The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!! -- Caps vs. Coyotes, January 23rd

It’s the day after the day after…

The Caps host the Phoenix Coyotes tonight as they return home from a 6-3 pasting of the Pittsburgh Penguins….

“The letter "P". My favorite letter.”

Oh yeah? Why?

“’Cause of all the great things that begins with the letter "P".
There's puck, points and poke check.
There's power play, periods, passes.
There's Poti and Pettinger…”

(not any more on that last one…)

“…and Pitkanen if you please.
There's Predators, there's Penguins
and Philly we can beat. Puh-puh-puh-puh.
P is my favorite letter,
'Cause all those things are neat.
Puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-puh
puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-puh-puh.”

Puh-leeze…

Today’s representative of the letter “P” is Phoenix, as in the Phoenix Coyotes, a team largely given up for dead, a carcass that was available to be shipped to a town in Canada near you sometime in the near future. It was a team that was considered as much a lock as could be for a lottery draft pick in June.

Well, Coach Dave Tippett and 20 ornery desert dogs had other ideas. The Coyotes sprinted out of the gate with a 9-4-0 October. After stumbling a bit through a 6-7-1 November, they got back on their feet and finished December with a 10-2-3 record for the month. You could say that their 4-4-1 record in January might be a signal that they are returning to earth, but it isn’t as if the four regulation losses have come against stiffs – Detroit, Vancouver, San Jose, and Buffalo. And they beat New Jersey and the surprising Nashville Predators for good measure.

If there is a parallel, performance-wise, that Caps fans might want to consider, it would not come from hockey, but baseball. Are these Coyotes, coached by a veteran player and coach, populated by a collection of youngsters (Peter Mueller, Martin Hanzal, Keith Yandle), vets approaching the tail end of their tours (Robert Lang, Adrian Aucoin), and reliable workhorses (Shane Doan, Ed Jovanovski) the real deal? Or are they the NHL equivalent to the 2005 version of the Washington Nationals – a somewhat undermanned, unheralded team that got off fast (19 games over .500 in July 2005) only to crash and burn in the second half of the year?

From the overall numbers, it’s hard to think of the Coyotes as a team really built for the long haul this year…



Those numbers are fair, but the Coyotes are certainly a team than plays very close to the margin – they have the fourth best winning percentage in one-goal games (.625 on a record of 15-4-5). Here is an ominous indicator… in games in which the Coyotes allow more than two goals in regulation time, their record is 5-14-1. That places quite a burden on their goaltending and defense.

Fortunately for Phoenix, Ilya Bryzgalov has been up to the challenge so far in goal. “Bryz” is tied for fourth in the league in wins (26), ninth in GAA (2.31, including goalies playing at least half their team’s games), is tied for ninth in save percentage (.919), and is tied for second in shutouts (five). But here, too, things might be taking an ominous turn for Phoenix. In January, Bryzgalov is 4-3-0, 3.91, .882, and he has allowed fewer than three goals only once (in a 4-2 win over Nashville on Thursday). The Caps are the only club in the NHL Bryzgalov has not yet faced in his career.

Working our way out, the Coyotes benefit from having three defensemen who have at least 20 points this season – Ed Jovanovski, Keith Yandle, and Adrian Aucoin. Jovanovski and Aucoin might be rather well known to Caps fans (49 games against the Caps between them); Yandle, not so much. A fourth round pick in the 2005 draft, Yandle’ s improvement has been of the slow and steady sort. He had seven games with the ‘Yotes in 2006-2007 to get his feet wet, then split time more evenly between Phoenix and the San Antonio Rampage of the AHL the following year (43 games with Phoenix, 5-7-12, minus-12). He stuck for good last year, getting 69 games of work (4-26-30, minus-4). He’s played in all 51 games to date this season and already has set a career high in goals (six). With 24 points so far, he seems a good bet to set a points mark for his career as well, surpassing last year’s total of 30. In nine games in January he is 0-5-5, even.

Zbynek Michalek is another defenseman that Caps fans might not recognize straight off. Michalek leads the defense in plus-minus so far (plus-9), but it is worth noting that he had a brutal game last Monday, going minus-5 in a 7-2 loss to Buffalo.

Phoenix does not bring the firepower to the show that the Caps possess, but what they do have is balance. 15 skaters are in double digits in points, led by right wing Shane Doan (14-20-34), now in his 14th season in the desert. If you were to call Central Casting and order up a “hockey player,” you would probably get a guy like Doan. He has been tough and durable… missing only 25 games over the past 10 and a half seasons. He’s been consistent… nine straight years of 20 or more goals coming into this year, eight years in that span getting 50 or more points (49 in the other). He’s been clutch… 41 game-winning goals in the last nine and a half seasons. He’s been faithful… spending all 1,048 games (regular season and playoffs) of his career with one organization. He is 4-4-8 in nine games in January; in 17 career games against the Caps he is 3-6-9.

While Doan – “Mr. Coyote,” if you will – leads Phoenix in scoring, the top spot in goal scoring is occupied by Scottie Upshall, now on his third team (Nashville and Philadelphia being his other stops). Obtained from Philadelphia for Daniel Carcillo last March, this is Upshall’s first full year in Phoenix, and it appears to be to his liking. He potted eight goals in 19 games to close the season last year, and the 17 goals he has in 46 games this year puts him on a pace (28) that would double his career high – 14 with the Flyers in 2007-2008. As if to emphasize the point going into tonight’s game, Upshall had a hat trick his last time out, the 4-2 win over Nashville on Thursday. What he doesn’t have is a career goal against the Caps; he is 0-1-1 in eight games.

The Peerless’ Players to Ponder:

Phoenix: Sami Lepisto

When last seen in these parts, the former third round pick of the Capitals was on the ice for all three goals in a 3-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes on December 7, 2008. It was the last game in a seven-game call-up from Hershey in which Lepisto went 0-4-4, minus-3 (three of the assists coming on power plays). Although he had only 14 career games with the Caps, he was caught in a numbers game here with several defensemen passing or projected to pass him on the depth chart. He also had the faint look of a player who might dominate at the AHL level (he was plus-53 in 125 games at Hershey over two years), but who might lack the size, strength, or skill to make it in the NHL. Well, he’s carved out a niche for himself so far in Phoenix—0-7-7, minus-1 in 43 games, getting almost 18 minutes of ice time a night. Something to watch for… he’s still looking for his first NHL goal. He might be excused for wanting to break that schneid against his former team in their rink.

Washington: Brooks Laich

Phoenix is likely to play this one as close to the vest as is possible, lacking as they do the firepower to run with the Capitals. It is likely to be a slog, and that is where a player such as Laich comes in. He had two goals against the Flyers last week to give indications he was coming out of his goal-scoring slump. And, he’s had some success in limited action against Phoenix (1-2-3 in three games). He had a power play goal in the teams’ only meeting last season, a 2-1 win for the Caps in Phoenix on October 23, 2008.

Keys:

1. Don’t take dictation, give dictation. The Caps might be ripe for an off-game here after their 6-3 win over the Penguins on Thursday. Watch for whether the Caps dictate pace. If they come out lethargic, it plays into the low-scoring, more deliberate sort of game the Coyotes might prefer. Which leads to…

2. Get the first goal! Look at that record the Coyotes have when scoring first – 23-2-2. When you consider that the Coyotes have 29 wins, it might be safe to say that this is going to be important, even if the Caps do lead the league in winning percentage when allowing the first goal.

3. 1-2-3-score. The Caps have been getting production out of each of their top three lines lately. Against Pittsburgh, the Ovechkin-Backstrom-Knuble line went 4-2-6, the Semin-Fleischmann-Laich line went 1-2-3, the Chimera-Morrison-Fehr line went 1-2-3. It’s one reason that the Caps have scored at least four goals in eight of their last nine games (45 total goals in those games, a 5.0 average).

In the end, this is a matter of which style of game gets played. If the Caps don’t suffer a letdown from Thursday’s win and play at a high tempo, they win. Phoenix doesn’t have the skill or depth to deal with that. If, on the other hand, this becomes a game played zone-to-zone, where Phoenix can play a more structured game and take advantage of mistakes, impatience, or lackadaisical play on the part of the Caps, Phoenix could pull out a low-scoring sort of game. The Caps have been on a roll this month – 45 goals in their last nine games, an 8-1-0 record, and they passed three important tests this week. Tonight’s test is to see if they can avoid the letdown…

Caps 4 – Coyotes 2

Sittin' at the End of the Bar

Thinking about last night’s game…

-- There is a widely-accepted narrative that the Caps lack the defense and goaltending to go deep into the playoffs. The Caps are currently allowing 2.78 goals per game. Last year’s Stanley Cup champions? 2.84 for the season.

-- But in those numbers is a caution in the form of a question… “do you get it?” After the Penguins made a coaching change in mid-February, they averaged 2.40 goals/game allowed for the remainder of the regular season. The light went on over their collective heads – “tighten up.” They got it.

-- Of the teams that took the ice at Mellon Arena last night, the one that should perhaps be concerned about its defense at the moment might not be the Caps. Since the beginning of December, the Penguins have allowed 3.00 goals per game (24 games), the Caps 2.74 (23 games). Perhaps more ominously, four times since January 1st (covering 11 games) the Penguins have allowed at least six goals, and they have four losses by at least three goals this month.

-- On the other hand… the Caps have allowed opponents two or fewer goals 13 times in 23 games since the beginning of December, six times in ten games this month.

-- Jose Theodore has allowed more than three goals in a game once in his last 14 appearances. Three-or-more? Not lately.

-- Top-six defensemen… Sergei Gonchar, Mark Eaton, Jay McKee, Brooks Orpik, Kris Letang, Alex Goligoski. Or… Mike Green, Jeff Schultz, Tom Poti, Shaone Morrisonn, Brian Pothier, John Erskine (we did not include Karl Alzner here because of fewer games played than Erskine). Advantage, who? Whatever your opinion, both teams are going to be looking to shore up their blue line.

-- There is another narrative out there that says that a team relying on so much offense such as the Caps can’t win the Cup. Well, this might not be your average season. The Caps are currently first in the NHL in offense, scoring 3.74 goals per game. San Jose is second with 3.25 goals per game, a 0.49 goal per game advantage for the Caps. The last time a team had a greater than half-a-goal per game higher scoring average than the next highest team was in the 1993-1994 season, when Detroit scored 356 goals in 84 games (4.24/game) to 306 for New Jersey (3.64/game). Detroit lost in the first round of the playoffs that year, ironically perhaps to this era’s early exit specialists, the San Jose Sharks. OK, maybe there is something to that narrative.

-- Last night, the Penguins skated without Marc-Andre Fleury, Pascal Dupuis, Chris Kunitz, and Maxime Talbot. The Caps skated without Mike Green, Brian Pothier, and Semyon Varlamov, and they iced two defensemen (Karl Alzner and John Carlson) with a combined 50 games of NHL experience. Who had the worst of it? Fleury’s absence is probably the trump card here, but not by a lot.

-- Sidney Crosby lost 20 of 30 draws last night. How bad was the abuse? Well, he came into the game having won at least half of his draws in 14 of his previous 15 games, and the 33.3 percent winning percentage was his worst for a game this season.

-- OK, the Caps have now beaten in succession: a) the team that eliminated them from the playoffs two years ago, b) the team that played in the last two Stanley Cup finals, and c) the team that won last year’s Cup and eliminated the Caps on their way there, scoring 14 goals in the three games, giving up eight. All in all, a good week.

A TWO-point night: Caps 6 - Penguins 3

Capitals 6 – Penguins 3

OK, so what does it mean? It means that Caps Nation is feeling really good with itself tonight. The beer tastes a little better, the air smells a little fresher, and the sun shines a little brighter.

For two teams that possess high end skill sets, this was as dominating as it gets in the regular season. It is the third time in the last four regular season games that the Caps have skated off from a contest with the Penguins with a three-goal win, twice on Mellon Arena ice.

And although the story line will probably emphasize that Alex Ovechkin outdueled Sidney Crosby on this night, the story was that the Caps employed a balanced attack and smart play late to secure the win. Balance, you say? Well, if 11 players getting points is balance, the Caps had balanced scoring.

On the other hand, the Penguins were essentially a one-line team tonight. Sidney Crosby got a gift goal when Jose Theodore tried to play the puck and lost it in his skates, but other than that was largely a non-entity – the goal, minus-1, 33 percent on 30 (30?!) draws. It was Ruslan Fedotenko (who should have had the third star of the game), Evgeni Malkin (who was named the third star), and… well, not much else. Those two assisted on all three Penguin goals. The Pens got points from only three other players – the goal scorers (Crosby, Kris Letang, and Nick Johnson, getting his first NHL goal in his first NHL game).

Other stuff…

-- Shaone Morrisonn recorded his first multi-point game (two assists) since March 19, 2009 – two assists in a 5-2 win over Tampa Bay. Add to that he was a plus-3, had two blocked shots, two hits, and no turnovers, and he had a nice night in 20 minutes of ice time.

-- Power play… two opportunities, two shots, two goals, a total of 1:03. You’ll see a lot of games before you see that kind of efficiency on the power play.

-- On the other side of that equation, holding Sidney Crosby without a shot on four power plays speaks to a fine penalty killing effort – the Pens were 0-for-4.

-- We said that if the Caps allowed something north of 35 shots on goal, it probably wouldn’t end well for the Caps. Jose Theodore, thanks for proving us wrong. Theodore saved 35 of 38 shots, and if you discount the odd circumstances surrounding the first Penguin goal, he had a whale of a night… again.

-- The Penguins outhit the Caps, 41-24? Home-town scoring, that.

-- Like that pass from Alexander Semin to spring Tomas Fleischmann in alone on Brent Johnson for a goal?

-- What’s with Evgeni Malkin? Yeah, he had three assists, but he looked like he was skating at 75-percent speed. We don’t see Malkin enough to think this is a pattern, but he didn’t look nearly ready for this game tonight.

-- The Caps were credited with five turnovers (three giveaways, two Penguin takeaways). That, kids, is an obscenely low number. Local scoring?

-- Brendan Morrrison… eight up and none down in the circle, an assist, and a couple of hits (I think Mario Lemieux was credited with three hits tonight).

-- Matt Bradley was the only Cap forward not to be credited with a shot tonight.

-- Tyler Sloan, John Carlson, and Karl Alzner – a combined total of 106 games of NHL experience – acquitted themselves pretty well. Alzner was the only one of that trio to be on the ice for any Pengins goals (he was on for two).

-- Alex Ovechkin came to play; he led all players in goals (two), shots (eight), shot attempts (12), hits (seven), tied for the most points (three), was plus-2 (to extend his league lead).

-- Eric Godard… one shift. One freakin’ shift? Why bother dressing him?

-- Four goals in 23 minutes after the Pens took a 3-2 lead, the first three of them coming in six minutes of running game time. Yes, the Caps can be fairly described as “explosive.”

-- At 32-12-6, this is the fastest the Caps have ever gotten to 20 games over .500 (50 games). They are on a 115-point pace.

-- This was only the 19th time in 50 games that the Caps surrendered the first goal, but they are now 11-6-2 when they do. The Caps are the only team in the NHL with a winning record when giving up the first goal.

-- Jose Theodore has now won his last five decisions. He is within one of his longest winning streak as a Cap – six wins from December 23 – January 6 in the 2008-2009 season.

-- In those five decisions, Theodore has saved 152 of 161 shots (.944).

OK, it’s always satisfying to see the Caps beat the Penguins. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There are three more regular season games and perhaps a playoff series to work through with that team. But this was nice. The Caps took a punch in the nose early on an odd play, came back, then came back again after the Penguins took their second lead of the game. Even if this was a game where neither team fielded its best complement of players (the Pens missing Marc-Andre Fleury and Chris Kunitz; the Caps missing Mike Green and, if you think he’s the number one goalie at the moment, Semyon Varlamov), the Cap showed that at the very least, these teams are more or less equal. In fact, the Caps looked to have more and deeper firepower than the Penguins, who looked very ordinary at forward past Crosby and Malkin, and looked a bit overmatched on their blue line.

The Caps now have the longest active winning streak in the league (five games, tied with Ottawa) as they head home to host Phoenix. That game will take care of itself. For now, enjoy this one. You earned it, boys.

The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR - Caps vs. Penguins, January 21st

The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!

In case you haven’t heard, the Caps and Penguins are playing tonight. Except for the execs at NBC, this is now the must-see matchup in the NHL, and this is the first of four such meetings this season. The matchup is like the latest installment of a movie franchise that stars…

“Hey, babe. I have a movie idea for you.”

Let me guess, you’re in movies.

“Oh, sure, sure… you ever hear of ‘Par Wars?’”

Star Wars?

“Par Wars… about a race of furry little creatures that tend golf courses on the grassy moon of Avenel?”

Uh, no…but about this movie?

“Uh, yeah… well in the future the corporation is mining this ice moon in a star system far, far away…"

Sounds familiar…

“And this moon in inhabited by these creatures that kinda look like humans, but they’re not… sort like…”

Cats?

“Right!...Cats, only bigger, stronger and faster, with feet that look like they have blades on the bottoms so they can get around on this ice moon.”

I kinda see where this is going…

“…and the atmosphere will kill humans, so to work on the moon, they have to grow these bodies that look like the ones on the moon, see, and then they get linked up mentally with a human that operates them remotely.”

Isn’t this movie out already?

“No, no, no. This one’s completely different.”

Uh-huh… and what are you calling this movie?

O V I T A R

Yeah, completely different.

But back to the business at hand. The Caps and the Penguins come into tonight’s game comfortably on course to reach the playoffs and perhaps meet again in the second round again, given their respective place in the standings and assuming all the higher seed win in the first round.

As you would expect of two teams that are often compared and that resemble one another in many ways, their performances this year mirror one another in many respects. The overall numbers look like this:

Both teams are playing well recently, too…

-- The Caps are 7-1-0- in their last eight games, the Penguins are 5-3-0.
-- The Caps have 39 goals in their last eight games, the Penguins 31
-- The Caps have converted nine of 25 power play chances (36.0 percent), the Penguins eight of 33 (24.2%, but four of those goals came in their last game)

They have even struggled in the same thing – penalty killing. The Caps are 28-for-37 (75.7%), the Penguins 22-for-29 (75.9%).

The similarities even extend to the nature of their important injuries, too. Caps goalie Semyon Varlamov has been out for the last nine games with groin and knee injuries, while Marc-Andre Fleury has missed the last two contests with a broken finger on his glove hand.

So with Fleury ailing, Chris Kunitz out (abdominal surgery), and a few other aches and pains down the roster – Maxime Talbot, Brooks Orpik, Pascal Dupuis, and Brent Johnson among them – the Penguins are ripe for the taking, right?

Well, they still have Sidney Crosby (8-6-14 in this 5-3-0 run for the Penguins) and Evgeni Malkin (4-5-9), so they’re not too bad off. And it isn’t as if the Penguins are entirely a two-man show. Bill Guerin is still productive at age 39. He is the Penguins’ third-leading scorer overall (16-19-35) and is 3-3-6 in the last eight games for the Penguins. He is tied for second on the club in power play goals (eight) and is tied for first in game-winning goals (four). He is even getting mellow with age. His 28 penalty minutes puts him on a pace to finish with the lowest total (45 PIM) of his career (previously 63, in his rookie year). In 48 career games against the Caps he is 24-13-37.

Jordan Staal has grown into a top-notch third-line center. He is currently fourth on the team in scoring (13-21-34), leads the team in plus/minus (plus-14), and leads the team in penalty killing ice time per game. He comes into this game with a pair of goals and six assists in the over the past eight games, and he is a plus-6 to boot. He is 3-1-4 in 12 career games against the Caps, although he was scoreless in four regular season games against Washington last year (ok, he was also 2-2-4 in the second round playoff series, all of it coming in the last four games of the seven game series).

Pittsburgh gets considerable scoring support from its blue line, too. Nine defensemen have registered points this year, six of them also having scored goals. Five defensemen have at least 10 points. Two of those defensemen are particularly important for the Penguins, both for what they are contributing this season and what they mean to the club’s future. Kris Letang and Alex Goligoski are the youngest of the nine defensemen having dressed for the Penguins this year. Combined they have fewer than 300 regular season games of NHL experience but already fill important roles. Goligoski is second among defensemen in scoring (6-17-23), while Letang is third (2-14-16). They have also contributed a combined 13 points on the power play and are a combined plus-10 for the season. Letang is 0-2-2 in six career regular season games against the Caps, while Goligoski has a goal in two games against Washington.

In goal, it’s pot luck. Marc-Andre Fleury has the broken finger. Brent Johnson had a lower body injury, although he did return to play against the Islanders in a 6-4-win. It is worth noting that the Islanders scored all four goals in the last 29 minutes of that game. A product of the Penguins already having a 3-0 lead when the scoring began? Or a product of his fading as a product of his injury? He did, however, hold the Islanders off the scoreboard in the last 12 minutes after they tied the game. Fleury is 8-3-0, 2.90 in 11 career games against the Caps, while Johnson is unbeaten against the Caps in his career – 4-0-0, 1.15.

If these two are unable to go (or last 60 minutes), perhaps John Curry will see action. Curry has been in one game this year, lasting less than 25 minutes in a 6-2 loss to Vancouver in which he allowed five goals on 14 shots.

The Peerless’ Players to Ponder

Pittsburgh: Sergei Gonchar

Pittsburgh has had a rough time on the power play this year. It is one of life’s great mysteries that a club employing Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin could rank 26th on the power play. One reason might be this – Gonchar has missed 16 games this year. Still, he has had a hand in 16 of the 34 power play goals the Penguins have scored this season.

Washington: Mike Green

Green has never scored a goal against the Penguins, regular season or playoffs. But that’s not why he is a player to ponder here. In last year’s playoff series against the Penguins, Green was harassed constantly by Penguin forwards on the forecheck. It played a role in the Penguins’ ability to hammer the Caps with shots on goal. He should expect to suffer similar abuse tonight to the extent the Penguins can apply it. If he handles it well, the ice gets tilted more in the Caps’ favor, and the Caps are the superior offensive team.

Keys:

1. I think I can, I think I can. Sometimes, and maybe this is just a fan’s view, one gets the feeling that the Caps aren’t 100 percent convinced that they are on the same competitive level with the Penguins. Even despite the 3-0-1 record last year, there just always seems to be that sliver of doubt. Uh, guys? You can do this.

2. By now, you are what you are. You might think this refers to the 26th-place ranking the Penguins have on the power play. Well, not exactly. What the Penguins are is a lot better on the power play with Sergei Gonchar in the lineup, and they are tied for ninth in the league in home power play conversions. Don’t let numbers fool you – this is a fine power play when playing in The Igloo. Keep it in mind.

3. Ready (fire), aim (fire), fire (again). In last spring’s playoff series the Penguins averaged almost 37 shots a game against Washington. It wasn’t a surplus of skill or talent that enabled Pittsburgh to win, it was the result of unrelenting shot pressure that finally caused the Caps – and their young goalie Semyon Varlamov – to crack. If the Penguins go north of 35 shots on goal tonight, it likely isn’t going to end well for the Caps.

In the end, the Penguins are – and will remain – the standard to which the Caps are compared, at least until the Caps win a Cup of their own (and then maybe the Penguins will be compared to the Caps – it is not a subtle difference). Sure, this is Ovechkin/Crosby, Part 134, or whatever it is. It’s Caps/Penguins, with all the emotional baggage that gets carried around (primarily by Caps fans). But the real competition is yet to come, probably in May. This one is more for bar talk and bragging rights than it is for benchmarking. Still…

Caps 5 – Penguins 3

Do we all feel better now?

OK, then it’s time to move on. Sometimes, I think to myself that if there is a fan base with lower (at times, folks...only at times) self-esteem than those of the Washington Capitals, someone needs to point them out, because we’re not aware of them.

Your Ol’ Uncle Peerless is now going to give you folks in Caps Nation one of those lectures that you roll your eyes at, the one that starts, “now in my day…”

Now in my day, back when we had a hockey team in these parts that won a few games, but suffered the burden of no one in the media paying attention (those being the days before the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, message boards, texting, sports talk radio, and indoor plumbing), we just took comfort in the fact that sooner or later (usually sooner, because we had this thing called the “Patrick Division”), the Flyers, the Rangers, the Islanders, or the Penguins might be coming to town (the Devils being at the time, as Wayne Gretzky famously called them, a “Mickey Mouse operation”), and we Caps fans could take out our frustration at the lack of media attention by heaping grief on those teams and their fans in other sweaters who showed up at the Capital Centre.

We didn’t much care that the Washington Post had “only” the legendary Bob Fachet (and pretty much just Bob Fachet) writing about the Caps, that Dave Fay really wasn’t yet the legendary “Dave Fay” (the Times just getting started at the time), or that there was only the infrequent 45-second segment on a local TV news outlet. Hey, so what – just give us the damned hockey!

But now, Caps Nation gets all in a dither over whether local radio pays enough attention to the exploits of the warriors on ice, whether the local papers devote enough column inches to chronicling the Caps, whether this columnist or that is properly respectful of the game and those who follow it, whether TV has enough “film at 11” of the Caps.

To all that, your Ol’ Uncle Peerless has two words…

WHO CARES?

C’mon folks, really – does it matter to you that the Washington Post doesn’t have more writers, more columns, more stories devoted to the Caps? Does it matter to you that Andy Pollin or Steve Czaban or Chad Dukes doesn’t devote more of every broadcasting hour on local radio to Caps features? Does it matter to you that Channels 4, 5, 7, and 9 devote a grand total of two minutes of air time combined to Caps news a week on their late night news? Does it matter that Mike Wise or Mike Wilbon devote more column space to basketball players who don’t even play in this time zone than they do to Caps hockey players who play a few blocks from their office?

WHO CARES??

Folks, we have a hockey team. Las Vegas doesn’t. Kansas City doesn’t. Hamilton doesn’t. Hartford doesn’t. Raleigh doesn’t (ok, that was a cheap shot). In fact we have a fine hockey team, an elite team, a team that could very well have a parade in these parts come the middle of June. They are entertaining, too. We fill the arena every night, a sea of red. And it’s loud… good heavens, it’s loud. I walked out of that game against the Red Wings last night, and it wasn’t until I stepped off the train out in Virginia that the ringing had stopped in my ears. And you’re in a snit that so-and-so doesn’t pay enough attention to the Caps?

WHO CARES???

YOU are paying attention. YOU are enthralled. YOU are schlepping to the arena every night in red jerseys, red paint, red costumes, and astronaut outfits. YOU are blowing horns, ringing cowbells, chanting “LET’S GO CAPS.”

And I don’t think for a moment that this kind of devotion is lost on the coaches or players. It’s not like it was three or four years ago, when you could probably carry on a conversation with the person (and there might have been only one) across the rink from you in the balcony at Verizon Center while the game was in progress. And while the boys were working hard on the ice, it couldn’t have been terribly inspiring to them to see thousands of empty seats. YOU are that seventh man on the ice now. And you’re going to be insulted, frustrated, dispirited over TV sports segments devoting time to drag racing instead of the Caps?

WHO CARES????

You have hockey. You have a team that wins and looks good doing it. You get to spend 41 nights a year in a sold out, ear-splitting funhouse that other teams can’t look forward to playing in. Then, you get playoffs!

The folks who do the pound the beat doing the covering – the Tarik El-Bashir’s, the Lisa Hillary’s, the Corey Masisak’s, the folks who are lonely islands of Caps reporting – we don’t have any problem with these fine folks. They do great work (maybe they just don’t get to do enough of it, or they don’t get enough support doing it). But if the folks who decide where to have their reporters spend their time and attention in covering local teams don’t get it, then who cares? If those who write opinion columns (as opposed to fact reporting) choose to write about basketball or baseball or soccer or NASCAR or the most recent firearms expo on 7th Street or whether the Large Hadron Collider will ever work, instead of the Caps, then who cares?

WE GOT HOCKEY!!! And we have a lot of people -- bloggers, fans, even some of those media folks -- who do spend countless hours covering and chronicling the Caps because they want to. We have us, so to speak. While it’s hard to replace nuts-and-bolts reporting from journalism professionals who might not get all the opportunities they (or we) would want to cover the Caps, Caps fans really don’t lack for written, spoken, or visual reporting of the comings and goings of the Washington Capitals.

And that’s quite enough for your Ol’ Uncle Peerless.

Now…go eat your vegetables.

A TWO-point night: Caps 3 - Red Wings 2

Can you give all three stars to one guy?

Well, even if you can’t, no star in this game shined more brightly than Jose Theodore, who almost single-handedly pilfered a 3-2 win over the Detroit Red Wings tonight that the Caps, frankly, had no business winning.

For you Caps fans unfamiliar with the practice, that’s called “a goaltender stealing a game.”

Theodore stopped 44 of 46 shots – too many of them quality chances – and gave the Caps a chance to win late, which they did when David Steckel scored the game-winning goal with 5:59 to play.

Caps fans might be forgiven if they looked upon what unfolded in the first period and thought, “we’re gonna get beat so bad…” Why?

-- The Red Wings outshot the Caps 13-0 in the first 14:26.
-- The Red Wings out-attempted the Caps 22-7 in that first 14:26.
-- If there was a time-of-possession clock in that first 14:26, the Caps might not have registered a digit in the “minutes” column.

It bordered on embarrassing. More ominously, it conjured images of last spring’s Eastern Conference semifinal playoff series, when the Caps spent minutes at a time chasing the Pittsburgh Penguins around in their own zone.

But Theodore did what a goaltender sometimes has to do – he held the fort while the Caps were busy trying to find their legs. Trouble is, it took the Caps most of the game… well, no, they never really did find their legs, not when the other guys get 46 shots on goal in 60 minutes and out-attempt you for the game by an 83-54 margin. The Red Wings had more of their shots blocked (25) than the Caps had on goal (23).

The Caps could thank two things (other than Theodore) for this win. First, the Wings lack finishers. That’s an odd thing to say about a team with Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, and a host of other names any casual fan would recognize. But the Wings missed at least a half-dozen chances to stick a fork in the Caps. As brilliant as Theodore was, there are going to be openings when 83 shots are launched on goal, and the Wings missed just about every one of those opportunities to swat in a rebound or bury a loose puck.

Second, Chris Osgood was at the other end. This being a regular season game, Osgood might not be expected to be sharp (he seems now a playoff goalie only, which is probably fine if you’re the Red Wings), and his being out of action except for a few scant minutes since December 20th didn’t help him find his edge. Still, Osgood was not sharp, except the Caps weren’t testing him nearly enough. The first goal – scored on a fine drive to the net by Matt Bradley when Jonathan Ericsson was woefully late to pick up what Bradley was doing, was not Osgood’s problem. But the second goal, scored when Nicklas Backstrom stepped around Brad Stuart as if he was a pylon and snapped it in, should have been stopped (Osgood looked as if he was late anticipating the shot and never got set to defend it as the puck was sliding through his pads). The third goal was scored when Osgood couldn’t react fast enough to a puck that changed direction enough to find David Steckel’s stick, and the soft backhand Steckel chipped toward the goal beat Osgood past his blocker.

Other stuff…

-- Alex Ovechkin: no shots on goal. Call CNN! Not only was that the first time that happened this year, it is the first time it happened since October 8, 2007, when Ovechkin had no shots on goal in a 2-1 win over the Islanders.

-- If a Gordie Howe Hat Trick is a goal, and assist, and a fight, then what do you call a 44 saves, an assist, and a hard hat? Whatever you want to call it, Jose Theodore earned it.

-- On that Bradley goal, nice recognition by Mike Green at his own blue line to find the Red Wings on a line change. His long diagonal pass to Boyd Gordon at the other blue line got the play started.

-- We hate to say it, but Tyler Sloan looked badly overmatched tonight. We were scratching our head as to why he was out there against the Datsyuk-Zetterberg duo.

-- Of course, a lot of Caps looked badly overmatched at times. There were stark differences on display between the clubs, especially in terms of how they handled the puck in their own end. It seemed as if every single Red Wing pass had a purpose. Every puck was put on a teammate’s tape. The Caps? Uh, not so much. The result was that the Wings moved the puck out of their end smartly, and the Caps left loose pucks lying around that the Red Wings could gobble up to maintain possession in the Caps’ end.

-- Top line: six shots. Second line: five. Third line: three shots. Fourth line: four shots. Defense: five shots. Hard to generate offense out of that.

-- The Caps had four power plays and 6:35 of ice time with the man advantage. Total shots on goal: one (Nicklas Backstrom’s goal).

-- The Caps have 31 wins this year; this was only the fifth in regulation when they scored three or fewer goals.

-- It is probably worth noting that Brendan Morrison registered only five seconds more of ice time (11:56) than did Matt Bradley (11:51). It was his second shortest tour of the sheet this year.

-- It’s sort of difficult to generate offense off set plays when: a) you get only 12 offensive zone draws, and b) you lose eight of them.

-- Every Red Wing skater except Jonathan Ericsson registered at least one shot on goal.

-- Valteri Filppula had more shots blocked (five) than any Cap had on goal (Backstrom: four).

-- Darren Helm really does have a knack for putting defenders back on their heels. The guy can flat out fly. Nicklas Lidstrom and Brian Rafalski shined in the defensive end, but Helm was the best player for the Wings at the other end of the ice. Unfortunately, though, that is not generally something that Wings fans are going to want to see – not with Datsyuk and Zetterberg both skating more than 20 minutes.

Let’s face it, the Caps were the second-best team on the ice tonight. But teams that have big aspirations are going to find themselves in that situation from time to time. The trick is to find a way. Tonight, the Caps cobbled together a win from great goaltending and a couple of opportunistic plays that took advantage of a goalie at the other end who wasn’t as sharp as their own. In terms of teams with an ability to finish, though, the Caps step up in weight class on Thursday against the Penguins, who got a six-point night out of Sidney Crosby this evening as a warm up for the clubs’ first meeting.

The fun week continues.

The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!! -- Caps vs. Red Wings, January 19th

The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!

The Caps go for four-in-a-row this evening as the Detroit Red Wings come to town. And these are not your father’s (or even your last year’s) Red Wings. The wearers of the winged wheel have spent the first 48 games of the year stumbling about, much like the city they represent…

“Oh, so it’s ‘pile on Detroit day here, is it?”

It’d be the only piling on a Detroiter sees this year – we’ve seen the Lions play.

“Yeah, yeah… the Lions suck. Hey, here’s a bulletin… we know.”

Do you know that the Tigers (86-77 for 2009) and the Pistons (31-53 for calendar year 2009) suck, too?

“Hey, it’s not like the Nats or the Wizards have been vaccinated against ‘suckitis.’”

Or the Redskins.

“Or the Redskins.”

You can’t even lean on the Wolverines this year…5-7 this year after a 3-9 record last year.

“And how did those Terps do in football this year?”

Hey, at least the Terps have a basketball team that did good things last year…

“Uh…you heard of Michigan State, national finalist, four final fours in the decade?”

Well, we have a soccer team!

“…and?”

OK, but tell me, how do you know so much about Washington sports?

“Oh, I was born in Detroit and moved here.”

Uh-huh…

Michigan hasn’t had the best of times lately, and the Red Wings losing in the Stanley Cup finals last year probably didn’t help things, at least from a morale standpoint. But this year’s version of the Wings is a bit hard to figure out. They have had injuries (only three players have dressed for all 48 games the Red Wings have played thus far, and only 12 players have dressed for as many as 40 games).

Perhaps as a result of the injuries to such critical elements as Johan Franzen (45 games missed), Niklas Kronwall (27 games), Jason Williams (33 games), Valteri Filppula (26 games), Henrik Zetterberg (eight games), and Jonathan Ericsson (12 games), the Red Wings find themselves on the outside looking in at the playoff picture. What is most stunning about their performance to date is the utter collapse of their offense. Last year, the Red Wings finished the year averaging 3.52 goals/game. This year: 2.50. The overall numbers look like this…


If there is real change point in the season, it appears to have come just before Christmas when the Red Wings were shut out in Chicago by the Blackhawks, 3-0. That was the last time goalie Chris Osgood started a game. Since then, it’s been Jimmy Howard’s Red Wings. Given the injuries and the offensive drought (the Wings have scored only 25 goals in the 12 games since that 3-0 loss to Chicago), it really is Howard’s team. The rookie came into this season with a total of nine games of NHL experience (1-5-0, 2.76, .908). It would have been reasonable to expect that he would serve as a backup to Chris Osgood this year, perhaps taking over the reins for good next year. Instead, Howard is the number one goalie (for now), 6-3-3 in those 12 games since Osgood’s last decision (Osgood got 21 minutes of mop-up duty in a 6-0 loss to the Islanders last Tuesday), with a GAA of 1.89 and a save percentage of .944. The top rookie goaltender this year might wear red, but he doesn’t play for Washington. But here is your odd Jimmy Howard nugget. He has played in four games on a Tuesday this season, started two, and it is his worst day of the week, GAA (3.21) and save percentage-wise (.901).

Offensively, there is a cup half-full/cup half-empty quality to the Red Wings’ performance over the last dozen games. On the half-full side, they have goals from 15 different players. On the half-empty side, only three players have more than two goals. And if you were asked which Red Wing over the past dozen games led the team in goals, you’d probably be a while before settling on Darren Helm (5-1-6). Keeping with the half-full/half-empty theme, Helm got those five goals in a five game stretch from December 31st through January 9th. He is without a point in his last four games. In his first full season with the Red Wings this year, this will be his first meeting against the Caps (he did not play in the 3-2 Red Wings win over the Caps on October 10th).

The overall scoring leader for the Wings over the last dozen games is defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom (2-10-12). Lidstrom is one of the three Red Wings playing in all 48 games this year. In fact, Lidstrom is one of the most durable players of his era. In 16 previous seasons (not including the abbreviated 1994-1995 season) Lidstrom has never played in fewer than 76 games, and 12 times he played in at least 80 games. At the moment, though, Lidstrom has points in his last three games (2-3-5), part of an odd pattern in which he has been three-on, three-off, and three-on again in registering points. Guess that means he draws a blank tonight.

Pavel Datsyuk is Detroit’s second leading scorer over the last dozen games (3-5-8). That he would be second with a total of eight points speaks to the trouble the Red Wings have had getting goals. It has been something of a year-long struggle for Datsyuk, although with players of his caliber, such things are relative. The fact is, however, that at 11-25-36 in 46 games, he is on a pace for his lowest goals and points total since his second season (2002-2003). His performance to date stands in stark relief to his last four seasons, over which he averaged 1.16 points-per-game. For the season he is averaging 0.78 points-per-game. In eight career games against Washington, Datsyuk is 4-10-14.

The only other Red Wing with as many as three goals over the last dozen games is Todd Bertuzzi (3-3-6). The former Islander-Canuck-Panther-Duck-Flame is on his second tour as a Red Wing (he played eight games in 2006-2007 for Detroit). This time around, Bertuzzi enters the game against the Caps as the Red Wings’ top active goal scorer for the season (team leader Tomas Holmstrom is out with a broken foot). But again, his leading the Red Wings for the moment with 13 goals (the Caps have six players with at least that number) reflects the offensive troubles they have been having. Something to note – Bertuzzi is the only Red Wing to score in overtime this year. He turned the trick twice – on consecutive nights against Anaheim and Nashville in mid-December. In 24 career games against the Caps, Bertuzzi is 6-9-15. What he doesn’t have, though, is a goal against Washington since March 23, 2003, when he was with Vancouver.

The Peerless’ Players to Ponder

Detroit: Valteri Filppula

Filppula was off to a decent start to the season (2-4-6) when he broke his wrist in the second period of Game 11 – a 6-5 Gimmick loss to Edmonton on October 29th. He also had a pair of assists in the October 10th 3-2 win over the Caps. He is a player with a lot of promise (the Wings committed $3 million in salary per year to him for the next three years), but so far this year is minus-6 and has been a plus player in only seven of 22 games – somewhat odd for a Red Wing. Given the presence of Lidstrom, Datsyuk, and Henrik Zetterberg on the roster, Filppula is a player who can fly under the radar. Letting him do so tonight would spell trouble for the Caps. Your odd Filppula stat – he has not scored a goal in any Red Wing win this season, but he has three goals in 12 losses for which he dressed.

Washington: Mike Knuble

The Red Wings have allowed an average of 33.8 shots per game in their last dozen games. This only makes the performance of Jimmy Howard in goal that much more impressive. It also speaks to the need to make sure that the Caps get pucks to the net where a player like Knuble can convert from within arm’s-length of the goal. Knuble has goals in four of his last six games (six in all), a stretch over which the Caps are 5-1-0. Do the math.

Keys:

1. Time and space. If Detroit gets them, they can make an opponent’s night miserable. And there is often a chicken-and-the-egg quality to this. Teams give the Red Wings so much respect, they end up giving them space (too much) and time (too much) to weave their magic. Crowd ‘em, bloody their nose a little bit. Find out what flavor gum they’re chewing. Just don’t let them skate around as if they were Disney on Ice.

2. Take the Helm. The Red Wings’ chances of winning are enhanced quite a bit when Darren Helm scores a goal. The Wings are 6-0-1 when Helm lights the lamp. Of course, that goes hand-in-hand with his leading the team in goal scoring over the 6-3-3 run they are on. But still…

3. Your “Intermission,” should you decide to accept it… The Caps and Red Wings are a combined 38-0-6 when leading at the second intermission. If you had to pick which club would be more likely to come back from such a deficit, it would be Washington, given that they have the league’s second-best record when trailing after two periods (Detroit is 10th). But it wouldn’t be the way to bet.

In the end, the front-end of Stanley Cup Finalists Week is a difficult game to handicap. It would not be out of the realm of imagination to think the Caps might be peeking ahead to Pittsburgh on Thursday. On the other hand, the Red Wings are the sort of team that will get any team’s attention. These are two teams playing well and that will meet in one of those “irresistible force – immovable object” sorts of contests. Howard, despite his stellar numbers, has allowed one, two, and then three goals in his last three games. Do we hear “four?” Yes, we do…

Caps 4 – Red Wings 3

Scenes from a Practice

It's a holiday here in the States (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) and the Caps held a practice before a near-SRO crowd at Kettler this morning. All seemed to be in good spirits -- what happens on the day after a win one supposes. Here are some images...

Dynamic Branding

This weekend, the Caps played two hockey games – wins on Friday and Sunday over the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Philadelphia Flyers. The events were duly reported in the Washington Post and in local television and radio outlets.

In the old days, that would have been it… move on to the next topic, the next game.

Not anymore. Tim Leone, beat writer for the Hershey Bears of the Patriot-News in Pennsylvania (hold that thought for a few moments) wrote two excellent articles yesterday, one titled, “Going Deep: Washington Capitals Out In Front of Media Revolution,” the other titled, “Web Site a Net Gain for Washington Capitals." As a set, they constituted an excellent look at the evolution of new media surrounding the Caps. And as if to make the point, much of that which Tim speaks was put on display in this weekend of two wins.

There were, of course, the newspaper, television, and radio reports. But the Caps themselves have spun off a production entity of their own – web site, full time reporting staff, video production operated by extremely talented staff. There were the blogs – two of the Caps’ “Holy Trinity” of bloggers – Japers’ Rink, On Frozen Blog, and Off Wing Opinion – posting clips and recaps, complete with locker room video and links to other sites reporting on the game. There were the dozens of “tweets” popping up on Twitter from bloggers, fans, and just folks who might have taken in the game. There were entries from a host of other blogs – some player-centric, others more general – providing as many different angles and perspectives on the games as any fan could ask for.

When I was a youngster, the term “multi-media” was born. It conjured up images of a film projector or a slide show with a sound accompaniment. The term has come to mean something else these days, but frankly it simply doesn’t capture the integrated, multivariate character of entities and methods employed these days to cover in such comprehensive ways the Washington Capitals (even though the term enjoys its own menu on the Caps’ web site).

Rather than “multi-media,” which implies more than one, yet separate, what we see now is more “integrated media.” Or more to the point, given that the whole object of the exercise is to focus on the Capitals – the games they play, the stories they live, the personalities who represent the “red” – the more precise term might be “dynamic branding.”

The Boss describes it (albeit in a slightly different context – alluding to the speed of the game) better than we could…

“…based on new viewer habits created by the web on TV (MTV anyone?); in video games; with iPods; with iPhones; with Avatar-like next generation films being produced; with third screens everywhere; with Google telling you on every search that they searched the web and found 1 million listings in 1.3 seconds; in a Web 2.0 world - what sports do you think are best positioned for the new generation of consumers? The “fast” ones or the “slow” ones? The ones that reward a viewer’s investment of time with fast paced action or with commercials? This is my bet: Younger viewers like multimedia, speed and pace and action.”

Hockey – and the Caps, who are in the vanguard of this evolution, unburdened by any need to adhere to old rules of media coverage – has carved out this new concept of coverage. An in house production; a confederation of dedicated bloggers (each with their own unique perspective on players and performance); social media such as Facebook and Twitter that provide the glue to connect fans, bloggers, and the team; player sites such as GreenLife52.com or Backstrom19.com that give fans more direct links to player favorites. And (this is where we come back to the start of all this – the articles by Tim Leone), this extends vertically downward, with no disrespect intended to all the fine folks in Hershey, to the Hershey Bears organization. The Bears are an integral part of the narrative of youngsters being brought into the Capitals community, seen growing through the ranks, and graduating to the show. They are a part of us, a part of the larger “community” that is the Washington Capitals organization. It is all a part of a piece, the dynamic branding of the Washington Capitals.

It hasn’t come without a price, though. “Traditional” media, primarily newspapers, have been left at the gate in this development. Some might call this “progress.” From a perspective of pure technological methodology, that is demonstrably true. Newspapers and electronic media are still (despite their own forays into blogging and social networks) in a calendar/deadline paradigm. Editions are published daily, programs are aired according to schedule. That simple isn’t compatible with the world described by Ted Leonsis in that quote above. About that there can be no further debate.

But, part of the price for taking away the “filter” of newspapers and electronic media is objectivity. If the club controls the message, then that’s what you get – the club’s message. If bloggers – who get into this endeavor out of their love of the sport and their devotion to the club – replaces the product of beat reporting, then what you risk are products that might be more favorable to the club than their performance would allow (as much as we and our colleagues try, sincerely, to be objective about the Caps). If tweets, Facebook “walls,” and message boards fill the gap in traditional reporting, then what you risk is a less well-researched point of view that comes with the more deliberate methods of reporting.

News cycles these days are not measured in days as much as hours, and with instruments such as Twitter perhaps in minutes. The fault line on which traditional and new media seem to be grinding is conflict between what the “consumer” wants – faster, edgier, more appealing to the senses – and what fundamental purposes an independent media serves – getting it right, being objective, serving as a check and a balance against parties with vested interests in outcomes.

We aren’t arguing that “dynamic branding” is bad, neither are we arguing that it is good. What it is, is unstoppable. This is the genie unleashed by technology – teams such as the Caps can produce and market their own stories directly to consumers. Bloggers such as ourselves can scribble, after a fashion, at our keyboards and instantly publish our products. Fans can tweet, post, podcast to their ever-loving heart’s content on any subject they can imagine concerning the Caps (although an unsettling number of them seem to focus on how much Jeff Schultz sucks).

What we might be surrendering is objectivity. There are those who adhere to the notion that there is “wisdom in crowds.” Don’t count us among them, at least not unconditionally. It is a short distance from “crowd” to “mob” (in the literal meaning of the term – a loosely organized group). The good part, at least in our minds, is that evolution tends to sort out these things efficiently. And in that respect, we think that the dynamic branding that is replacing (and has in large part already replaced) traditional coverage of teams such as the Washington Capitals will sort out its issues of consumer friendliness and objectivity. You might be getting a glimpse of that already with such aggregated “blogging” sites as SBNation.

In any case, we are all right smack in the middle of a paradigm shift – a change in the fundamental model of events and how those events and the personalities central to them are covered. It might be bumpy, but it won’t be boring.

A TWO-point afternoon: Caps 5 - Flyers 3

Home sweet home.

For the 16th time in 22 home games, the Washington Capitals heard the final horn as victors at Verizon Center, today’s victim being the Philadelphia Flyers by a score of 5-3. The win propelled the Caps to the top spot in the Eastern Conference with 66 standings points, one more than the idle New Jersey Devils.

The Caps very nearly “Lemieux’ed” the Flyers in this one, that being a reference to scoring a goal in each of the five ways such a thing can be accomplished in the real hockey portion of the game (regulation or overtime) – even-strength, power play, shorthanded, and penalty shot. All that was lacking was the empty-netter in the dying moments of the game.

It all might not have taken place, though, but for a misfire by Simon Gagne at the 42-second mark of the first period. He had the puck on his stick and goalie Jose Theodore at the other post, and Gagne bunted the puck into the side of the net instead of the back of it. The Flyers would get the first goal of the game later in the period, but had they scored there – in the first minute of the contest – it might have put the Caps back on their heels more.

When the goals came in this one, they came in machine-gun fashion. Jeff Carter opened the scoring at 6:03 with a power play wrister that Theodore got a pretty good look at and would probably like back. Mike Knuble got it back only 1:46 later when after Alex Ovechkin gloved down a high puck to his stick and sent it out in front from the Bradley Corner, Knuble pounced on the loose puck that goalie Ray Emery left lying in the crease.

Philly returned the favor after Matt Bradley was guilty of a giveaway in the Olympia Corner (guess he’d have been better in his corner at the other end of the ice) that Arron Asham pounced on. Asham sent it to the top of the circles where James van Riemsdyk was waiting. Only 1:27 after Knuble’s goal, van Riemsdyk wristed the puck past Theodore to give the Flyers their second lead of the period.

Then, Brooks Laich broke his eight-game streak without lighting the red light. Tomas Fleischmann sent a shot to the net that Emery fumbled, and Laich did the Knuble-ey thing and popped the puck into the net from the top of the blue paint while Emery was searching for the car keys.

The Caps got one power play on the day – one – but they made short work of it. Alexander Semin was the one Cap left unaccounted for by the Flyer penalty killers as the puck was collected by Mike Green at the opposite point. Green sent the puck to the net where it was redirected by Laich onto the stick of Semin, and Semin swatted the puck into the yawning gap that Emery left behind. Total power play production – one opportunity, one goal, eight seconds.

Laich notched his second (his first two-goal game since November 2nd) when Matt Carle made the sort of play that turns a coach’s hair gray. As he was crossing his own blue line, he left the puck for Mike Richards trailing behind him. One problem – Richards wasn’t near the puck. Laich chipped the puck past Richards, collected it at the top of the left wing circle, skated in on Emery, and backhanded it in when Emery bit on his forehand move.

Alex Ovechkin closed out the scoring, courtesy of Danny Briere, who was carrying the puck over his line and into the neutral zone as if he had not a care in the world, at least until Ovechkin picked him clean. Braydon Coburn was left to try to chase Ovechkin down, but all he could do was try to hang on for dear life as Ovechkin barreled in on Emery. Coburn managed to wrestle Ovechkin off the puck, and Dan Marouelli signaled for a penalty shot. Ovechkin – previously 0-for-5 in this situation – carried the puck in, feinted Emery one way, showed him the forehand, then swept the puck to his backhand, whereupon he roofed it over the sprawled Emery. A stat-padder goal by Danny Briere finished the scoring in the last 30 seconds for the final score.

Other stuff…

-- 17:30 in ice time? After 17:50 against Toronto, Alex Ovechkin will think coach Bruce Boudreau is mad at him. It says something of the team’s depth at the moment that Ovechkin could skate so comparatively little time, yet the team has 11 goals in its last two games.

-- Oh, and do you like drama? Ovechkin scored on his 2,000th shot in the NHL -- on a penalty shot.

-- Laich’s two-goal performance makes 34 multi-goal games for the Caps this year.

-- Give the Flyers credit, they bottled up the Caps pretty well all afternoon. The Caps had only 46 total shot attempts (22 shots on goal).

-- Even though Jose Theodore gave up two goals in the first period, one of which he might have wanted back, his turning away 12 shots in the second period might have been the difference as the Caps took a lead. If that wasn’t, perhaps it was his turning away 10 of 11 power play shots for the game.

- In the game-within-a-game, it was interesting to watch Eric Fehr and Scott Hartnell go at it before faceoffs. Fehr did a pretty good job of egging Hartnell on with his stick. Of course, maybe it was a reminder that Hartnell’s running around engaging in some interesting stick work of his own wasn’t unnoticed.

-- Think the Flyers would like to unload that $6.5 million cap hit Danny Briere has? We do.

-- It’s one thing for a fourth line to be an “energy line.” We get that. But Ian Laperriere, Daniel Carcillo, and Blair Betts… no shots on goal. As a group they had only four attempts.

-- Jeff Schultz: 23:44 in ice time, even, a shot on goal, two hits, and three blocked shots. And still some moron on the post game was whining about him with a bad giveaway (it was Bradley’s giveaway, but hey…red sweaters look alike).

-- With a goal this afternoon, that’s five goals in three games for Mike Knuble. Kanoobie gets an extra Milk Bone tonight.

-- The difference between Tomas Fleischmann last year and Tomas Fleischmann this year… last year, if Flesichmann tried to hit Braydon Coburn, he would have bounced off. This year (this game), he was credited with the hit.

-- Hey, who’s that who led the Flyers in giveaways? Why, it’s the $6.25 million free agent defenseman. Oh, and Mike Green didn’t have any, in case you were wondering.

-- There are Flyer fans in attendance who seem to think it is a comeback to shout “two Stanley Cups, baby” as they are leaving the building with four minutes left. Actually, it’s pretty sad, because the only people who remember when the Flyers won a Cup now gum their food and wear extra-absorbent undergarments.

- If the only forwards finishing in plus territory for the Flyers are James van Riemsdyk, Darroll Powe, and Arron Asham, it’s a good night for the other guys.

-- The Caps outscored the Flyers for the season series, 22-13. They were 7-for-16 on the power play against the Flyers. You Caps fans who might have an inferiority complex concerning some teams? The Caps are better – you can sleep better in that knowledge.

-- Top line: 2-1-3. Second line: 3-3-6. Helps to spread things around.

-- It might not have been the score sheet buffet, but Alex Ovechkin helped himself to the hungry-man platter: a goal, an assist, four shots, three hits, three takeaways.

-- The Caps were 35-up and 30-down in the circle, but perhaps more important, they were 13-up and six-down in the defensive end.

-- One had the feeling (well, we had the feeling) that the Flyers sort of sacrificed this game to get Ray Emery back on the ice. He was, to be kind, bad. The Flyers had better hope it was rust.

Whether it’s a one-goal win, an 8-2 thwapping, or a score-every-which-way sort of game like this, it’s always good to send Flyers fans home sobbing into soggy cheese-steak buns. The Caps end one Pennsylvania series for the year (3-0-1 against the Flyers) and start another this Thursday against the Penguins. Let’s hope that one goes at least as well and is at least as satisfying.

Hockey makes for some of the most interesting stories

...and sometimes, they even happen in Pittsburgh. Well, Vancouver, but...oh, you get the point (courtesy of Shelly Anderson at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)...

"Alex Pechurski, a 19-year-old goaltender...made his unexpected, unscripted entrance into the NHL last night and played well in relief in the Penguins' 6-2 loss to the Vancouver Canucks at GM Place...

...an injury crisis at goaltender meant that [Penguins head coach Dan] Bylsma was sending in a raw Russian rookie who had been in North America just a few weeks, doesn't speak English, had had just one morning skate with the club after signing an amateur tryout contract in a pinch and was wearing pads that belonged to No. 1 goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury.

Fleury was out with a broken finger, and regular backup Brent Johnson is out with an undisclosed injury. Curry, who was recalled from the minor leagues Monday, was playing in his fourth NHL game, first of the season.

No one really expected Pechurski to play, including him."

Play he did. The young Russian who doesn't speak English, who was on a one-game amateur tryout with the Penguins, who played the previous night for the Tri-City Americans (co-owned by former Caps goalie Olaf Kolzig, hence a Capitals connection), and who had to use Fleury's pads because his own did not meet NHL regulations, allowed only one goal on 13 shots in 23:43 and won the game's third star in a 6-2 Vancouver win.

Try to imagine being dropped into Moscow, not being able to speak Russian and playing goaltender for CSKA Moscow.

The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!! -- Caps vs. Flyers, January 17th

The Peerless Prognosticator is ON THE AIR!!!

It’s Brunch With the Caps on Sunday as the Capitals host the Philadelphia Flyers…

“It’s not ‘brunch.’”

What?

“Brunch is a meal served between breakfast and lunch...”

I know, but…

“No, something in the afternoon might be more of a ‘dinch’ or a ‘lunner,’ or maybe even a ‘suppunch’…hey, that works for hockey, doesn’t it?... A ‘sup-PUNCH.’”

I guess it does. It was just a figure of speech. Who are you, anyway?

“Vic”

Vic? That’s it?

“Vic E. Peedia. I'm something of a trivia nut…but back to this brunch thing, a ‘brunch’ is something a hockey fan might enjoy before an afternoon game.”

Ok, I get it, I just…

“In France it might be called, ‘le grand petit dejeuner...’”

OK, OK!

“Although in Quebec, where I assume they play hockey, it might be called ‘dejeuner-buffet.’”

Are you done?

“Well, I just wanted to add that in Germany, it might be called ‘gabelfrühstück.’”

“Fork Breakfast?”

“Very good…but actually, the term ‘brunch’ has its origins in Great Britain, except New Yorkers seem to think the term originated there among newspaper reporters.”

Hey, here’s a term originated by a blogger…

“Which is…”

SHUT UP!!

This afternoon, Flyers head coach Peter Laviolette gets a do-over. After replacing John Stevens behind the Flyer bench on December 4th, Laviolette stepped behind the Philadelphia bench at Wachovia Center the next evening and watched in horror as the Caps scored seven goals in 35 minutes on their way to an 8-2 win over the Flyers.

Including that game, Laviolette is 10-9-2 as head coach of the Flyers. The near-.500 record belies something of a “then and now” ride for the orange and black since the switch. Laviolette started 2-7-1 in his first nine games, then went 8-2-1 in his last 11. In those last 11 games the Flyers have outscored their opponents 44-29 (4.0-2.6). Until getting shutout by (of all teams) the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday, the Flyers had scored at least four goals in five consecutive games. One underestimates them at their peril at the moment. Here is how the overall numbers stack up...



In the 8-2-1 stretch on which the Flyers find themselves, their scoring has come from the guys who have to do the heavy lifting. Captain Mike Richards is leading the way here with a 6-6-12 line over the last 11 games. After going 13-14-27 in his first 36 games of the season, one might say Richards has benefitted from the change behind the bench. He is 6-9-15 in 17 career games against the Caps and had a hat trick in the first meeting of the clubs this year, a 6-5 overtime win on October 6th.

At first blush Simon Gagne seems to have benefitted from the switch, too. In the last 11 games he is 5-7-12. But his situation is more a matter of health (It’s always a matter of health with Gagne – he’s missed 84 games over the past two-and-a-half seasons). Since returning to the lineup after missing 24 games to a hernia, he has been on quite a run. In 13 games since his return he has three multi-point games, including a hat trick 3-1-4 performance in a 6-0 win over the Rangers on December 30th. In 33 games against the Caps in his career Gagne is 17-16-33.

Someone has had to set things up for the Flyers, and leading in the helpers has been Chris Pronger over the last 11 games (1-9-10). Oddly enough, though, only two of those nine helpers have come on goals from either Richards or Gagne (both on Richards goals). The ten points in his last 11 games represents quite an improvement over the 5-17-22 he had in his first 35 games of the season. But what’s more, he is plus-10 in those 11 games to raise that number to plus-18 for the year. In 27 career games against the Caps he is 2-9-11.

In goal, Michael Leighton seems to have found cheese-steaks more to his liking than pork barbecue. In seven games with the Carolina Hurricanes to start the year, Leighton was 1-4-0, 4.28, .848. Since joining the Flyers after being claimed off waivers on December 15th, he is 8-1-1, 2.39, .921, and a shutout. But (there’s always a “but,” isn’t there?)… the bloom might be coming off the rose. In his last four games Leighton is 3-1-0, but other numbers have deteriorated somewhat – 2.75 GAA and a .902 save percentage --- and he’s allowed at least three goals in three of those games (he allowed as many as three only once in his first eight appearances with the Flyers). Leighton is 1-2-0, 3.07, .917 in three career games against Washington.

It could, however, be the return of Ray Emery in goal for Philadelphia. When last seen on a sheet of NHL ice, he gave up five goals on 17 shots in barely 31 minutes of work in that 8-2 loss to the Caps on December 5th. Then he had surgery to repair a tear in his abdominal wall. Perhaps it was his injury that accounted for his allowing 21 goals in the five appearances (getting pulled twice) before his surgery. Flyer fans are hoping so, because if it wasn’t the injury, and Leighton is falling back to earth, the Flyers’ playoff hopes lay in the balance.

The Peerless’ Players to Ponder

Philadelphia: Scott Hartnell

No discussion of the Flyers should omit some discussion of the physical tradition they have built. And that is in conflict with at least the perception of Peter Laviolette’s preferences as a head coach. Well, Laviolette seems accommodating to the Flyers’ tradition of brandishing fists so far. In this 8-2-1 run the Flyers have had eight fights. Scott Hartnell – perhaps the one Flyer whose combination of playing ability and pugnacious character would make him fit right in with the 1975 Flyers – leads Philadelphia with three of those eight fights. He is 10-6-16 in 17 career games against the Caps, but he has seven of those goals in his last seven games against Washington.

Washington: Brooks Laich

Laich is in a slump. He has no goals in his last eight games, one in his last 18, two in his last 26. But it is not as if Laich doesn’t know how to do this – he had nine goals in his first 21 games and is coming off two consecutive years of 20-plus goals. Last year, when he finished with 23 goals, he had two streaks of at least ten games without a goal. It’s a slump. Maybe the Flyers are the tonic. Laich has four goals in his last eight games against Philadelphia.

Keys:

1. Be a frontrunner. The Flyers have the worst record in the NHL when giving up the first goal on the road (3-15-0). They’ve won one game this year when trailing after two periods (1-14-0). In this 8-2-1 run they had ten consecutive games scoring the game’s first goal before being shut out by Toronto.

2. Turn off the power. In the 8-2-1 run, the Flyers have scored at least one power play goal in eight games (12-for-35; 34.3 percent). In the eight games in which they have a power play goal, the Flyers scored a total of 41 goals (5.1/game). The three games in which they failed to get a power play goal – three goals. Seems the power play reflects the offensive rhythm the club is enjoying that night.

3. Have a bunch for brunch. OK, maybe it’s not technically “brunch,” but the term “bunch” certainly applies to the Caps lately. In their last 17 periods of regulation hockey the Caps scored two or more goals 11 times. Five times they scored at least three goals. Philly hasn’t been exactly immune to giving up the multiple goal period on this streak. Seven times in the last 18 periods they have done so. It’s one thing to have that happen against an Ottawa or a Toronto – two teams that did have multiple goal periods but rank in the lower half of the team scoring rankings. If that’s a problem against the Caps, one multiple goal period might not be the limit.

In the end, these are similar teams. Both can score, both have had issues in giving up goals. Both have potent power plays. But dig past this, and one sees that the Caps are the superior team as 5-on-5 play. And while both teams have had intermittent issues on the penalty kill, the Caps have the sixth best home penalty kill in the league (87.3 percent). But this game seems most likely to turn on what unfolds in the first period. The Caps have had comparatively sluggish first periods lately (eight goals in their last six games, their lowest scoring period overall). The Flyers don’t respond well to giving up early goals. Guess what we think will happen…

Caps 4 – Flyers 2

Yeah, yeah... we know

Plus-minus is the Devil's spawn of statistics. Still...



And while we're at it, from the Man-Bites-Dog file...

Kanoobie is NOT happy!

What does a person have to do to get a star, eh? Two goals not good enough for these guys?

A TWO-point night: Caps 6 - Maple Leafs 1

So, you’re a coach of a struggling team. You come into town to face an offensive juggernaut. What is the one thing you want to burn into the brains of your players as they take the ice?

DON’T GIVE UP A GOAL IN THE FIRST MINUTE!

Unfortunately for the Toronto Maple Leafs, such advice was either not given or not heeded as Alex Ovechkin took a feed from Nicklas Backstrom and deposited it in the back of the net at the 49-second mark of the first period. Before the night was over, Ovechkin would provide a helper on four other Capital goals, and Jose Theodore would turn away 28 of 29 shots on the way to a 6-1 win over the Leafs at Verizon Center.

Other stuff…

-- We’re late with this because Kanoobie kept us up all night yapping and watching the replay, spinning like a top each time Mike Knuble batted a loose puck lying in the crease into the back of the net. There was Knuble working a give and go with Ovechkin early in the second for a goal from the blue paint. Then it was Knuble finishing off a Backstrom to Ovechkin to Semin to Ovechkin tic-tac-toe from point blank range. Officially, the goals were tallied from a total of 16 feet. More like 16 inches.

- The second Knuble goal came as a result of – STOP THE PRESSES!! – a fine defensive play by Alex Ovechkin when, after shanking a shot, he had to play the role of defenseman as Alexei Ponikarovsky picked up the puck and skated down one-on-one on Ovechkin. The Cap angled Ponikarovsky away, stole the puck, and hotfooted it the other way to set up the scoring play.

- Five points ties a career high for Ovechkin, the four assists sets a new personal career high.

- Knuble might be hitting his stride. That was his third two-goal game this year, but his second in four games.

- Niklas Hagman had ten shots on goal for the Leafs. No Cap had more attempts (Mike Green had ten shot attempts).

- John Carlson was a late call up for this game, and he acquitted himself quite well. 14 minutes, two shots on goal (seven attempts, one of which hit the post), one hit, and a plus-two.

- In a game that saw the Caps score six goals, the game might have been won by Jose Theodore. Even though Ovechkin got the Caps rolling with that goal in the first minute, Toronto came back to dominate for long stretches of the first period. Theodore turned away all 14 shots he faced in the period to allow the Caps to skate off with a 2-0 lead at the first intermission.

- It was as Brooks Laich described it in the pregame – if the Caps could get a two goal or three goal lead, maybe the Leafs start to get tired or feel sorry for themselves about their schedule (they played the previous night). Well, after those 14 shots in the first, the Leafs could manage only a total of 15 for the remaining two periods.

- Jason Chimera almost had his second consecutive game with a Gordie Howe Hat Trick. He had an assist and a fight, but didn’t find the back of the net with his two shots on goal. So far, Chimera is as advertised – fast on his skates, able to chip in the occasional goal, feisty.

- The Leafs had 29 shots on goal, the Caps had 25 of their shots blocked.

- The Caps had 24 shots on goal, they had 25 of their shots blocked.

- Strange game, this hockey.

- Jeff Schultz (plus-1 for the night and plus-27 for the season), Alex Ovechkin (plus-3/plus-26), Mike Green (plus-3/plus-20), and Nicklas Backstrom (plus-2/plus-19) are four of the top six in plus-minus in the league. Brendan Morrison (plus-2/plus-17) is lurking at 15th in the league.

- Watching the Toronto power play is kinda painful. Everyone seems to receive the puck backing away from the goal, and the whole exercise seems to be one of trying to feed Tomas Kaberle at the point. Yes, it did work once (in six tries), but it doesn’t look to be something that will have a lot of long-term effectiveness.

- Nice how Eric Fehr “Knuble-ized” the puck on his goal, redirecting a change-of-pace shot from Ovechkin (who broke his stick).

- And how about Fleischman doing the redirect mambo on another shot by Ovechkin… sticks on the ice boys.

- If Tom Poti could score a goal every time he gets flattened like that, think he’ll take it?

- If Toronto had made the game a bit closer, think Ovechkin would have set a personal high for points? He skated only five shifts in the third period and only 17:50 for the game.

- Where does David Steckel earn his money? In the faceoff circle in his own zone; he was six-for-eight there.

- Two fights, one Cap (Chimera) tossed, a goalie interference penalty when Jason Bake rammed through the crease and toppled onto Theodore, 54 minutes of penalties in the last six minutes, and the refs bagged the last two seconds rather than risk a faceoff. Almost a shame these two teams don’t meet again this year.

- That makes six straight games in which the Caps have scored at least four goals (31 in all). They are 5-1-0 in those games.

It wasn’t as purely a dominating effort as was the 8-1 win over Atlanta a week ago, more like a relentless squeezing of the life out of the Maple Leafs. Toronto deserves credit for working hard, but they just don’t have the assets to finish a lot of what they spend so much time working to get. There aren’t any finishers there (and for the moment, that includes Phil Kessel). The Caps, on the other hand, are finishing what they start in spades 31 goals on 215 shots in their last six games (that’s a .856 save percentage for opposing goaltenders).

It makes for an interesting week ahead as the Caps now host Philadelphia on Sunday and Detroit on Tuesday before heading to Pittsburgh on Thursday before a date with Phoenix at Verizon Center on Saturday. But right now, Caps fans couldn’t ask for their team to be in a better situation than they are in right now heading into that week.

He's not paid $124 million to use his knuckles

In the midst of all this Kovalchuk contract talk and the amazing, unprecedented, awe-inducing spectacle of Sidney Crosby hitting the 30-goal plateau, there is a lingering story gliding beneath the radar.

That story would be the saga of "Alex and the Bodyguard." The issue would be whether, during a 7-4 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, Alex Ovechkin should have manned-up and dropped gloves with Lightning forward Steve Downie, with whom Ovechkin had a collision earlier in the contest, when the two exited the penalty box after serving their coincidental penalties stemming from the hit. Even though Ovechkin dropped his gloves and removed his helmet to answer the bell, teammate Matt Bradley inserted himself -- loudly and rapidly -- between Ovechkin and Downie, assuming the position as Downie's dance partner. Bradley ended up with four penalties for 27 minutes and an early exit from the contest, Downie got 17 minutes, and Ovechkin got only a single minor for unsportsmanlike conduct.

In the wake of the episode, many seem to have an opinion about Ovechkin's conduct -- unsportmanlike or not. Today, Allan Muir of Sports Illustrated weighs in on the matter of Bradley coming to Ovechkin's defense...

"It was yet another hit on a resume that could be interpreted as crossing the line between cheap and dirty. A minor confrontation followed and both players were penalized. When they exited the box, hostilities resumed. It was at that point that Bradley decided Ovechkin couldn't, or shouldn't, defend himself and took it upon himself to attack the player who'd originally been wronged.

Yeah, that makes sense.

We all know why Bradley felt the need to take action. Do the Caps want to see their franchise sidelined by a broken hand, separated shoulder or any other injury that has a remote chance of occurring any time two players square off?

Of course not. But that's hardly the point, is it?"

Well, it's precisely the point. The predicate for the argument is that the original hit was dirty. This is, itself, in no small amount of dispute in that the most-often quoted assessment to that end comes not from the wronged party -- Steve Downie -- but teammate Jeff Halpern, who said:

"I thought it was a dirty hit. He's a (heck) of a player, and he plays hard, but it's still a dirty hit. He's charging from his bench, Downs makes a move and he sticks his knee out there. It's not the cheapest hit in the world, but it's still a dirty hit."

Having watched the clip of it several times, Ovechkin enters the zone lining up Downie to be sure, but he is coming at him in a manner where his legs are at least shoulder width apart, and as he makes contact with Downie appears not to make any particular movement with either leg to impede Downie's movement (i.e., throw a knee out at him). As a Caps fan, I'll acknowledge that your interpretation of the events may differ, but what seems not to be debatable is that you have to assume the hit was dirty (an extension of the narrative that seems to have gained momentum that Ovechkin is a "dirty" player) and, therefore, something to be answered for.

And Ovechkin seemed willing to answer his call to The Code and do battle with Downie. Bradley intervened, and Muir seems to think this violates a code of accountability, the real point of the matter in his view.

Well, no. If Matt Bradley had been the perpetrator of the hit, Downie and Bradley almost certainly would have had their dance without intervention from a third party. But the point is precisely that "the Caps [don't] want to see their franchise sidelined by a broken hand, separated shoulder or any other injury."

Ovechkin represents a $124 million investment by the club in recognition that he is the most important piece in any run the Caps might make toward a Stanley Cup, and the risk of his being sidelined by an experienced pugilist of no other particular consequence from a hockey standpoint such as Downie is a no-brainer sort of decision. Matt Bradley -- to his everlasting credit -- recognized this instinctively, asking Coach Bruce Boudreau to put him on the ice, because Bradley knew that Downie would go looking for Ovechkin.

There is even a bit of recent history in this with respect to Ovechkin to drive home the point. On November 1st in a game against Columbus, Ovechkin was involved in a scrum at the Blue Jackets' bench, getting tangled up with Jason Chimera (now, perhaps ironically, a teammate) and Jared Boll. Ovechkin injured his shoulder and missed six games.

This isn't the black-and-white era of hockey. Elite players are very expensive investments. And while hockey is and should remain a high-contact sport where players should expect to be hit when they themselves engage in the practice, the sheer economics of the current game argue against players such as Ovechkin (or Crosby, or Kane...) expanding the potential for risk by engaging in score-settling fights with journeyman players at the end of games long-decided.

Muir missed "the point" entirely in his article, and there are $124 million reasons why.