Mike Green scored with one of your sticks.
If you turned off Saturday’s Capitals-Predators game after twenty minutes, I’m worried for you. Yes, it was ugly at that point, but the Caps team of the game’s latter two-thirds wasn’t so bad. If you tuned out, you’d have missed Troy Brouwer’s hero pose and Mike Green’s Ovi spot routine. It was still a brutal loss, but it wasn’t such a bad game after all.
The Caps actually looked pretty good for ten minutes, but after failing to convert a 4v3, the Predators took over. First it was Mattias Ekholm, whose pretty backhand goal came right after the Caps power play expired. Then Mike Fisher took the wheel after Karl Alzner lost his stick and a battle in the crease to Filip Forsberg. Speaking of that dude, Forsberg broke our hearts and ended Holtby’s afternoon with a solo scoar.
That all happened in the first damn period.
The second found Troy Brouwer scoring twice, his 19th and 20th of the season, to put the Caps within striking distance. Things were looking up, but then Mike Ribeiro, who is probably a garbage human being, gave the Preds their fourth goal.
Mike Green put the Caps back within one just 20 seconds into the third, scoring on a Greenie shot from the Ovi spot with his Stealth. The Capitals ratcheted up the pressure late, but Pekka Rinne held onto the lead.
Preds beat Caps 4-3.
- Jury is still out, but I think Nashville might have won the Filip Forsberg trade. That’s all I’m gonna say about it, but Ian’s working on a story that I’m sure will have you in stitches. Or possible in tears. And I’m sure someone’s gonna be like “get over it, whiners!” To these people I will politely remind you: We write about hockey. This is hockey. Hockey is pain. Pain is life.
- But let’s talk about Troy Brouwer, who was the Capitals’ entire offense in the second period. Dude got his 19th goal 19 seconds into the second period, and then scored a shorty to give number 20 his 20th goal. Stellar game for Brouwer, and probably a good afternoon for the Brouwer Rangers.
- Alejandro De Aza hit an Earl Weaver special, a three-run homer. I write what I want.
- Your officials today, Eric Furlatt and Kyle Rehman, got a lot of criticism from the Verizon Center fans for calling everything they saw– and a few things they did not see. Personally, I’m okay with the refs calling a lot of penalties– the game more closely resembles what I watched when I was younger– all power play, all the time.
- Tom Wilson and Alex Ovechkin both suffer for their reputations. Wilson got a pretty whack pair of minors after a scuffle with Mattias Ekholm, then Ovechkin got called for a dive. I don’t think he actually dove on that trip, but he did embellish a bit earlier on that same sequence. If Ovechkin has been warned before (and we don’t know if he has), he’ll be fined $2,000. The language on Rule 64 is a little unclear, but I think Barry Trotz might get fined as well. I welcome any amicus briefs you want to offer in the comments. Best comment on Ovi’s dive:
https://twitter.com/frankwisniewski/status/581881927755571201
- Early on, I thought the Capitals would run away with this one. When Evgeny Kuznetsov‘s strong drive to the net earned his team a minute-long two-man advantage, I thought Washington would get the early lead. Instead, the Caps collapsed low and put Ovechkin high during that 5v3, which seems to me to minimize the danger they pose. The Caps didn’t score, and the Preds burned them right after the penalty expired.
- The Caps had one functioning line: Alex Ovechkin, Nick Backstrom, and any of the three guys they had on the right wing. Every other line got smoked– especially Brooks Laich, Joel Ward, and Eric Fehr— who were right around 30-percent possession until late in the game.
- Pretty decent game for Justin Peters in relief of Braden Holtby, who wasn’t quite himself today. Thank goodness for small favors.
Joe B suit of night
Alright, let’s shake it off. That as pretty brutal at times, but the Caps did their best to redeemd themselves. No use in stewing over this one, and not much time to do it anyway. The Capitals have less than 24 hours to get up to Manhattan for an early-afternoon rendezvous with the league-leading Rangers tomorrow. Lundqvist and the Rags got smoked by the Bruins today; I wonder how they’ll react.
