The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!! -- Eastern Conference Quarterfinals Game 2: Rangers at Capitals

The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!

The Washington Capitals try to make it two-for-two at Verizon Center in their series with the New York Rangers when they take the ice at the 12:30 hour Saturday afternoon.

The Caps defeated the Rangers in Game 1 of the series on Thursday, taking advantage of the Rangers’ lack of discrimination in several areas.  Let’s take a look at them…

Discipline

The Rangers took six minor penalties and faced five shorthanded situations totaling 8:33 of ice time.  The five shorthanded situations faced by the Rangers was important.  When getting five or more power plays this season, the Caps had a record of 5-1-3 and were 4-0-0 in such games during April.

The blink of an eye

Three times the Rangers were guilty of losing focus – two obvious and one subtle – and all of them burned the visitors.  Let’s deal with the obvious ones first.  Dan Girardi and Ryan McDonagh can be considered a shutdown defensive pair, unaccustomed to egregious errors and certainly not simply – as a pair, no less – losing track of a player completely.  But that is what happened with the teams tied as the second period ticked under five minutes.  Marcus Johansson is lurking in the weeds at the Ranger blue linenear the penalty box when he starts across the Ranger line to create a passing lane for Steve Oleksy…

McDonagh (on left defense) appears unaware of Johansson’s move to the middle, choosing what in football might be considered “peeking” – what a cornerback does in “peeking” into the pocket to read the quarterback instead of focusing directly on the receiver he is covering.  And just as in football, sometimes “peeking” ends badly, for while McDonagh is peeking down ice at Oleksy, his partner – Girardi – appears to be unaware of Johansson’s whereabouts…

Oleksy now has a passing lane with neither McDonagh nor Girardi in a position to defend either the pass (McDonagh concentrating of the passer and not the revciever, Girardi too far away from the play to intervene)…

Johansson received the pass behind the defense, Girardi and McDonagh now only turning to try to get back into the play…

All McDonagh can do is lunge out at Johansson to try and interfere with his shot, unsuccessfully…

The second obvious instance was the Caps’ third goal, the play on which the Caps scored started in odd fashion.  Mathieu Perreault fended off Anton Stralman and Mats Zuccarello in the Olympia Corner to move the puck out to Jason Chimera.  From the edge of the left wing circle, Chimera works the puck up the blue line with Brad Richards in his path…

Then Richards makes a decision not to engage Chimera, backing off to defend a possible pass to the point.  Meanwhile, Perreault is exiting the corner and heading for the net…

With Richards taking himself out of the play, Chimera turns in the other direction along the wall and, spying Perreault getting into position in front of the crease, sends…what?  A pass to Joel Ward at the left wing hashmarks?  A pass to Perreault for a possible deflection?  These are things that might have been weighing ever so slightly on the mind of Henrik Lundqvist…

Of all the choices he had to defend, Lundqvist appeared to consider a shot from Chimera last on that list in that split second.  He did so at his peril…

Then there was the subtle instance, coming on the Caps’ first goal.  This gets started with the Rangers in what looks like decent position to defend a play from the top of the Rangers’ zone. Ryan Callahan is in Mike Green’s shooting lane as Green winds up for a shot, Derek Stepan looks in good shape to defend Troy Brouwer from the back side…

And as Green fires, Callahan turns into the middle in an effort to block the oncoming shot.  The trouble is, the puck is going wide left, and Callahan has turned the wrong way with the wrong guy to leave by himself on that side – Alex Ovechkin…

The puck sailed wide, hit the end boards, and rebounded back, Ovechkin wide open to collect the puck.  Meanwhile, Callahan, having turned away from the direction in which the puck was shot, is now tied up with Troy Brouwer, and Dan Girardi cannot make his way through the wash in front with Mike Ribeiro there.  Ovechkin has a free shot…

You know how that ended…

Nash Hash

Rick Nash is a gifted goal scorer, but even goal scorers have preferred areas from which to shoot.  Although Rick Nash had eight shots on goal, chances are that he would have preferred not having six of those eight shots coming from between the faceoff dots and the wall or the low edge of the faceoff circles.  He did have two shots from scoring areas, but it was a low yield given his shot volume.  Nash is a scorer who has the gift of reach and quick hands that can be used to great effect to beat defenders in close or one on one.  Neither of those gifts could be used to good effect for much of the evening…

Hot Breath of the Power Play

The New York Rangers do not have an especially efficient power play – 23^rd ranked in the regular season at 15.7 percent.  But in Game 1 New York had the benefit of four power plays on which they recorded eight unsuccessful shots.  Five of those shots came deep within the “home plate” area in which a team would want to find scoring chances.  One cannot think the Caps would want to tempt fate with a repeat of this performance on Saturday afternoon…

In the end...

The Caps were opportunistic in Game 1, taking advantage of momentary lapses on the part of the Rangers.  On the other hand, the Rangers were a more methodical team but could not convert what opportunities they had, particularly on their own power play.  In a sense, that is who these two teams are, the Caps better able to impose their personality in Game 1.  But the margin of error is thin.  If a fine defensive pair does not lose contact with a Cap, and a close in power play shot pinballs of a body, these teams might still be playing in overtime.  There is a long way to go, but for now, “Advantage: Capitals”…

Capitals 3 – Rangers 2

Pictures from screen capture of NBCSports feed
Shot charts from Washingtonpost.com