Knee-Jerks & Notes: Philly, 10/02
Two consecutive Friday nights with appealing visiting clubs and two straight conspicuously disappointing crowds. Ten years ago it it would have unfathomable to view wide swaths of emptiness on a post World Series Friday night with Philly in town. More and more I've become convinced that the hockey product here is (1) gratuitously overpriced for its value (especially in the lower bowl) and (2) battered into home emptiness by a decade of defeat that, on the heels of a decade and a half of perpetual springtime torment, has produced as significant a marketing challenge as faced by any team anywhere in the landscape of pro sports. And Alexander Ovechkin is more or less powerless to do anything about it until he and his teammates begin to win consistently and then make some postseason noise.
- At the risk of stating the obvious, Dave Steckel, absent an injury rehab assignment, has played his final AHL hockey game. He has done exactly what I thought he would this season having watched him play a two-way, dominant role for one of the all-time best Hershey Bears' clubs last season.
- Kozlov played a strong first period, carrying the puck deftly and with strength. However his following two periods were markedly less effective.
- Early on it appeared as if there would be plenty of Washingtonians disappointed they didn't come last night -- this was an old fashioned chippy Friday night affair between Philly and Washington. Then the Caps fell lifeless the entirety of the second period and almost all of the third.
- You'd have to score the Richards-Laich bout Richards' on points, but Laich made his few landings count. Eric McErlain, seated next to me, said, "Richards looks like David Koci" at the conclusion.
- Speaking of Richards: Here's money in the bank -- he's the next Flyers' captain. Midway through the game I knew he'd be named the game's first star. A year ago he was thought to have been a terrific find at no. 24 in the 2003 first round by the Flyers. Now he's positively a jewel of that draft class. You wish you could take a month's worth of footage of his game, sit Tomas Fleischmann -- who has twice the talent of Richards -- in a dark room for a long weekend, and have him watch it on a loop, hoping something would seep in. But that's hockey for you; playing the game the way Richards does comes from the heart.
- The Pothier-Schultz convergence of non-convergence led to the Flyers' first goal. Both broke toward Briere in the center ice slot but neither ultimately covered him, which is why he was able to complete a tap-in past Kolzig without objection and heat a cup of soup there too. The blueline turnover that led to the Flyer's jailbreak the other way of course didn't help.
- The
CarterEager-Suts slowdance was largely missed fists and fury about nothing connecting. I guess you award it to Eager on the takedown. - Boyd Gordon's centering line 1 isn't a long-term solution. It also isn't a short-term one.
- Remember the mantra of playing a puck possession game as a means of reducing opponents' scoring opportunities? After two periods tonight the Caps had 11 giveaways.
Now three games below .500, and with a tough slate of three on the road this week before returning home against Tampa next Saturday, the Caps are staring squarely at the possibility of being ranked 15th in the East at week's end. If not sooner. Injuries aside -- and all teams have injuries (the Flyers were without Simon Gagne last night) -- there is a bizarre and disconcerting inconsistency to this team 13 games into the season. The cohesive and committed sets of lines, forward and back, of Monday night in Toronto bore no resemblance to last night's 20 man-units of one. There were widespread expectations of marked improvement for this club this season, and that included the coaching staff. It would be difficult imagining this club a favorite in any of the games it plays this week (particularly Monday and Friday nights), and November is littered with Southeast division matchups. Absent a significant turnaround, this team could be staring up at a chasm-gap in postseason contention sooner rather than later.
After next Saturday's game there are fully four days off. Just sayin.
Leave a comment