A one-point night: Devils 2 - Caps 1 (OT)

Too much Marty.

There really isn’t anything else that mattered in the Caps’ 2-1 overtime loss to the New Jersey Devils this afternoon. It was too much Martin Brodeur, who stopped 37 of 38 shots – many of those stops being of the “holy crap, how did he stop that one” variety.

The Caps out-shot, out-chanced, out-hit, out-blocked, out-just-about-everything’ed the Devils. They just didn’t out-score them, and in the end, that’s all that matters. The Devils know how to win those games; the Caps do not yet apparently have that knowledge at this level.

As is often the case this time of year, it was a game of inches – Matt Bradley and Eric Fehr had chances to put the Devils on the ropes early but found nothing but iron on shots that got past Brodeur. Travis Zajac fired a shot through Brent Johnson in the third period that squirted between Johnson’s pads and rolled on edge just past the post. And John Madden found a couple of inches of space under Brent Johnson’s left pad for the game-winner with 50 seconds left in overtime.

Lost in Brodeur’s superb performance was a fine effort by Johnson in the Capitals’ net. Johnson turned away 29 of 31 shots, 21 of which he faced in the third period and overtime.

The Caps played a much better game this afternoon than the one they played yesterday; there was a more consistent effort from top to bottom of the roster. 15 of the 18 skaters registered shots on goal, and the Caps got 18 shots from the players who have to take them – Alex Ovechkin, Alexander Semin, Mike Green, Nicklas Backstrom, and Viktor Kozlov. There was a higher level of feistiness among the Caps as well, as 11 different players were credited with hits – Ovechkin leading with five and Donald Brashear getting four in less than seven minutes of ice time.

The trouble is, again, the Caps aren’t getting much balance in their scoring. Today, it was Semin scoring off assists from Ovechkin and Backstrom (the latter’s 50^th point of the season). Last night, the Alexes had four of the eight points, and Ovechkin figured in each of the goals (primary assists on all three tallies). And, Semin has five of the Caps’ 13 goals in this 1-2-3 six-game stretch of frustration. Other Caps have more or less dried up in the goal-scoring department…

- Nicklas Backstrom has no goals in this six-game stretch (none in his last 17 games)
- Boyd Gordon…none (one goal in his last 20 games)
- Viktor Kozlov…one (that’s one in his last eight games after netting six in nine games)

And the bottom half of the forward lines (Matt Pettinger, Boyd Gordon, Brooks Laich, David Steckel, Quintin Laing, Donald Brashear)…a total of three.

All this makes Alex Ovechkin’s five-game (and counting) goal-scoring drought all the more important.

The defense hasn’t been awful in this stretch…they’ve allowed 18 goals in the six games, but six of those came in the stinker yesterday in Carolina. What the Caps have had with respect to their defense and goaltending lately is an awful sense of timing. Whenever they make a mistake, it ends up in the back of the net…what you might expect at this time of year, though. Today’s split-second moment came when Shaone Morrisonn got turned around on a shot from Patrik Elias that snuck through and hit the post to Johnson’s left. While Morrisonn was looking to find position, John Madden pounced and slid the puck under Johnson for the winner.

That’s not meant to single out Morrisonn for bad play, only a bad moment. Morrisonn logged more than 24 minutes of pretty solid play and led the club with five blocked shots. But that’s the story this time of year…blink, and you lose.

Also part of the Caps story in recent weeks is losing a point here, a point there…since beating Pittsburgh in a shootout on January 21^st, they are 6-6-3. A pair of shootout losses to teams they are fighting with for playoff spots – Atlanta and the Islanders…losses to teams they should have beaten in Toronto and Florida…getting shutout 2-0 at home against the Thrashers, the second goal being an empty-netter. If they’d picked up at least an extra point in each of those games, they would be tied with Carolina tonight with two games in hand. That’s the slow bleeding that can end a season before the 82^nd game.

And despite the fine effort put forth by the Caps this afternoon, another point got away. Someday – perhaps not this year – this team will learn how to gobble up those points instead of frittering them away. But this is the price one pays to young guys to learn. Part of it is learning to win close and win late. The Caps have yet learned those lessons.