Image by Danny

Raise your hand if you expected Tuesday’s Capitals/Blue Jackets game– the first after the trade deadline– to be a grim, fin-headed mess of a hockey game. The good guys won in the end, but if it costs them Michael Latta for any length of time, I won’t look back on tonight as a victory.

The game started as so many of them do: with Alex Ovechkin opening up scoring, this time with a savvy deflection of Brooks Orpik’s shot. Eric Fehr waited at the doorstep to make it 2-0 before the first period was up, letting us think this would be a secure, uneventful win.

Dumb. The second period was a penalty-laden mess, and it played to Lumbus’ advantage. David Savard and Scott Hartnell each scored with a pair of darts– with Tom Wilson’s net-crash goal in between.

Ovi struck again in the third period because screw the Jackets. Scott Hartnell earned his second while Troy Brouwer was in the box and threatened to tie it on a suspicious late-game penalty, but Holtby was superior. Marcus Johansson got the empty netter and that was that.

Caps beat Jackets 5-3. Let’s get the hell out of here.

UPDATE: I feel like a creep from overlooking this. Joel Ward played in his 500th NHL game tonight. Since coming from Nashville a few years ago, Ward has been beloved in the locker room and reliable on the ice. Congratulations to Joel for the accomplishment, and best wishes for the 500 yet to come.

• Alex Ovechkin continues his torrid scoring pace. Goals 42 and 43 (Ward and Wilson) came tonight– the difference makers– plus two more towards the records held by Pivonka and Bondra. I think Ovi will have both by season’s end. He played with a lot of hart tonight.

• What did you make of John Carlson on PP1? I think he’s a terrific manager of the puck, but I don’t think he holds a candle to Green when it comes to setting up Ovi shots from the Ovi spot.
• Alright: the fighting. It began at the tail end of the first period, when Michael Latta fought Justin Falk to defend the honor Tom Wilson. The many extracurriculars of the second period all sorta stemmed from those first fisticuffs. In all we saw 80 minutes of penalties, most of it incomprehensible to me because I don’t speak the lost arcane language of the bipedal zebra.
• Because all those fights seemed genuine and organic to me, I can’t muster any outrage. It didn’t seem to me at any point that the players were fighting to make a statement for their coach that they shouldn’t be sent down the A, where they’d lose 90 percent of their salary. Instead, it was “Bro, don’t run my bro, bro. [Punch].” I can’t get behind that fully, but I definitely understand it.
• Except in the case of Michael Latta. In my tepid take, Jared Boll charged and boarded Latta, who was defenseless. Latta left the game and did not return. The DOPS phone better be ringing.
• Boll’s brothers, as mentioned in the pregamer, are in the band The Hudson Branch. We discussed the hit on twitter.  (They’re a good band– check ’em out. And no, I wouldn’t link that or say that if they were dicks.)

@davidasachs @russianmachine let's watch that hit again and then see if you want to start something with all the Boll brothers

— The Hudson Branch (@thehudsonbranch) March 4, 2015

@russianmachine @nhlplayersafety ooo well… I'm beginning to see your point!

— The Hudson Branch (@thehudsonbranch) March 4, 2015

• Jason Chimera continues to kill it. Chimmer added two assists (and one fight) to his ledger tonight, the second time he’s had two apples in a game in the last week. Terrific work from the vet. Chimmer rules. Yeah, I said it.
• Brooks Laich was a healthy scratch for the first time in my memory. I don’t really know what to say about that.
• Weird penalty night: penalty shot on an iffy call, delay of game on Marcus Johansson in the waning minutes, a curious distribution of penalties on the Wilson/Boll/Latta thing– plus a number of missed calls, most notably Alex Ovechkin getting tripped as he worked on goal number Orpik.

Joe B suit of the night

Like I said: I didn’t have a big problem with the way these fights came about, but that doesn’t mean the tenor of this game worked in Washington’s favor. The less the Caps played their 5v5 game, the narrower the shot differential got.

I get “thick and proud,” and to a large extent I agree, but I like “play hockey and win games” even more.

A little good, a little bad. Two big standings points. Get well soon, Latta.

Full RMNB Coverage of Caps at Blue Jackets