Why Boyd?

There is a lot of knashing of teeth this morning about the selection of Boyd Gordon to take the decisive -- and ultimately unsuccessful -- Gimmick shot in last night's 6-5 loss to the Devils.

Fair question.

Viktor Kozlov and Alex Ovechkin had already tried and failed, and the Caps didn't have, say, a Sergei Fedorov available to use his vast store of experience in that situation. Alexander Semin, with his bag of stick-handling tricks, was sitting this one out, too. So...Gordon?

Well, to whom could the Caps turn in that situation?

There was Michael Nylander, who was 11-for-27 in his career in the Gimmick phase of the game, including 1-for-2 this year. But there is the fact that Nylander hasn't had a real goal of his own since the Pittsburgh game on October 16th. Then again, his was the game-winning Gimmick goal against Nashville on October 28th.

There was also the possibility of Brooks Laich, but he was 2-for-10 for his career in this thing and hadn't had a successful attempt since the 2005-2006 season (neither of his successful attempts had been on the road).

Nicklas Backstrom? The kid's been on a roll lately, and he was 1-for-3 in his career attempts.

Gordon was also 1-for-3 in his career attempts, but failed even to get a shot off as Scott Clemmensen guessed right and poke-checked the puck off of Gordon's stick before an attempt could be made.

In retrospect, we suspect Coach Boudreau was playing a hunch of sorts. But all other things considered, we just wish Matt Bradley took things into his own hands one more time.