On Frozen Blog

You expected less drama from the Cardiac Caps?

Bruce Boudreau this week made a point of white-boarding his hockey team’s underwhelming and underachieving performances against the Tampa Bay Lightning this season, and his team’s middle 20 minutes Thursday night gave him fresh lecturing material. A dominant opening 20 minutes, exclamation-pointed by a 20-5 shotclock slaughter, was followed by tentative, tense, and sloppy play in period two.   

“How many times have we seen that — teams dominate in the first period and not get rewarded enough, the other team comes back in the second period and plays a lot better,” Coach Boudreau noted in his post-game press conference.

“It happens almost every time,” he added. “Guys didn’t want to make a mistake and they wanted to play perfect hockey.

“Sometimes you just gotta play,” he said. 

The longer the game played “ugly” the more dangerous the atmosphere became for the favorite. There were even unforced physical errors — Nick Backstrom falling and surrendering the puck dangerously behind his own net, Cristobal Huet nearly sliding head-first into the sideboards in pursuit of a third-period puck — to remind Caps’ fans of the Ghosts of Gonchars past in a big game. And in Karri Ramo (36 saves) Caps’ fans confronted yet another no-name opposing netminder seemingly hell-bent on wrecking a Caps’ season.

And this being the history-plagued Caps, misfortune’s cherry was needed on top of the melting sundae of a season, so a Brooks Laich goal in the first period that would have knotted the game at one was disallowed by the zebras, citing, according to Boudreau, “incidental contact” from which ”the goalie didn’t have time to recover.” Which prompted Mike Vogel to ask the coach, “Is there such a thing as two minutes for incidental contact yet?”

Not to worry. This season, there is in the Capitals’ uniform he who is making it his life’s mission to re-write scoring records as well as a new chapter in his team’s Chronicles of Spring, with a much better ending.   

Getting home through this two-week minefield of lose-once-and-you’re-through, inevitably there was going to be a performance in which the young skated their age — actually showed some sign of being aware of the stakes and reacting as the young are supposed to. Thursday was it. There was also this factor: winning games you’re supposed to win is occasionally tougher than winning those you aren’t.

The game turned on Vincent Lecavalier’s third period injury. Matt Cooke clobbered him in open ice, and while Cooke probably went appropriately unpunished, Tampa reacted as hockey teams typically do when their star player is violently removed from a game: with vengeance. On the ensuing Caps’ power play, Alexander Ovechkin scorched a wrister past Ramo that unleashed Def Leppard-like loudness in an arena that had spent nearly 50 game minutes united in an updated version of woes of old: ”They’re gonna come this far and blow it against the bottom-feeding ‘Bolts?”

Lecavalier’s absence was also acutely felt on Tampa’s 4-minute man-advantage from a John Erskine high stick. The last-place ‘Bolts still ranked 6th in the league on the power play. The ensuing effort was competent but lacked its customary lethal fright. Then Boyd Gordon made it 3-1, occasioning another eardrum-paining celebration among the red-clad. 

Greg Wyshynski, who yesterday authored “Can You Smell the Sidney/Ovie in the Air?”, stood next to Dmitry Chesnokov and me amid the relief-delerium and shouted, barely audibly, ”Washington isn’t a hockey town!” to demonstrate the very changed air within the rink on F Street. Dmitry and I took turns replying, “We can’t hear you.”  

The Caps, a team that spent years recently seeking 5 consecutive wins, won their sixth in row Thursday. (They last won six in a row in 2001). At least for one day, they moved into the Eastern conference’s top eight, and postseason qualification. Their no. 1 star Thursday night is also the league’s no. 1 star of 2008. Soon, formally acknowledged as such.   

“We have so much firepower on this team, and so much trust, if we play our way we can come back and score goals, and it’s just a matter of time,” Brooks Laich said afterward. Laich in his breakout season is also a disciple spreading the gospel of puck in a region increasingly receptive to it. 

“You can obviously tell in the building that hockey’s really catching on,” he said.

“It’s starting to become a hockey town.”