A lackluster effort by a hockey club can manifest itself in a wide variety of ways. Losing battles to loose pucks. Consistently crappy passing. Each and every five-man unit generally looking out of sync with one another. Skating seemingly without much of a sense of urgency . . . as in going one-for-nine with the man advantage. The Caps were all this and much more of the morose in a spirit-sapping and thoroughly underwhelming showing Thursday night.
And yet . . . most improbably, most undeservedly, they found themselves in the lead nearing the midpoint of the third period, poised to steal two points they certainly didn’t earn. Such thefts though require solid goaltending to finish off a valiant and more deserving visitor. The Capitals on Thursday night needed Jose Theodore to be brilliant in the first period, and he was. In the third period, holding the lead, they needed him to be merely adequate. He was anything but.
- No reason to be particularly upset with Jose Theodore for Thursday’s result — he showcased precisely what he consistently has over his decade-long career: his inconsistency — brilliant one frame against blazing bullets, bamboozled by changeup wristers the next. To the extent that you harbor some sliver of notion still that a Capitals’ Stanley Cup winning team will have Jose Theodore backstopping it, disabuse yourself of that. He’s a placeholder. He was last year, he is again this.
- Urgency. Teams with a killer instinct, twice awarded a 5-on-3 advantage, make their opponents pay for them. In that wounded prey moment, they form a five-man unit of urgency and frenzy, and they feast. The moment they enter the zone so advantaged they force three defenders onto their heels, into futility, flailing and gasping, looking helpless and pitiful. No Capital in any man-up moment Thursday night — especially during the 5-on-3s — skated as a leader, with confidence and swagger, defying the Rangers to defend his possession of the puck. The Capitals instead skated as individuals while up a man, and that’s a recipe for failure.
- In my rink exit ruminations last night I began second-guessing Bruce Boudreau’s rotation of his blueline personnel through four games this season. The first two games were such gangbuster affairs of feel-good dominance, and I remember wondering this as the Versus broadcast of Tuesday announced new Capitals’ blueliners dressed for the Flyers: Why? Mind you, I didn’t quibble with his specific player changes — I believe as he does that he has eight NHL caliber defenders vying for sweaters on the roster today — but rather wondered why he’d change anything at all at an impressive 2-0. Hockey is a game of momentum, of crests being ridden and tumbled from. You’d have to say that of the first six periods of the new season the Caps’ blueline performed well to very well in five of them. So change it up for period seven? One plausible but still perplexing answer is simply that Gabby is a rotational coach when it comes to personnel. Another rationale: his is an esteemed professional hockey brain while mine is rank amateur.
- It’s perhaps a measure of how good this Capitals’ club can be that a quality Rangers club — and this Rangers club is markedly better than the one the Caps faced last April in the playoffs — can come to D.C., execute a perfect gameplan perfectly, and nonetheless be in a position to lose had JT merely closed his pillows on two middling Blueshirt shots directed at them in the final frame. But promise and press clippings and $2.50 will get you a cup of coffee, right?
- Urgency. What I’d most like to see evolve within this hockey club this season is a Detroit-like ethos, circa 1996-2009, of showing up at the rink night after night, no matter how perceptually inferior the opponent, and skate with a passion-purpose to pummel. That’s what truly special hockey clubs do. I don’t know how many times I expected a Wings’ club the past 10 or 12 years to show up just once in Columbus on a February Tuesday night and mail in a 3-2 nailbiter, only to instead watch them lay down the hammer on the Jackets as if their roster spots depended on it.
I’m not going to close this file filled with grim reflection on a gross Capitals’ effort on a downer. Consider instead some superb effort and dedication taking place by a local traveling girls’ hockey team this weekend up in Alberta. The Washington Pride, our region’s elite, pre-college women’s travel hockey team, is opening conference play this season with a five-game slate today through Sunday in the western Canadian province, but doing so under some notable academic duress. At least half a dozen Pride players are scheduled to take the SATs early Saturday morning, and they’ll do so at the Edge School, a Calgary private school and the weekend hockey host, and then return to the team and resume play in the tourney. During the SAT the Pride will skate with just eight or nine players. Good luck to the test-takers and all the Pride players in their games this weekend.
10 Comments
What has happened to Mike Green? This is not the same player we saw last yr. He looked like Fulton Reed from the Mighty Ducks Movie 1 outta 5 hitting the net. except last night I think it was 1 outta 15. He looks lacksidasical skating with the puck and is now resorting to wrist shots on the regular instead of the slapper that put in 30+ last yr.
“Too cute” A phrase we’ll hear 500 times this season as we did last year. When does it change?
Simply pathetic. The first game OI have been able to attend since they changed jerseys and this is what I get? What an entirely pitiful performance across the board. The Caps have some serious issues they need to deal with. Particularly their defense.
Theodore was below average no doubt, but I found his play adequate compared to a defense that consistently broke down on nearly every occasion. The Rangers out hustled them and out muscled them, while the defense and offense alike gave up break aways and odd-man breaks due to “passing” I can only describe as lazy and offensive to watch.
Get it together guys. Seriously.
Momentum doesn’t mean jack in October when you have 78 games left to play. No matter how stable your team has been, October and November is when you experiment, see what you can do to get better when it counts.
But your point about laying down the hammer every night is absolutely spot on. Whatever personnel are on the ice, should be in John Henry mode.
lackluster. lackadaisacal. and, those are the nice things to be said about last night. the forwards don’t backcheck and the defensemen don’t check (at least most of them). pothier and green have earned ice time. none of the others have. I would experiment w/ clark taking a rotation on the blue line and would sit poti;erskine; shultz; jurcina and morrisson. bring up azner and carlson and anyone else from hershey who appears enthusiastic about playing. also, I felt that laich was far more effective w/ ovie and backstrom than semin if only for the fact that laich will attempt to play some defense. semin appears lost w/o the puck at best and indifferent to it when the other team has it.
maybe the team has become complacent. if so, boudreau needs to send a strong message more than just taking some ice time away – bring up some new people who looked good in camp. it’s early enough in the season to experiment.
There was enough lousy play to go around last night, but is it just me or were Poti and Schultz on the ice for a lot of the bad? (They certainly were for the Rangers last two goals) Poti has frustrated me for a LONG time. You’re an offensive defenseman and you’re only +3 on this team in 08-09. It doesn’t help that we have Alzner and/or Carlson patiently waiting in the AHL, while Caps fans are enduring the same shenanigans that we did last year. I’m not saying that change would be THE solution, but it does seem that I’ve seen this same song and dance before out of our current Dmen. A little shakeup may be in order.
I think the biggest problem that the Caps have is they don’t fear their opponents. I think they think that they can win on talent and skill alone.
And it is true that they are more talented and skilled than almost every other team but that gets them in trouble because teams that are willing to pay the price can beat them with superior efforts and that’s just what the Caps are facing.
The Caps are to every other team the way the Bruins opener was to the Caps.
The Caps better get serious about their opponents and less enamored with themselves if they truely want to take the next step.
When reading the blog OFB
A toast of beers I have got to see.
There is no excuse,
(You may even ask Bruce),
For playing lackadaisically!
I just want to say thank you! Your last bulleted point about “urgency” was spot on. That is what bothers me more than anything about last nights game. It was a shameful display of laziness for most of the game, which is unacceptable. When is this team going to learn that they have to show up every night to play? Because I am getting tired of them “squeaking” out wins when they should be blowing teams out! I am heading to Detroit for the game tomorrow and I am going to be furious if they put on another sleepwalking game!
I think the Caps fall just short of the playoffs this year and then don’t sign Semin, instead taking the draft choices. Long shot bet:
next year’s starting goalie is Michael Neuvirth with Braden Holtby backing him up. Varlamov plays in the KHL. Green traded before draft day. Caps will be a better team without Semin and Green.
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