Photo: Christian Petersen

I don’t get it. Twenty minutes in, the Washington Capitals looked like they almost had it figured out. Despite some sub-optimal lines, they held a lead over an inferior team. Then they stopped skating, surrendered the lead to the Arizona Coyotes, and then looked not much better than the Oates Caps. I don’t get it, but at least they had Eric Fehr to seal the deal.

The two players we expected the least from, Jason Chimera and Jay Beagle, combined for a skill goal in the first period when Chimera burst into the o-zone then dropped to the late-guy Beagle, who put it in the back of the net. The Caps had control for the rest of the period, but surrendered all momentum in the second, culminating in Oliver Ekman-Larsson’s goal into a practically empty net.

Nobody could score in the third, so we got to see the dry scrape– maybe for the last time. Then, in overtime, Eric Fehr crashed the goddamn net and won it.

Caps beat Yotes 2-1 in overtime!

• Per hockeystats.ca, those are the shot attempts through 40 minutes. See the flat blue line that lasts more than half of the second period? That’s the Capitals taking their foot off the pedal when they have the lead. Again. This team desperately needs to remember how to SCOAR MOAR GOALS.
• Or score any goals, which the top six haven’t done in over two games.
• Braden Holtby has had shutouts in his last two starts as long as you count only the shots he’s been in the net for. Lately, the Caps need their goalies to be perfect in order to win cleanly, and Holtby was only almost perfect, so that’s why we went to OT. If you’re making a list of every possible problem, Holtby’s goaltending gotta be one of them, I guess, if you’re a completionist. It’s just not a big problem– at least not in the last ten days.
• Top-line Tom Wilson is not working. He’s laying big hits like crazy, but those hits only happen when his team doesn’t have the puck. In one second-period shift, Wilson turned over the puck in the defensive zone, then put a huge hit on Michalek behind the Arizona net, then couldn’t get back to his own zone, resulting in an outmatched Nick Backstrom committing a hook. If the only part of that shift we hear about is the big hit, I’ll be quite frustrated.
• After going sans on Saturday, the Caps finally got some power-play time on Tuesday. Alex Ovechkin looked like Ovi during a monster first-period power play– basically a two-minute shooting frenzy. And that was all the offense (unblocked shot attempts) he could muster all night.
• “Oh man, Peter. You must feel like an idiot. You said Jason Chimera and Jay Beagle weren’t playing well, and then they scored.” On the contrary, my hypothetical strawman. Two players on my preferred hockey team bucked off a pattern of bad play to do something pretty. I love being wrong like that. I hope they prove me wrong twenty more times. Being wrong is one of life’s best pleasures.
• Martin Erat, ma bookie, dived a well-embroidered dive in the second period. I think that’s the first dive I’ve seen in a Caps game– and the first since the league set up some kind of secret-police watchlist for serial embellishers.
• Matt Niskanen hit Mike Stone with a high slapped puck late in the third period. Had the puck not been slowed on a block, it could have been scary bad. Instead it was just bad. Stone went straight to the locker room.
• Eric Fehr is the man. Great apple from Brooks Orpik too.

Pretty elite Joe B suit of the night

I don’t get it. The team is excruciatingly close to being really good, but they keep on playing games like this. Thank goodness for Eric Fehr for salvaging what could’ve been a waste.

If they played sixty. minutes like they played that first twenty.

If they put their lines together coherently.

If Braden Holtby stayed in his net.

If they shot first and shot often.

If.

Panicking is still silly, but some anxious confusion about what the heck the Caps are doing right now wouldn’t be unwarranted. At least they got two standings points and a happy ending.

We’ve got two scrub teams in our future– the Avs and the Sabres. The Caps need to look like a dramatically better team by Saturday, replete with scoarmoargoals and such. Let’s do it.

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Coyotes