Tuesday Caps Clips: Take Cover

Your savory breakfast links:

• Find out who’s up and who’s down as the postseason gets underway. [Rink]
• Check out the three things we were talking about yesterday when we were talking about the Caps. [Rink]
• Recaps and other assorted musings on last night’s loss from us, Vogs, Caps video (Reirden, locker room, recap), Canes, NHL, AP, WaPo, NBCSW, NBC4, News & Observer, The Score, NoVa Caps (and again), RMNB, and Canes Country.
• “We didn’t play our game at all.” The captain sums it up pretty perfectly. [News & Observer]
• Struggles at both ends of the ice exposed the Caps’ biggest weakness: the hole on the blueline. [WaPo]
• Perhaps the weirdest part of an all-around awful game was the fight between Alex Ovechkin and Andrei Svechnikov, which resulted in the youngster being helped off the ice. Blech. [WaPo, AP, ESPN, Canes Country]
• Of course, as always, there are two sides to every story (but in this case one is right and the other is Brind’Amour’s). [NBCSW (and again)]
• Ovechkin doesn’t exactly have a long, storied history with the ol’ fisticuffs. [NBCSW, Caps Outsider]
• No Kempny, no problem? Well... no. Problem. But the Caps are muddling through without last year’s secret weapon nonetheless. [THN]
• News and notes from yesterday’s pregame skate, which re-introduced last year’s road tradition of the hot lap! [Caps, NBCSW]
• This probably doesn’t need to be said after last night’s result, but the Caps would do well to heed the lessons from other series: expect the unexpected. [NBCSW]
• Finally, happy 56th birthday to Garry Galley.