The Washington Capitals came back from the dead last night,
crawled back into the coffin in the last two minutes, and then sprung back to,
if not full vim and vigor, into a more or less upright position with their
3-2 overtime win over the Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 3 of their Eastern
Conference semifinal series. It was your
standard 60 minutes of regulation with a short, by NHL postseason standards,
overtime, but it was as if the teams put on a production of “The Ring of the Niebelung” in Pittsburgh. The cousins found it an
interesting game, to say the least…
Fearless… OK, let’s get right to it. Dirty or not?
Cheerless… Kunitz should be kicked out of the country for
that hit on T.J. Oshie.
Fearless… Funny. Of
course, we mean the attempted assassination of Sidney Crosby by Alex Ovechkin
and Matt Niskanen with the game barely five minutes old. First, Ovechkin clocks Crosby in side of the
head, dulling his senses, then he slewfoots Crosby, kicking out his left foot
to put him off-balance as he heads through the low slot. Then, in the coup-de-grace, Matt Niskanen,
encamped on the grassy knoll of the right wing faceoff circle, cross checked
him in the face, snapping Crosby’s head back, and to the left…back, and to the
left…back, and to the left…
Cheerless… I ain’t the sharpest knife in the chandelier, but
from the time Crosby came across the blue line to when he collided with
Niskanen, it was about four seconds.
Hockey is a fast game. Do you
think Alex Ovechkin told himself… “I must break him,” circled in behind him,
recollected that Crosby had a history of concussion issues and thought, “hey,
if I whack his head, maybe I turn his brains into pirozhki,” whacked him, then
slewfooted him on purpose, knowing Matt Niskanen was 20 feet away looking to
deliver the kill shot… all in four seconds?
Who are you, Rob Rossi?
*****
Cheerless… Back to the actual game, what is with this team
and horking up leads? Last night was the
fifth time in nine games in the postseason that the Caps had a lead and lost
it. They are 3-2 in those games, but
really…stop doing that!
Fearless… It is part of a bigger problem. Only the Ottawa Senators have allowed more
second period goals (12) than the Caps (11), and no team has allowed more third
period goals than Washington (9). Shoot,
no team at all has allowed more goals than the Caps (27), period. They have more overtime goals scored than any
team in the playoffs so far (four), but that’s in no small part a product of
losing leads. The Caps have a fine
plus-4 goal differential in the first periods of games so far, but they have a
minus-five in the second periods and a minus-3 in the third periods of games. If they don’t end that nonsense, start
thinking about tee times.
*****
Fearless… This was just the third time in ten tries against
the Penguins that the Caps won a Game 3 and the first time they did it since
1995. The only time they beat the Pens
in a series was when they won a Game 3 on their way to the win. It was the first time in six tries that they
won a Game 3 in Pittsburgh.
Cheerless… Yeah, how ‘bout that? Since Ovechkin has been in the league the Caps
are 2-2 in series in which they win Game 3.
Let’s not read too much into that, okay?
Game 4 doesn’t seem to matter much, either. The Caps are 4-3 when winning Game 4 in those
same years (including a series win against Toronto this year).
*****
Cheerless… Three games in this series, the third and fourth
lines have a total of one point. And
even that one – an assist by Lars Eller – was recorded skating with Alex
Ovechkin and T.J. Oshie (Ovechkin got the goal). Last year against the Pens, the Caps third
and fourth lines recorded four points by four different players in six games
(Jay Beagle and Andre Burakovsky had goals, Tom Wilson and Jason Chimera had
assists). Haven’t we seen this movie?
Are we expecting it to end any different if it’s just a remake of the
same movie?
Fearless… The Eller-Wilson-Burakovsky line is a 72.73
Corsi-for at 5-on-5 in the postseason.
Of 167 forwards having skated at least 50 5-on-5 minutes, Burakovsky has
the best individual Corsi-for at fives in the league (66.01). Wilson is tenth (60.48), and Eller is 12th
(60.00; numbers from Corsica.hockey). Either these guys just forgot
how to get puck to and into the net, or they have had the worst luck imaginable
from a fancystats perspective.
*****
Fearless… Talk about worst luck imaginable. The Caps have a two-goal lead late, and the
Pens get one on a shot from Evgeni Malkin that looked to nick the heel of Karl
Alzner’s skate, altering the trajectory of the puck upward enough to clear
Braden Holtby’s left pad, then they get another when a shot hit T.J. Oshie and
changed direction past Holtby. But he
was solid before that and sucked it up after for his best performance of the
series and one of, if not his best of the entire postseason to date. Just in time, I’d say.
Cheerless… In nine games so far, Holtby has allowed fewer
than three goals in consecutive games just once (Games 5 and 6 against Toronto,
in which he allowed one goal in each).
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves and pronounce him “cured” of whatever
yips he had.
*****
Peerless… The dominant story over the next two days is going
to be the health of Sidney Crosby and the likelihood of his return for Game 4,
or perhaps even the series. There are a
lot of ways this can play out in terms of whether his absence advantages the
Penguins (steely team resolve, Malkin doing well over his career in Crosby’s
absence) or the Capitals (not having to face the game’s best player in addition
to the absence of Pittsburgh’s best defender in Kris Letang and their number
one goalie, Matt Murray).
The way we see this is a situation that provides the Caps
with another opportunity to demonstrate the difference between this team and
its predecessors. They have to be a team
with no memory and no conscience. They
just need to stick to business, play the team in front of them, assert their
will, and stand on their throat. Sounds
easy, doesn’t it? Yeah, if it was, I’d
be centering Fearless and Cheerless for an NHL team. Don’t see that happening soon. Let’s just hope the Caps find a way to find their inner ruthlessness and come home with a tied series that looks more like one to their
advantage.
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