This is Mitch. (Photo: Scott)
Hello. It’s tomorrow. The Washington Capitals just beat the Anaheim Ducks. It was fun.
The Caps were bad in the first period and good in the third period, which is to say they were the Caps.
Getzlaf scored like .000025 seconds into the game.
Hey, Andre scored. We like Andre.
Buncha stuff happened, but nobody scored. Out of rego, into overtime. Out of overtime, into biscuit bullets.
- Perron didn’t put the biscuit in the basket.
- Oshie put the biscuit in the basket!
- Silfverberg didn’t put the biscuit in the basket.
- Kuznetsov didn’t put the biscuit in the basket.
- Perry put the biscuit in the basket! (Great fadeaway!)
- Backstrom put the biscuit in the basket!
Caps beat Ducks 2-1 in the shootout. 102 points!
- First: great damn game by Braden Holtby. Freaking superb.
- Except the Caps got scored on in the first minute, so that bad first period mojo ain’t over yet.
- It was a mostly even possession game on the macro scale, but it was the result of shifting extremes. Tom Wilson and Jason Chimera weren’t on for any offense at all during 5v5, and the Weber-Schmidt pairing spent nearly all of their shifts getting shelled by Anaheim. But the second and fourth lines were solid and pressing. More on this below.
- You see a fair bit of odd-man rushes in today’s NHL. Two-on-ones aren’t that uncommon. They’re Caterpie. Three-on-ones are like as common as a Togepi. But a four-on-one is like Zapdos. If you see it, it’s a big deal, and you’re probably in trouble. Except this time, Mike Weber was good and Corey Perry didn’t play the Zapdos very well.
.@russianmachine pic.twitter.com/t4wP75cwL9
— pfholden.bsky.social (@pfholden) March 8, 2016
- What even are the stats above? Percentages? Rates? Minutes? What comprises a forecheck? Who compiled these? Who did peer review? How do these stats correlate with winning? What’s their repeatability? Does the audience know what “PP” and “ES” are? Man, I thought SAP gave “analytics” a bad name.
- There is mounting evidence that NHL officials are trying to save Tom Wilson from himself.
- Weekday late games are brutal, but the tweet thread below is worth your click. It will redeem you. Enjoy. I know I did.
Are your pets asleep? Pics or gtfo.
— RMNB (@rmnb) March 8, 2016
- Alex Ovechkin committed two penalties (the first never got called as the Ducks scored) and looked really wrong for the first forty minutes. Then he came out in the third and made Anaheim goalie John Gibson do work.
- Mike Richards had been great for Washington until he revealed his double-agent status in the third period.
Braden Holtby's best save of the night actually came on a backhanded shot from his own teammate, Mike Richards pic.twitter.com/cdqGL0S2yK
— Ian Oland (@ianoland) March 8, 2016
- Bruce put too many Ducks on the ice in 3-on-3 overtime, which sounded great, but then Oshie carried the puck, so that was a waste, like camping out to see Gods of Egypt on opening night.
- I wrote this recap surrounded by a sleeping person and sleeping dog, which meant I had to stifle my excited reactions.
Joe B suit of the early morning
The result of the Caps having one dysfunctional forward line and one troubled d-pairing was a thrilling game with a rhythmic beat you can bailamos to. Really, if you stayed up late for this, you probably enjoyed yourself– and not just because we got cheeky on Twitter.
Late games are weird.
Let’s do it again on Wednesday. Now get some sleep.
