Photo: Alex Brandon
The Washington Capitals didn’t play particularly well against the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday night, but an awful injury to Jimmy Howard, some sterling work on special teams, and some killer instinct in the dangerous zones vaulted the home team to a comfy lead over the possession monsters of the Motor City.
Troy Brouwer scored early in the first, exploiting a costly mistake by Jimmy Howard that forced him to leave the game. In the second period, Andre Burakovsky sent a perfect pass to John Carlson for a one-timer, and Joel Ward chopped at a loose puck to put the Wings in a three-goal hole. Before the second intermission, Jonathan Ericsson seized on a loose puck to make it 3-1. No change in the third, so the Caps enter the season’s back half on a high note.
Caps beat Wings 3-1.
Joe B suit of the seriously what is the deal with the wide ties lately
How did the Capitals score three goals with so little offense? That’s not a rhetorical question: the answer is luck. Or, if you wanna be a little more exacting, the answer is a non-repeatable skill.
The Caps are gonna have to right the ship when it comes to shot differential. They’ve got a couple lines that are dysfunctional and their best D-pairing no longer tilting the ice as it should. They can’t bank on wins like this one for too much longer.
But that’s way too a pessimistic note to end this game on. The Caps are now halfway through their 2014-15 campaign, and there’s a lot to celebrate. This game joins 21 others in the W column for the Capitals of Washington. This is a good team, and we’re gonna spend a lot of time discussing exactly what that means on Sunday. Join me for a supersized snapshot, and have a great night.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Red Wings
Russian Machine Never Breaks is not associated with the Washington Capitals; Monumental Sports, the NHL, or its properties. Not even a little bit.
All original content on russianmachineneverbreaks.com is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)– unless otherwise stated or superseded by another license. You are free to share, copy, and remix this content so long as it is attributed, done for noncommercial purposes, and done so under a license similar to this one.
Share On