Another 2-1 lead after two periods…
Another 3-2 loss.
The Washington Capitals made it 0-for-2 on their Ontario road trip,
dropping another 3-2 decision, this one to the Toronto Maple Leafs. It was the Leafs’ first home win of the
season in three tries.
It looked good for the visitors early when Jason Chimera pushed the
puck around the end board behind the Leafs’ net to Mike Ribeiro. From goalie James Reimer’s left Ribeiro circled
around defenseman Matt Frattin and angled out in search of a passing lane. He found it, snapping the puck across the
slot to Joel Ward on the left wing side for an open netter that Ward buried.
James van Riemsdyk tied the game seven minutes later on the back end of
what started as a 5-on-3 power play (Jason Chimera getting a double dose of
penalty box time for hooking and yapping), one of eight power play chances the
Leafs would enjoy in the first 34 minutes of the game. That would be how the teams went to the first
intermission, tied at one apiece.
Alex Ovechkin reached into the golden oldies bin to break the tie on
the Caps’ third (and what would be their last) power play of the evening early
in the second period. It was Mike
Ribeiro who made the play though, looking off Nikolai Kulemin as if he was
going to pass the puck to the point. It
opened up a passing lane to Ovechkin at the top of the left wing circle. From there, Ovechkin sent an old-fashioned
wrist shot through Reimer’s five hole for what would be the only score of the
middle period.
The Caps learned nothing from their lost 2-1 lead in Ottawa on Tuesday,
though. Toronto came out flying, pushing
the Caps back on their heels and getting clean shooting lanes on goalie Michal
Neuvirth. The Caps finally cracked,
allowing two goals in the space of 2:13 at the hands of Kulemin and Frattin,
the two Leafs who were victimized by Ribeiro's passing on scoring plays earlier in the
game.
The Caps, having looked gassed for the first half of the period,
applied heavy pressure in the last half of the period, but the damage was
done. When Alex Ovechkin whistled a shot
just wide of the far post with four seconds left, it was over. And if you didn’t DVR it, you can just replay
the Ottawa game…same thing.
Other stuff…
-- In being showered with those eight power play chances in the game’s
first 34 minutes, the Leafs managed to build up what was a 25-3 edge in shots
attempted at one point. As it was, the
Leafs ended the game with an 84-46 edge in total shot attempts (40-22 in shots
on goal).
-- The Caps season so far in a moment… Alex Ovechkin circling behind
the Toronto net once..twice (shoot, he might still be doing it). Other guys were standing around, and he had
his head down. They’re not giving him a
passing option, and he’s not looking for one.
Game over.
-- Toronto had a total of 12:11 in power play ice time in the first
35:58 of the game. More than a third of
the elapsed time is time Ovechkin isn’t going to see the ice. He had less than ten minutes of even strength
ice time in the first two periods.
-- Michal Neuvirth deserved
better…a lot better. He had 37 saves on
40 shots and saved nine of ten on the penalty kill. Look at it this way. He face more even strength shots (27) than
the Caps had in total (22). He had a soft
goal in there – the game-tying goal by Kulemin when he let the original shot
squeak through his pads to the goal line.
But he more than made up for it just on his repeated robberies on Phil
Kessel.
-- And where is Nicklas
Backstrom? In 18 minutes and change, two
shot attempts (none on goal), and he lost 13 of 20 faceoffs (he was 2-for-7 in
the offensive zone). He did have an
assist on the Ovechkin goal, but otherwise it would be hard to remember moment.
-- The Caps were 5-for-21 on offensive zone draws. Backstrom and Ribeiro were a combined
9-for-25.
-- Caps season so far in a moment, part dwux… Marcus Johansson gives up
the puck, they gets turned around in front of Neuvirth, Jeff Schultz is late to
cover Frattin, and Frattin flips it off the pipe and in. A day late and a dollar short.
-- Ovechkin did not have an even strength shot on goal in the game
until there was 2:14 left in the game; it was his only even strength shot on
goal of the game. That’s ok…no Cap had
more than two even strength shots on goal.
-- Ponder this for a moment. In
the year Alex Ovechkin scored 65 goals it represented 27.3 percent of total
number of goals scored by the Caps in 2007-2008. With his fourth goal tonight, Joel Ward has
accounted for 26.7 percent of the Caps’ goals this season. One is a good sign, the other is not.
-- It might surprise you to know that Eric Fehr dressed tonight.
Getting only 4:11 in ice time (and no shifts in the second period), you might
be excused for missing him.
-- John Erskine has had more “Ovechkin”
in him than Ovechkin lately. He had an
even strength goal against Buffalo (Ovechkin does not yet have one), and his
hit on Phil Kessel barely a half minute into this game had a very “Ovechkinesque”
look to it.
-- Look, killing seven of eight shorthanded situations is a good thing,
but if they go short eight times against the Penguins on Sunday, Pittsburgh is
going to challenge double digits in goals. The Leafs power play was and is flat
out awful. The fact that the Caps have
allowed power play goals in six of seven games does not give one a comfortable
feeling heading into the weekend.
-- Early post game comments from the players seem to repeat the word “luck”
a lot, as in “the Caps haven’t had any.”
Bull. If you’re 1-5-1, losing from
Florida to Canada and in-between, when you blow third period leads in
consecutive games, you’re not unlucky, you’re just bad.
In the end, the Caps are looking right down the gun barrel. At 1-5-1 they now get the Pennsylvania teams (Pittsburgh
twice) and a rematch with the Leafs in the next four games. By the time they get to face the almost
equally hapless Florida Panthers on February 9th, the Caps could be
1-9-1. If that comes to pass, their
season is over. They have to turn this
around…right…now.
