On Frozen Blog

If only Jim Zorn had this kind of offense.

Coach Boudreau called out his top line of Ovi-Backstrom-Knuble, somewhat, after Tuesday’s Duchesne Cup scrimmage, and on Wednesday the trio apparently got wind of the middling review. The line spent much of Wednesday’s scrimmage toying with the opposition, playing keep-away with the puck and more or less humiliating a largely undefended Semyon Varlamov, to the tune of 9-5.

The ‘A’ces went up 3-0 in a dominant first frame, with tallies from Joel Broda, Kyle Wilson, and Brandon Sugden, the latter Hershey’s designated enforcer this season who cleaned up a rebound off of Broda’s pipe-pinging. (Broda had a strong scrimmage.)

Team ‘B’ briefly made a rally of it in the second stanza, scoring the first two tallies: Patrick McNeill (a nice camp thus far) and Brendan Morrison. But he ‘A’ces went wild thereafter — Wilson and Oskar Osala (a real solid showing from the big Finn on Wednesday) made it 5-2, and the rout was on. Only an Alexander Semin tally to make it 5-3 interrupted a five-goal outburst by the boys in white. The second period ended 8-4, a brutalized Varlamov on the hook for all eight, and each side added a single marker in the final frame for the 9-5 final.

There were again statement performances by talented prospects, but Wednesday was mostly about the organization’s top line looking in mid-season form and thoroughly poor goaltending by the top two netminders (JT surrendered four in the second period). Let’s focus on the positive.

If there were mild doubts about Mike Knuble’s candidacy for skating on a top line with two players each nearly 15 years his junior, Wednesday offered a powerful case that the trio should be kept together for the duration of Knuble’s contract in D.C. And that said contract should perhaps be extended now. These three guys looked as if they’d been skating together for five years instead of five days.

I’m of the opinion that we’ve yet to see Alexander Ovechkin’s best hockey, as gaudy as his already richly decorated young career has been. No, he wasn’t skating against the San Jose Sharks on Wednesday, but I’m not sure it would have mattered. And already in this young training camp Bruce Boudreau is seeing evidence that his first-line center is now blooming toward best-in-the-world kind of pivot. He said this of his young center on Tuesday:

“Nick Backstrom can pass the puck. I mean, he made some passes in his
first scrimmage I went, ‘Wow is he good.’ I mean Alex is Alex, but you
get so impressed watching the subtleties of Nick making a backhand pass in the second period right on Mike’s stick, and it was a backhand pass from inside his feet, which, if you knew how hard a play that is . . . it’s really difficult.”

Mike Knuble won’t match the footspeed of his linemates, but I’m not sure that much matters. We saw a decent bit of good hockey when Viktor Kozlov skated on the right side of the big two, and Mike Knuble is probably a tad quicker than Koz. More importantly — much more importantly — he is also a better overall hockey player than Kozlov. If it can be fairly alleged that the Caps have played the past two seasons with two and two-thirds of top players on their top line, beginning October 1 they will have a full-fledged top line, big talent all the way across, one that won’t be fun to play against.

So the 2009 Duchesne Cup is in the books. Some big-picture impressions from the three scrimmages:

Lines I Loved: