Couch Coach

And by best ever I mean for all time, not just this season.

With the exception of a few soft games at the end of the southwest division swing, they have been playing at an almost flawless level for the last dozen or so.  Their offense has been dominating team after team.  Defense has been tightening down their play and really improving.  The lines are stabilized, and each line is playing very well for its role.  In fact, the second line combo has been so strong that the Caps just about have 2 first lines, night after night.  Enviable.

Let’s just look at the first line.  We will say that the rest of the team playing with this same sort of balance and skill, in their roles.

Here, Knuble makes a perfect complement to Ovechkin and Backstrom.  He is like the deadly one-inch punch, able to score off any contact with the puck no matter how random or close to the goal.  Sometimes he cleans up on an Ovechkin shot and sometimes Ovechkin cleans up his rebounds.  The goalies must be putting on Depends undergarments when they have these two circling them.

And then Backstrom is there the whole time, quarterbacking it.  Oh and he has no problem putting in himself, either.  You know a team is in deep trouble when they are triple-covering Backstrom…  It is usually a matter of seconds before they are down a goal at that point.  Ask Anaheim, it happened to them just the other evening.

And seriously, the other lines and the defensive pairs are doing great jobs too.  Let’s take number 28 for example, who is playing so well right now that he is making highlight-reel quality goals faster than Hostess makes hoecakes.

Even goaltending has been good enough, even though there is a strange triangle with the injured Varlamov, the fragile Theo, and the green Neuvirth.  But with any luck that will sort itself out.   And the Caps are just not letting teams get second and third shots very often, keeping the goalies warm and snug most games these days.

And I would have to agree with Daggone here…  There is no reason to be talking trades or even wasting time thinking about them.  Sure, defense could be tinkered with.  But the current setup has some solid vets and room for Carlson and Alzner to step in slowly.

-Bobomite

This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 12:28 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.