The Washington Capitals and the Pittsburgh Penguins played a chaotic slobberknocker of hockey for an hour on Sunday night.
Bryan Rust and Trevor Daley put the Pens ahead in the first period. Jason Chimera and Andre Burakovsky tied the game in the second, but Tom Kuhnhackl gave Pittsburgh the lead after forty, which Matt Cullen and Chris Kunitz extended in the third. Holtby got pulled, and then Justin Schultz welcomed Philipp Grubauer to the game.
Wow. That was brutal. Pens beat Caps 6-2.
- ^ The docket.
- Well, at least those first few minutes were fun, eh?
- Books will one day be written about the individual and systemic failures that led to the Penguins’ first few goals. An overconfident breakout by Dmitry Orlov, an unwise pinch by Mike Weber— both of these indicate to me a Caps team that doesn’t just need to “retool” their 5v5. Since the trade deadline, the Caps are barely hanging in the middle third of the league in possession. It’s not okay.
- OTOH, Jason Chimera is still producing at age 36. Actually, the way I phrased that is too modest. Jason Chimera is scoring like a terror. On Sunday, for his 18th of the season, Chimera didn’t even need a hockey stick. He needs two more goals to tie his career high. AT AGE THIRTY SIX.
- Ian addressed the escalation of the second period already, but I’ll add two points: Washington is manifestly bad at getting favorable calls, so I’d argue that they should be disincentivized from getting in those 50/50 situations at all. And that whole fiasco was the result of the Caps playing scrappy because they had first been playing crappy.
- Justin Williams, supposed bacon bits, got wrecked in match-ups today. He had the team’s lowest 5v5 differential.
- Alex Ovechkin had one shot attempt through 40 minutes. It was blocked. One layer of critique there would be to pick on top-line Beagle. I don’t think that it’s it, though Ovi was joined by Kuznetsov and Oshie in the final period. To me, Ovi’s long-languishing lower-body injury seems to be the bigger factor. I remember 2012, when an Ovechkin frustrated with his offensive ability would resort to a purely physical game. That’s what we saw late in this one. Clean hit, btw.
- Braden Holtby was pulled after allowing 5 goals on 26 shots. He spent 8 of his 48 minutes shorthanded.
- Mike Weber went off for a five-minute major for boarding in the third period. It was exactly the sort of hit that the league instructs players to pull up on. After 7 games of Weber in a Washington uniform, from bad pinches to bad hits to truly bad, Ian-caliber skating, I’ve seen enough. Taylor Chorney, whose name I don’t just remember but now remember fondly, is a good 6D.
Artist’s rendering of killer prehistoric penguin of the day
So, yes: The Penguins are good. Even without Malkin, they’re good. (Hot take: Without Malkin they lean even more on Crosby, who might eventually burn out, but for now it’s paying dividends– so maybe they’re better because Malkin is out? Sorry; I’ll log off shortly.) The Capitals are too eager to coast on shooting percentages and a stout goaltender and special teams. Those things are notoriously unreliable. The Capitals must do better or else we won’t see hockey in May,
I’m gonna be cryptic in this conclusion, so please forgive me.
This whole thing– the sport, the community, the website– it’s like a party. It’s a great damn party. It’s so good we want to invite everyone to the party. This ain’t the Little Rascals; we really do mean everyone is invited. The only thing that gets you kicked out of the party is being a jerk to the other partygoers.
But when we first came to the party, there were a whole bunch of bouncers and barricades and velvet ropes. Some of them were subtle and visible only to the people who weren’t already at the party. It is our duty as party hosts to get more people into the party and rip those barricades down. We’re gonna sneak as many people into this party as we can until the man shuts us down.
So, uh, this game sucked, but party on.
