Caps win skills competition against Habs to get 2 pts

Caps came out sloppy against the Montreal Canadiens, but persevered to win in the shootout 4-3.  The highlight reel of the night was Alex Ovechkin's goal which rivaled "The Goal".  Ovie passed to himself off the boards, made Habs defenseman Roman Hamrlik look silly, got tangled up and fell to the ice, shot the puck and celebrated his goal while still sliding on the ice. Wow, it's fun to be a Caps fan and it's a thrill to watch Ovie play his game.

Nicklas Backstrom made a beautiful play with a pass to Sergei Fedorov that came back to him to pot the 2nd goal in net for the Caps.  David Steckel got the 3rd goal (and 3rd star) by deflecting a shot from Tom Poti.

Now, for the rest of the game:

• Caps passing.....phew.
• Alexander Semin's hooking penalties...we've seen enough of those.
• Delay of game penalties...yes, Mike Green and many others, we've had enough of those, as well.
• Caps penalty kill (Habs scored 3 of 3) and two of them came within 4 and 5 seconds of starting the penalty kill...yuck.  That won't do for the playoffs boys.

The Caps and Habs came to a draw at the overtime period and went to the skills competition to decide the game.  Alexander Semin and Nicklas Backstrom (Coach Boudreau - why don't we use Backie more on the shootout?) scored for the Capitals and Caps goalie, Jose Theodore, stopped Montreal's shooters for the win.

The Colorado Avalanche come to the phone booth on Friday and I'm going to be there. 

So, please, let's not play down to a struggling team Caps.

Let's go Caps!

Caps lose to Habs 5-4 with 22 seconds left

With 22 seconds left in a game, it's tough to swallow a loss that doesn't even make it to overtime to, at least, give the Caps 1 point. Sigh. Caps fans are spoiled, too, and two losses in a row stinks especially with a tough stretch of games coming up (Boston twice, Penguins and Detroit to name a few) over the next few weeks. They haven't lost two in a row since that horrible West coast road trip back before Thanksgiving. Oh, well, the Caps get a little dose of reality.

I didn't get to watch the game too closely as I was at a party (with a couple of other Capital fans) so I'll skip the highlights and lowlights for today. It was nice to see Alexander Semin find his scoring touch again as he got 2 goals and the 3rd star of the game. Michael Nylander scored one of the flukiest goals I've ever seen with a redirected puck from Alex Ovechkin hitting his skate and going into the net. Tomas Fleischmann also found the back of the net on a pretty pass from Matt Bradley.

The defense and goaltending, on the other hand, were atrocious. Poor Milan Jurcina and Karl Alzner both failed on the play that ended in the game winning goal for Montreal. Alzner didn't clear the puck out of the zone, Jurcina lost the puck in his skates and didn't check Kostitsyn so he scored and Brent Johnson didn't make a save when he absolutely had to. Johnson hasn't looked as good as he did prior to getting injured. Let's hope it's not a trend.

The Caps face the Edmonton Oilers at the phone booth tomorrow night. I hope they're motivated.

Let's go Caps!

Varlamov gets 1st star in his first win over the Habs

The rookie netminder Simeon Varlamov earned the first star of the game for his stellar performance in Montreal against the Canadiens making 32 stops on 33 shots to make sure the Caps won this 2-1 game.  Not the easiest place to make your debut for sure, but Varlamov appeared calm and survived 8 power play attempts, including a 4 minute high sticking penalty on Alex Ovechkin.  The Caps defense helped him out which is nice.  Regardless, that's an impressive performance for a raw talent, but still developing goalie who's only played 13 games in the AHL and 1 preseason game for the Caps on the smaller North American ice sheet.  

I had to watch this game on my laptop as I was out of town so it was tough for me to fully appreciate Varlamov's performance on such a small screen.  But, I'm thrilled for him and excited to be a Caps fan knowing he's most likely the future goalie and will be for a long time. 

The other amazing news from last night is that Michael Nylander actually scored a goal.  I couldn't believe he actually shot the puck, but he was standing right in front of the night so, thank you, Michael.  It was the game winning goal.

The bad news Sergei Fedorov and Tyler Sloan left the game with injuries.  Nicklas Backstrom also left but with a migraine as reported by Tarik today in the Washington Post.

Since it was impossible for me to discern the highlights and lowlights by watching the game on a laptop, I'll skip that for this post.

Caps play at the New York Islanders on Tuesday.  It'll be nice if they can put together two road wins in a row.

Let's go Caps!

Theodore gets shutout in 3-0 win over Canadiens

Goalie Jose Theodore had a score to settle with his old team the Montreal Canadiens and he did it in style making some spectacularly athletic saves in the 2nd period that had the fans at the phone booth on their feet in a standing ovation.  He played his best game as a Capital and got the first star for the game.  I've never been a big Theodore fan, but I want him to be successful now because he plays for my team.  Hopefully this will be a big confidence boost for him that helps him find the consistency he needs to win games for the Caps in front of an injury plagued blue line that featured four Hershey Bears players last night.

The highlights:

• The call ups from the Hershey Bears continue to play well and are helping the Caps to still win games.  Rookie defender Karl Alzner continues to impress people by playing sound positional defense.  It's going to be hard to send him back down, but I don't know how the Caps will manage the salary cap issue.  Milan Jurcina plays better with Alzner than with John Erskine and his blocked shot late in the third helped preserve the shutout.  
• Alex Ovechkin, 2nd star of the game,  continued his 10 game scoring streak with the 2nd goal of the game from an unbelievable angle.  I thought he was too far past the net, but not Ovie. Nicklas Backtrom got the assist and both he and Viktor Kozlov played great for the top line again.
• Tomas Fleischmann got the first goal of the game, after stealing the puck, on a pretty pass back and forth play with Michael Nylander. 
• David Steckel netted the 3rd with a blind toss to the net that went in.  
• The Caps weren't expected to win this game against a Montreal Canadien team that just beat the Detroit Red Wings 3-1 on the road.  But, the Caps call ups did their job and, in fact, the defense was stellar last night.
• The organizational depth that this team has here and in the AHL and ECHL is a credit to GM George McPhee (I can't believe I said that as I don't give GMG too many props.), but to win a game against the 5th place team in the East with 1/3 of your players on injured reserve is quite an achievement.

The lowlights:

• None.  Okay, maybe too many Habs fans at the phone booth, but the place was still rocking the red.

Next up, the Columbus Blue Jackets tonight.  The Caps are not nearly as good on the road as they've been at home this year so it'll be a challenge, but maybe the Hershey Bears playing will bring good luck.

Let's go Caps!

Zubie Nets 2 Goals & The Caps Finally Win

In my last post, I mentioned my disappointment with this Caps team and tonight's win against Montreal, a team 10-points ahead of the Caps in the Eastern Conference, proves that this Caps team can play against contenders. That's why I get so frustrated sometimes.

Interestingly enough, it was Zubie who put the first two in the net (he's been in a scoring drought) and the Caps also got contributions from Nycholat and two more from Semin. Nycholat, the recent captain of the AHL Hershey Bears, has been impressive in his NHL stint and apparently the Caps management thinks so too as evidenced by the increase in his playing time from around 16 minutes to 24+ minutes.

The energy level of this Caps team reflected the way they looked earlier in their winning streak and I hope this game builds some confidence for the team. Maybe the flu knocked the team out more than I thought or Hanlon putting the old lines back together worked some magic.

To read the fan message boards right after the game is quite amusing, particularly, the entries that occur during the game. Right after the first period, there were topics like this...Semin looked horrible (hey, he scored 2 goals) and Huet is the only one that looks good (the Caps ran the league leading goalie in saves against off the ice...hmmm, running goalies off the ice is a familiar scene from the prior winning streak).

Caps have 2 more games in their 4-game homestand with the Thrashers, ugh, then the Flyers coming to Verizon Center.

Let's go Caps!