Friday night, the Washington Capitals continued their home stand with a soiree involving their former bench boss Bruce Boudreau and his Minnesota Wild team. This was the final game of the season that the Caps will play against a Western Conference team…unless we get another Cup Final.
Jordan Greenway opened scoring for the Wild during a sleepy first period. Brett Connolly deflected home a Nick Jensen drive to tie the game at one. Luke Kunin restored the Wild lead in the third.
Wild beat Caps 2-1.
- First period was a period that happened in a hockey game. The Wild scored a goal. The Capitals did not score a goal.
- Speaking of the Wild’s goal in that period, Brooks Orpik my dude. I feel like we don’t poke check with that kind of positioning in the big leagues.
- It feels like the Wild have about 56 dudes that were on different teams a couple weeks ago. The Caps do not play the west enough for me to be expected to keep up with this.
- Special shoutout to Craig Laughlin who powered through tonight’s broadcast on the day that his mother passed away at the age of 97. You and your entire family are in our thoughts, Locker.
a puck works too! pic.twitter.com/7dsw9iR400
— NBC Sports Capitals (@NBCSCapitals) March 22, 2019
- The Caps were pretty bad in the second and the period reminded me much more of the pre deadline Caps that I really did not like watching. Braden Holtby had to let the beast out on more than a few occasions and without a Brett Connolly tip-in, Devan Dubnyk would be riding through forty pretty darn easily.
- I get that the slingshot is almost like a football team coming out of the huddle, snapping the ball, and having its receivers then run their routes which I guess is supposed to disguise the entry and give the quarterback options, but…it really doesn’t feel like it does anything different than a normal breakout. It’s just a waste of time and this Caps power play was successful without it for a very long while.
- To further my complaining about the power play, I don’t think Alex Ovechkin should be deployed with the second unit anymore. The first unit has the elite passers and scoring brains that can feed Ovi’s one timer. The second unit feels like a waste of his legs and I feel like they should just be focused on getting pucks to the net no matter what.
- Matt Niskanen and the curious case of the never ending, 3:44 long shift. If I ever played that much consecutively in a hockey game, you’d need to drag me onto the bench.
If your favorite Teletubbies character wasn't the vacuum thing, you were wrong.
— RMNB (@russianmachine) March 22, 2019
- I felt like the third was probably the Caps best period but they just had no finish to their game and one ugly Niskanen turnover gave this win to Minnesota.
- The Caps second line, led by Evgeny Kuznetsov got absolutely smashed in this game at five-on-five. They were sub 30-percent in regards to shot attempt percentage and were on the ice for the Wild’s only goal.
- I thought Andre Burakovsky was superb in this game. Hustled all night.
- The amount of missed and shanked passes/shots in this game would make Luca Sbisa proud.
- Get Carl Hagelin some fluids and Michal Kempny a new leg. The latter can have one of mine.
Subdued digs for the gents tonight #JoeBSuitOfTheNight pic.twitter.com/7QhaspaYQH
— Good Tweet Pete 🌮 (@peterhassett) March 22, 2019
The Caps finish up their season series with the Philadelphia Flyers on Sunday afternoon and then the Caps have a home and home set with the surging (lol) Carolina Hurricanes.
Full RMNB Coverage of Caps vs Wild
Headline photo: Patrick McDermott
