Couch Coach

The Caps got beat down like a litter of puggles that wandered into Michael Vick’s basement.

They came out flat and disorganized and left the ice in pretty much the same state.  The Caps just didn’t play as a team. Individually they were not that hot either.

And a side note - the Sharks do have some odd traditions.  These include a smoking shark head that the players skate through at the beginning, which looks like a giant bong.  I mean it fills the rink and most of the arena with smoke at the start.  I read some quote from Ovie about “not being able to breathe in the first” and I know exactly what he meant.  It then hangs way up in the rafters the rest of the game and emits clouds of smoke when the Sharks score.  Oh and they have a dude in a stuffed-animal shark suit who rappels from the ceiling at the beginning and make hip thrusts at the crowd to techno music.  Not cool.  Well, on to the game.

Neuvirth seemed ok in goal, for a while.  The game would have absolutely, positively been 4-0 or 5-0 in the first if he had not been standing tall out of the gate.  But the pressure never let up on him, and it came at random times.  There was one point (about halfway through the 2nd)  when he’d been hit with about the 10th barrage of shots, just getting hammered to pieces.  The puck came to a stop right in front of him and he just stared at it, dazed and confused. S. Morrison had to tip it into his glove so he could freeze it.  I was thinking, “Uh oh, he’s lost it.”  He also got an unbelievable 2 penalty shots awarded against him, and a frisky shot (right in his face) that left him bowing to mecca for a minute or two.  Rough night for the rookie.

The Jizz blew his load in the first minute, attempting 2 shots and a pass.  Failing at all 3 efforts he seemed to doze off for most of the rest of the game.  Well, until he blew a goal-mouth pass from Ovie during a 2-on-nothing breakaway by shooting it right into Nabokov.  He was truly off the radar from then on.

But it wasn’t number 28 alone - the Caps just looked lost in the sauce.  Mike Knuble was as surprised as anyone else when he dribbled one in while standing in the crease.  Chimera did good (assisting on that goal) but definitely had that look of, “damn, what’s my place in all this chaos?”  Which I get 100%.

Overall team defense was ok except when it really mattered.  Mike Green made a haphazard dash into 3 Shark defenders and got off a wobbly wrist shot at one point.  He then raced back the other way chasing a few Sharks that were taking the biscuit home all by themselves.  On the bright side, he only tried that once.

Backstrom was not on the ball for this one either.  Whenever Backstrom gets pissed off, he should repeat to himself himself: “I will not weakly cross-check an opposing player, get a penalty, and look like a silly Swedish dandy.”

Overall, the Caps played too fancy until the 3rd, and then tried more dump and chase.  (Including Knuble’s goal.)  I will say that Nabokov makes it hard for the dump and chase to work, because he moves pucks like hot cakes.  In the end the Caps started lobbing the puck into the zone to get the hang-time up so that Nabby couldn’t take the chance of getting caught out.  That was a damn good idea, but needed to be done from the beginning.

Ovie was not too sharp until the 3rd.  He kept trying to stickhandle in but the Sharks were on him like glue.  He did, however get doused in vodka and set on fire in the last 5 minutes of the game.  He was running around like a madman.  Hitting everything, and I mean that literally - he took out a linesman by accident at one point.  He scored right off a faceoff, so fast that no one even knew what happened.  He was later hitting one guy while the puck was right next to him, unnoticed.  Then he grabbed it and hammered a shot.  And kept doing it.  Open ice hits, crunches on the boards, and the hip check on the linesman…  it was a box of chocolates.  Good Lord Above, if he could play like that all the time the rest of the NHL would just call it quits and move to the KHL.  It was three of the most amazing shifts of hockey I have ever seen.  I was muttering “don’t get injured” to myself, though - he just can’t do that all the time.

Alas, the Sharks did not fold under all that pressure, and the game was over long before this sweet rampage even started.  As Japer’s Rink put it, this game will fade from memory over time, and the season is not even at the halfway point.

Let’s see what happens next in LA on Saturday.

-Bobomite

I just watched HNIC, (tho I don’t know why I bother) and I saw Don Cherry’s take on Koci’s hit on Mike Green.  So evidently it was Green’s fault for facing the boards.  The other guy, the ass-hat that sits next to him, was like “I thought Koci should have got a suspension for the hit, but when you explain it that way, it was Green’s fault.”

I was looking around; he is evidently listed as one of Canada’s greatest 10 people.

Pitiful.

-Bobomite

Well the game was not horrible, I’ll say that much.  However, it was not particularly impressive either.  Vancouver outworked the Caps overall, and seemed to want it a lot more.  And Vancouver also played the night before, the Caps have had a few days off - so no excuses about the plane was broken or my poocat hurt.

Powerplay situations were not helping the Caps.  On their own powerplays (4 I think) they got basically no shots which is notable considering the firepower the team packs.  I only saw one minute of one of the powerplays as having that “killer instinct.”  And then the refs made some strange calls.  They called a very questionable holding on Erskine in the first.  Then Poti got high sticking for no reason I could see, and then game him 2 more for “slamming the door to the penalty box.”  I mean come on is this a hockey game or an elementary school?

They must have felt bad about that because they gave Semin a penalty shot that normally would have been a penalty (and in hindsight would have been a lot better.)  Unfortunately though, he blew his load early and low, right into Luongo’s pad.

And one of the goals was a very direct result of GreenLife52 pinching down way too far to take a wrist shot - he got picked clean and only SMo was back to defend the 2-1 that resulted.  And they scored.  So on the one hand I guess you’d say this is what can happen if you have an offensive defenseman…  On the other hand, it was not good, at all.  He came in pinching on a non-screened shot, Luongo had 20 clear feet of ice to see it all, and in fact directed the rebound perfectly to the breakout guys.  Green really must not want to play on the Olympic team because I am quite sure that clip will be splashed around up north.  It was just not a good play.

But whatever, let’s see how the Caps do with Edmonton.

-Bobomite

The past few days have included a number of hockey news stories about the quality of teams in the Easy vs. teams in the West. Consensus has been that the West has the better teams. Everyone from the ESPN power rankings dude to commenters at Japer’s Rink were going along with that logic.

Well so much for that argument. Ok so one game against the Avs (who just had a hard-fought battle the night before) may not prove or disprove much, but it was a nice game to watch. Even if the Avs were tired, the Caps executed almost perfectly. Solid team effort, with good defensive efforts and solid goaltending by Mr. Theodore. The support crew was firing on all cylinders and the first line was not playing too fancy at all.

More like this, please! And man, where were they hiding Wilson? I want to see more of that number 57 out there. Perreault I like but Wilson is going to be hard to take that center job away from. And Alzner is still fitting right in - he looks confident and collected out there most of the time.

On a Hockey Night in Canada broadcast liberally peppered with shots and long editorial comments about the Capitals over-curved sticks, Toronto punished the Caps harshly. The first period looked great and a 2-0 lead made the game look like a slam dunk.

Nothing could be further from the result. The last 40 minutes were a crumbling collapse of epic proportions.

Neuvith might be as brilliant as they say, but he made the most amazing impression of a giant block of swiss cheese that I have seen in a long time. He made Theo’s play last night look like superstar quality.

Perreault is sliding by the game. The support crew is not getting any momentum. The defense is getting run over like small orange road cones on the side of the freeway. Fancy first line play is eating all the ice time and the Caps have returned to the crazy manic-depressive play (or is that high-risk, high-reward?) and to be honest I liked it better when they played some regular hockey too.

Hanging in by fingernails with Carolina and then getting slapped silly by Toronto… It’s going to be a long month at this rate.

-Bobomite

What is not to like. Semin warms up, Perreault sets up the lead and Mike Green finishes it off after laying down many good hits.

It was great to see Knuble back in action, tho clearly his finger is still hurt. Theo had a terrible, terrible start but came back into the game with some awesome saves in the last half. I’ll take it. Let’s work out Neuvith on this road trip.

Man this was some clean hockey, as well. Carolina was playing well and Ward was tight for most of it. They had a 2-0 lead and it looked like another shutout against the Caps in the first. But Semin caught on fire, just killed it with some sick moves.

Looking forward to the coming road trip!

-Bobomite

Generally you’d think there would be no merit to a 3-0 loss. But in this case, I’d actually say the Caps did most things right. Ovie, Backstrom and a few others had half a dozen seemingly wide open chances. Some went wide, some were amazing saves. Luck was definitely with the Sabers.

The Sabres also hustled a lot and were ready to come back from their double-last shutout, both from the last game with the Caps and their last actual game. They were only flat for any length of time early in the second. The Caps however started slow and took 2 periods to warm up. Better go to the morning skate more often, guys!

That goalie Miller played an awesome game. He was so good I caught myself smiling on a few of those saves and then I felt guilty for 2 minutes. But overall the game was some good, clean hockey. No gooning around and a good effort from both sides.

Encouraging signs:

-The defensive effort was pretty consistent; Buffalo was hot tonight.
-Offensive play was also strong, especially for the first line.
-Theo let in only one bad goal, the other two were awesome shots - he did ok overall and that is fine.
-Giroux showed one thing more clearly - he can skate fast. He didn’t do much but he can move like a jet.
-Backstrom is starting to hit people a bit. Who would have guessed?
-S. Morrison back and hitting, I liked it.

Discouraging signs:

-It did kind of seem like everyone was trying to set up Ovie with cherry-picking passes too much…
-The same Gr8 dived like a thespian and got caught red-handed… not impressive man. You gotta know Don Cherry will pick up that video and all the refs and the NHL suspension team will watch the replays. Come on.
-Mike Green gets stripped when stick-handling into the zone 90% of the time and tonight it was more like 99%
-Fehr, Stekel, the blue collar contingent in general were ghosts. Laich hung in overall but he and Brendan Morrison can’t do it all. Man is Knuble back yet??
-Seems like there are 2 teams, one with Ovie and one without… If those 2 Caps team can play together then they are unstoppable.
-Semin is cold again. (Trade him for a stack of 1st round picks please. Fehr needs some center stage time and Backstrom needs all the money Semin was collecting.)
-Varley has a groin injury, but then again it’s starting in March that he needs to be ready. He has been playing very, very well. Put Neuvith in some more and see what happens.

-Bobomite

As I figured, the Pens would become tired of him and place him on waivers and the Caps would pick him right back up. I don’t know what Caps fans fascination with him is. Maybe because he is Ray’s son or he is small and quick thinking he can be another St Louis. Maybe as he gets older he could be but I don’t see it. Then again, maybe is he got playing time with the Caps roster and not the Pens, he may do better. The style the Caps play is more to his ability. I doubt he will see any time this season unless there is an extended injury to a starter. GM likes to pull up guys who he can send back down without having to clear waivers.

Ovie of course played well as I figured after sitting and watching everyone on the team score. Varly looked solid again. I wonder how long until Boudreau just takes him for a ride and plays him like 10 straight. He is playing much better than Jose. I think the Caps play better D when he is in.

I have been occupied with the holidays, birthdays and everything in between so here is a short on the long that has happened.

The Ovi knee/suppension, I am kind of torn. On one hand I think he needed to be suspended because he was booted from 2 game in a matter of days. On the other hand I am not that sure the hit on the knee warranted being booted. Ovi does need to tone it down since he isn’t the inforcer. He will just shorten his career and hurt the team by him being out. On the other hand it’s nice to have a player that plays all out all the time. The thing that gets me on some of his hits or near hits is it takes him out of the play and sometimes it is well after the puck as gone. He needs to be in the play. With that said, 2 wins with him out and he gets some rest for both his knee and for that upper body injury he had earlier so it isn’t all bad.

So far it appears that with the suspension and the fact the Caps have been winning without him, I think him getting MVP again is all but gone.

Now to the Philly game. There are 3 things that bring joy in sports. Redskins beating the Cowboys, Caps beating the Pens and Caps beating the Flyers. It is so nice to see the Caps school the Flyers in their own building. What was really nice is to hear that the place was filled with Caps fans! Where are the Flyer fans?? I thought the place was a sellout all games??? This was a Saturday game not Tuesday game! The Flyer fans continue to show why Philly fans are the worst. Down many, many goals and a slapper from across the ice catches the ref in the head. He drops like a rock. What do the majority of Flyer fans do?! Cheer. Brilliant. And they wonder why they get a bad rap?? And don’t even say that Ovi is a cheap shot when their own player cheap shot Bradley and got booted. That is a suspension!

Tampa is next. Critical division game. Tampa is looking better than thought this year. Caps need to put more space between them so wins here are critical. Ovi is back and I am sure he will be fired up.

Seriously, the Caps schedule sucks. It’s a bunch of road games every other day and then a west coast road swing. All for the Olympics…..

-Daggone