced one from Washington. Go figure.
Hold all of those milestones waiting to be reached: Alex Ovechkin‘s 50th; Alex Semin‘s 30th; Nicklas Backstrom‘s 20th; the team’s franchise record sixth-straight road win. Instead, the Caps allowed 5 goals, including rookie defenseman Anssi Salmela‘s first NHL goal, and fired 50 shots on Kari Lehtonen. Most of which were those perimeter shots, from the point or off drop passes outside of the slot, that we so know and loathe. And a team that really shouldn’t be winning all of these games down the stretch now has an impressive six-game winning streak.
Just when we thought these Caps were invincible at home, they begin to stumble. And just when hitting to the road is trumpeted as the antidote, the team decides to play non-contact hockey for roughly half of the game.
On this night, it was a game where several Thrashers, particularly young D-men, remain late-season eager to prove themselves worthy of a significant role in a developing system. That showed. Aside from Ovechkin’s firestarting shift late in the second and consistent dispensation of punishment along the boards in the third, a determination by the Caps to demonstrate to themselves and the coaching staff a capability of making a lengthy playoff run didn’t.