Eight games in...
-- I might have thought Alexander Semin could lead the Capitals in scoring (5-3-8), and I might have thought a defenseman would be third on the team in scoring, but I would not have thought that defenseman would be John Carlson (1-5-6)
-- I might have thought John Erskine could be up there in penalty minutes (17 so far), and I thought in doing so he might still be looking up at a teammate. I just didn't think that teammate would be Carlson (20)
-- I might have thought a Caps defenseman would rank highly in giveaways. But I would not have thought that defenseman would be...you guessed it, Carlson (third in the league, but he's in good company, behind only Tyler Myers and Duncan Keith).
-- I might have thought a Cap would be in the top-ten in faceoff wins, but I would not have thought that Cap would be Nicklas Backstrom.
-- I might have thought the Caps had been eliminated from playoff competition based on what I've been reading the last few days, I would not have thought that no team in the East has more wins, and only three have more points.
-- I might have thought that at least one Cap would be among the league leaders in power play points; I would not have thought that I'd have to go to the second page of the NHL.com stats to find the top Capital in power play points (Backstrom, tied for 37th)
Just some early morning thoughts on perusing the league stat tables.
Methinks the grousing about the Caps record thus far stems from last year's regular season where the Caps were semmingly kicking everybody's you-know-what all over the ice all of the time compared this year's version that so far has shown precious little interest in what is going on so far.
ReplyDeleteWhich in all fairness is natural on both sides of the ledger. As for myself and myself alone, I'm not going to start worrying about the lackadasical attitude until late February, early March.
The Caps have enough talent alone to win enough regular season games to remain safely near the top of the Eastern Conference and overall NHL standings without much effort. We know these guys will be in the playoffs and as long as they start putting their "game faces on" ahead of time they should be alright.
Granted the Caps had a great regular season last year. But they did not get off to all that great a start last year either.
ReplyDeleteAfter 8 games, they were 4-2-2 and they had blown leads in nearly all their losses up to that date. They were scoring but the defense and/or goaltending was issumatic and we were gravely concerned.