You are reading live from the Press Box in the Verizon Center. Greetings, hockey fans, Empty Maybe here guesting for some live knee-jerk reactions to tonight’s contest against the Panthers from Florida. You may notice a conspicuous lack of the word V*rsus tonight, and I’m guessing that the esteemed broadcasting partner of the National Hockey League is deeply apologetic about the Caps not being on television this evening.
Incidentally, the interior temperature of the building is chilly.
For those needing their Joe B. and Locker fix, they were in the 100s earlier tonight, giving a chalk talk to a group of season ticket holders.
If you have any questions, put them in the comments section and I’ll do what I can to answer them. We’ll start for real at face-off.
And there’s face-off.
Ovechkin’s line controls the play early, with Alex taking a long shift and playing some with Bradley and Nylander.
Alzner blocks a shot with his foot, and had a bit of alimp his first stride, but smoothed out.
Weiss beats Lepisto to the inside on the right wing to get an uncontested shot on Theodore; Theo saves.
Ovechkin with a flip onto Anderson from behind the net, Anderson steers it away. Ballard and Ovechkin then jostle a bit at the Florida blueline.
The game is moving a lot quicker without TV timeouts.
Brashear with a big hit on Boynton on the forecheck. The Panthers then pin the Caps in their own zone for a solid 20 seconds or so (Lepisto and Morrisonn the pairing). The Caps then draw a penalty, and Karl Alzner makes a nice keep at the blueline, then pinches in, but is missed by a crossing feed.
Caps’ starting PP unit – Kozlov – Backstrom – Flesichmann, with Ovechkin at one point and Lepisto at the other. Fleischmann tries to walk the puck in from the right goal-line, but is denied.
Nylander hesitates in front of the net, and is stoned. On the right goal-line, he then taps his stick loudly for the puck (second time this period). Decent power play, but Florida keeps the sheet clean.
Halfway done with the first, with the Caps carrying the play for the most part. Bouwmeester muffs a pass when he sees Ovechkin trucking for him, but recovers and moves it out of his zone. The Caps then go offsides, with Nick Backstrom taking a hit from a Florida defenseman during the whistle.
Ovechkin is pretty much shooting from anywhere this period. He sets up in the slot, but is turned away by Anderson. He then doess a pretty inside-out move to keep possession. Bryan Helmer then chips in with a shot and a nice blueline keep.
The Grind Line of Brashear – Gordon – Mink has a great cycle shift,with Brashear eventually drawing a tripping penalty.
And with a beaufitul passing play that you could see developing, Backstrom scores. Lepisto fakes the shot to the blueline, then passes to Fleischmann at the right circle. He immediately sends it down low to Backstrom at the right goal line, who then tries to send the puck cross-crease where it bounces in. initially it looked like Ovechkin scored at the left post, but the puck must have bounced in off a Florida skater or Anderson. Caps lead 1 – 0.
Jurcina commits an interference penalty, taking some of the momentum from D.C.
The Caps PPK never really gets into trouble and kill off the penalty. Tyler Sloan has a clearing attempt he probably would like back, and then has a tough shift to end the period and then gets turned inside-out by a Florida winger, giving up a scoring chance.
After one, the Caps lead by one. They carried the bulk of the play, but it hasn’t been a particularly hard-hitting contest, and little jostling after the whistle.
SECOND PERIOD
A comedy of errors in front of the Caps net makes for a few harried moments for the Caps, with Sloan again being in the thick of some strange play. The Caps clear.
The Panthers seem to have turned up the effort here in the second.
Backstrom with a nice faceoff win back to Ovechkin, who puts it on net. Nylander with a solid wrister that is turned away, then more trouble around the Caps net as they have trouble clearing. Tarnasky puts down Backstrom.
Peltonen then comes in on the right side, stops quickly, throwing off Alzner, then roofs a hard wrister past Theodore. Good goal. We’re all tied up.
On the ensuing Florida power play, Dave Steckel makes kind of a strange pass to the center of the ice in the defensive zone, which bounces off Alzner’s skate and goes in the Caps’ net. No pass for Alzner there, but Steckel’s too-crisp pass was ill-advised.
The Panthers are turning up the pressure.
Boyd Gordon puts a solid hit on Tarnasky at the Florida blueline, after Donald Brashear skates the puck into the offensive zone, but is stripped.
After another shift spent largely in the Caps’ end, Eric Fehr puts the puck into the stands for a penalty.
A Bryan McCabe point shot bounces off someone in front of the net, and the Panters have their second power play goal of the night. The Caps effort continues to under-impress.
The Ovechkin line brings some life back into the crowd, with two near-miss scoring chanes, with both chances being spoiled by centering feeds from behind the net going out of the zone. Kozlov made a solid play by drawing two defenders to him and passing to an all-alone Ovechkin, but Ovechkin couldn’t corrall the pass in his skates.
Sami Lepisto makes a clever pass off the boards to find Viktor Kozlov and spring a scoring chance. Ovechkin later blazes into the zone with his pattented move from the left wing to the slot and unleashes a wrister, which is stop. Florida counters, but Theodore is up to the task.
It’s worth noting that there gave been multple instances of the Caps making a centering feed from below the Florida goal-line that have ended up out of the zone due to the Caps not being in the slot. The defensemen also seem to be clinging to the boards more tightly than usual, and not being able to cover the middle of the ice in the offensive zone.
The ice was tilted this period, and not in the Caps’ favor. The Panthers lead 3 – 1 after two.
THIRD PERIOD
The Caps’ effort seems to be a bit better, as they have carried the play for most of the first few minutes. Ovechkin throws a shoulder into a Panthers to finish his shift off.
Of course, having said that, the Panthers again pin the Caps in their own zone for 30 or so seconds, receiving a Bronx cheer when they finally clear the puck. Florida again gets the puck into the Caps zone, Tyler Sloan misses his man, and the Panthers are up by three on a roofed wrister from tight in the left circle by Dvorak.
Nylander is now centering Kozlov and Ovechkin.
Anderson makes a nice save on Kozlov, who was right in front.
The Caps’ power play again is solid, but Anderson is up to the task, including stopping a Fehr offering and and Ovechkin one-timer.
Ovechkin again wakes the crowd up by flattening Kamil Kreps in open ice.
He then clocks Dvorak against the boards.
The crowd, who has treated the team to boos at the end of the second period and again after the fourth Florida goal, begins to head to the exits.
Viktor Kozlov takes a drop pass from Backstrom and rifles a wrister past Anderson, Panthers lead by two.
We’re wrapping up the live jerks on that note. Thanks for reading.
10 Comments
i had an awful sense of deja vu at the game tonight: the same energy, same reactions as the night glen hanlon was fired. Terrible night then, and tonight was terrible as well. Our defense was nonexistent, our offense couldn’t hold onto the puck, and our goalie loses it whenever he makes a mistake. This was NOT the Theodore i saw play on friday, and it was definitely not the same team. To lose your home streak because of a phenomenal opponent is one thing, but to lose it because the team collectively decided to leave their skills and brains in the locker room is another entirely. Incredibly disappointing showing from a group of guys who can do so much better
Definitely a down game for the Caps, but one likely overdue given the injuries and their unbeaten streak at home. Still, I hated seeing their 9-0-1 record on the big screen when the Caps were up 1-0 . . . I’m not particularly superstitious, but that felt like a jinx.
same thing happened last year during playoff game 2: the big screen asked people to text in their answers as to which cap would score the first goal for the caps. the caps were shut out that game…
Nice description of the key points Empty. I get the sense that this was a particularly difficult game to live blog as a fan.
As an out of towner, I guess I can be happy that, instead of listening on radio, I spent the evening dining with friends at a nice local spot and then hauling back an Xmas tree, sold very easily to me by an enchanting and fetching woodsy girl with a Quebecois accent.
Thanks for that. Better than radio. Despondent, I turned to Universal Sports (Channel 807 on Cox Cable, Fairfax Co.) and watched the first of the 2-man bobsled events for the 08-09 World Cup. Bring on the bobs! Tonight is 4-man at Wirtenburg. If I’m still in despair this evening I’ll forego Center Ice and watch the Big Sleds instead. In the meantime, the Caps will get over this. They’ve had perfectly awful nights before — part of growing up, you know. I’m not terribly happy with them right now, but I would never boo them, even if (when) they stink up the place. Especially now when they are mostly hurt and trying to play through it.
A few items from the game.
First of all, the crowd. They can announce 16K sold seats all they want but Verizon was about 30% full, at best, last night. The Caps are the only division champion in town, tickets are very reasonable, and the crowd last night was embarrassing.
Second, Steckel. It’s not “unfortunate”, it’s moronic. Who clears a puck across the crease of his own net—-ever? This wasn’t a puck that was five or six feet in front of the goal and Alzer just happened to be dancing around kicking up his dancing shoes, it was two feet in front of Theodore and sent across way too hard. That was the worst play of a horrible Caps performance.
Third, the veterans on this team need to step up. We’ve got Alzer and Lepisto on D (five NHL games between them?) and Sloan with his 15 games as 3 of our 6 defenders. You know what? The Caps have always been suspect on defense and are now even more so – the vets need to get back on D and help out the kids at the risk of foregoing the high-octane offense for a week or so. The offense will be fine, but for right now it can’t overcome the lack of defense, even with Ovechkin trying to do it all.
Lastly, Nylander needs to stop prancing around and shoot the puck. I think everyone’s trying to be a bit fancy out there and I’m calling Nylander out for being especially full of his own stick “skills”.
Players will be back and hopefully we are enduring our entire injury bug in one fell swoop.
How about a crowed in Verizon tomorrow night? How about some defense and hitting.
I’m gonna have to agree about the “prancing,” although it’s definitely not just Nylander. This entire team has a tendency to play way too cute, as Boudreau would say; they need to just shoot the puck. Those last few minutes of the game were great, and we fans know that that’s what a good game is like for the full 60 minutes. It’s really a shame that Green’s and Poti’s true value to the team had to be uncovered in this way…
I was not surprised at the Steckel pass in front of the crease hitting Alzner’s skate. Alzner has done nothing but impress me since being called up, but why with all the minutes he’s been playing are they taking a chance on breaking his confidence by playing him on the PK? Give the man a little time to really feel comfortable in the bigs before dropping him in the box of quicksand. Seeing him look to the ceiling after the puck hit his skate was depressing.
The crowd…1 Where was everybody, that place was pathetic last night. If the fans don’t show up, where does the team get the home rink jump from? 2. I understand that the caps really didn’t show up for a very good part of the game, but still, the boos…they are still the home team and is in a very respectable position in the conference.
All in all, it left much to be desired, but could have been far worse. They will bounce back and maybe this is what they needed to kick start a nice winning streak.
Agreed regarding the boos. With rare exceptions, boos should be reserved for the refs’ bad calls and for the other team.
Mulletman,
I agree on putting too much pressure on the young defensemen but I’m not sure how to get around the ice time during PK or otherwise. With only two Ds healthy from the opening roster there is going to be a requirement for them to be on the ice all game, every game. They’re working hard and doing the best they can but it takes time – look at how much more comfortable Sloan is after only 16 games in the bigs. Until the regulars are back the rest of the team has to be much more cognizant of the situation at the back. I thought Alznar played well but it was almost too much to watch him after that play – he was crushed after getting beat on the first goal and then skating in the second. Even a vet would get down.
I hope everyone’s up-to-speed tonight. They need to play hard from the drop and win a big game.
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