Photo credit: Patrick McDermott
DFL. The Washington Capitals came into Friday’s game against the Philadelphia Flyers in dead last place. Not in the southeast, not in the east. In the whole damn league.
Here’s the part where they turn it around.
Halfway into the game, Bruno Gervais sent a loose puck deep into Holtby’s net. Nick Backstrom tied it up with his first goal of the year, a patient deke to beat Ilya Bryzgalov one-on-one late in the second. Troy Brouwer took the lead with a brilliant near-side roofer. Wojtek Wolksi robbed Baby Schenn and put a one-touch goal on Bryz to make it 3-1. The Flyers got one back with a Brayden Schenn rocket right as the power play expired.
Caps beat Flyers 3-2.
And that’s how ya do it. Even without winning the puck-possession game, the Caps won this one– due in part to increased discipline as well as some solid goaltending and fancy moves.
I know everyone is a bit jammed up over the Caps right now. Our brains tell us they’re not a bad team, but as those losses keep piling up it’s easy to get cynical. I don’t have anything profound to say about that right now except: Yeah. That’s the point.
The Game is going to test you as a fan. Sometimes you’re up, and it’s important not to be cocky then. Sometimes you’re down, and then you cannot despair. From where I stand, what matters is that we celebrate success and think hard on defeat.
Tonight was a success. Hopefully, the first of many. We came, we saw, we wolski’d. There are more bad beats coming, and definitely a few our team will deserve to lose as well. And when those happen… well, I’ll turn it over to Toby Ziegler:
We win together. We lose together. We celebrate and we mourn together. And defeats are softened and victories sweeter because we did them together.
Good win. Let’s do it again on Sunday.
Kanoooobs! With the poorly timed nose-picking. @russianmachine pic.twitter.com/OgpAEATH
— StopThrowingHats (@stopthehats) February 2, 2013
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