Couch Coach

The last two Caps games have been a real pleasure to watch.  The Caps are showing a much more healthy style of play these days.  A little more gritty, no aversion to mixing dump-n-chase with pretty passes, and much more defensive structure.  Also of note is that there have been more shots from the point and shots off the glass to get rebounds in front of the net, another good trend.  The Peerlees Prognosticator damned this trend with faint praise calling it “workmanlike play.”  But I think he misses the point – by mixing it up the Caps are less predictable.  The opposing defense has been backing off because they can’t trust that every single play will be of the stickhandle-n-pass variety, and it is working.

The Laich-Fleischmann-Semin line seems to be a very nice combo when The Jizz is present and accounted for.  (And he was at 200% against Montreal!) I think the Caps are much better off spreading out from the traditional Ovie-Backstrom-Semin line and rotating others into the first line.  Knuble is doing good in that regard, he is a net crashing missile as always.  I daresay his finger cannot possibly be 100% - he looks a little ham handed.  But he needed screws and plates in that finger so frankly I am surprised he didn’t take a lot more time on IR.  But sore finger or not he can clearly bang the puck in paddle-style as well.  And the chaos he brings to the crease is invaluable.

Accolades would be too numerous to hand out all around.  Of special note: Backstrom – on fire.  Fleischmann doing great at center.  Gordon with a sweet goal.  (I kind of forgot he even played for the team in fact.)  Laich just never stops working, I love the way that guy plays.  Steckel and Sloan with contract extensions, good moves.  Sloan there has been grumbling about, but I think everyone forgets how quickly injuries can pile up like they did in September and October.

And a special note on Mike Green – he has been playing great these last few.  I noticed that people are still pinging him (by default I suppose) for any turnover.  I myself have been critical of the guy at times.  But from watching what he is doing, he actually is playing a very tight game.  He has been blasting from the point and only pinching when appropriate.  He is hitting a bit more as well.  And he is not just trying to stickhandle into the zone against 3 guys all by himself.  He will score many more goals if he keeps this up, and strengthen the defense to boot.  Your loss, Team Canada.

As for the trade and all, I think it was a great move.  Ovie as captain is a great move.  He clearly takes it very seriously.  Chimera is not a game changer but he contributes more than Clark did in a pure on-ice assessment.  Jurnica I liked but I don’t think his absence will hurt the Caps in any way.  In fact, getting Alzner and Carlson rotating into the mix more will be a very good thing in my book.  Alzner may be rotated back the AHL right now, but he plays with a certain confidence and leadership that is nice to see.  And Carlson clearly will be a scoring threat, based on goals he already scored for the Caps and his World Juniors OT goal.

The only sad part is that I watched a few Columbus games after the trade and Clark and Jurnica were clearly very upset by it all.  The first few interviews were hard to watch, I thought they might start crying.  But all the best to them, the clearly loved playing for the Caps.  I don’t think it was a good trade because those guys sucked, or were a negative drain on the team.  I think it was a good trade for other reasons and the benefits that are clearly starting to show already.

Well here’s looking forward to a 3-game divisional road trip.  Should be some tough and interesting games for those reasons, despite the Caps much better overall record than Atlanta, Tampa and Florida.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 8th, 2010 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Hockey, Washington Capitals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.