Everything Else

Game #22 – Hawks vs. Capitals Q&A: Russian Machine Never Breaks…Unless It’s Drunk…Then Only Sorta

By Sam Fels 1644 0

RussianMachineNeverBreaks.com has been a quality Caps outlet for as long as we’ve been doing this. Follow them @RussianMachine. 

It’s odd for a Cup-winning team to lose its coach. What really happened with Barry Trotz and has it made any difference so far this year?

There’s probably less to the story of Trotz’s exit than meets the eye. Trotz’s contract was up at the end of last season, but he had a provision that would have extended him with a modest raise if he won the Cup. Trotz felt he deserved more than a modest raise, and the Caps felt they should not commit upwards of $20 million on a coach that would likely be fired before full term. Trotz had come very close to a firing this time last year, and Todd Reirden had been groomed to take over for a couple years now. It was an awkward split, but this is sort of the way it had to go.
The team is mostly the same, but they’re having massive trouble with team defense, especially on the PK. New AC Reid Cashman is reportedly in charge of the defense, and they’re certainly struggling so far.

Much like last year, Braden Holtby can’t seem to stop a sloth. He struggled last season, and then was excellent in the playoffs. What’s the deal here?

We think Holtby’s doing okay, but “okay” is sub par for Holtby. Instead of saving around 93% during 5v5 play, he’s barely saving above what we’d expect given his workload — and that’s the rub. Holtby’s job has gotten much harder in the last year: more shots and more of them from close up. The team needs to do slightly better for him, and then I suspect Holtby will climb back up to that 93% range.

Feel free to go ahead and taunt us about Michal Kempny. We’ve lost all feeling anyway. 

Kempny literally saved the Caps season. He replaced Madison Bowey in February and immediately transformed the blue line. He seemed just as happy about the change of scenery as we were. Flat out: the Caps could not have won the Cup without him. Thank you for sharing.
Actually, Kempny got a concussion in the preseason and hasn’t quite been on the ball yet this year. I hope he’ll get back to it soon.

With the defense this team still has, why do their metrics underwhelm?

A bunch of factors, but here are a few: they stink without the puck. They are way too passive on the forecheck, which leaves the potential of dangerous floaters like Ovechkin and Kuznetsov unexploited. Orlov and Niskanen seem to be having down years, and depth forward Andre Burakovsky can’t seem to get his scoring touch back after an injury-riddled season. Still, I expect the Caps to outscore their shot-attempt stats by a fair bit just on the strength of their shooting talent.

If the Caps went 0-82, would anyone around there really care?

In the words of JP at Japers Rink,
[}=[[[[[[[[[
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

Game #22 Preview Suite

Preview

Spotlight

Q&A

Douchebag Du Jour

I Make A Lot Of Graphs

Lineups & How Teams Were Built

Everything Else

You Share The Same Fate As The People You Hate – ’18-’19 Team Previews: Washington Capitals

By Matt McClure 2047 0

Oh yeah, these guys. While the Capitals finally hoisting the Cup last season was basically the equivalent of Denzel winning an Oscar for Training Day or Scorsese winning for The Departed, they certainly didn’t celebrate like a team that beat an expansion franchise, and to be fair, they did take out the top seed in the conference Lightning and the two-time defending champion and arch-nemesis in the form of the very tired Penguins, so the names won’t be ground out of the silver any time soon. Last season’s champions return mostly in tact, if more than a little bit dehydrated.

’17-’18: 49W-26L-7OT 256GF 239GA 22.5%PP 80.3%PK 47.96%CF 9.19SH% .9248SV%

 

Goaltending: Last year was finally the year that Braden Holtby broke under years of tremendous workloads, with sub .900 months of January and Febrary, ceding much of the home stretch of the season to Philipp Grubauer, who even started the playoffs in Round 1 against Columbus. But as Grubauer faltered, a somewhat rested Holtby was able to return to form and posted a .922 overall the remainder of the post season. With Grubauer shipped to Colorado for a second round pick, Holtby will now be backed up by something called Pheonix Copley (yes, that’s how his name is spelled) who has allowed 6 goals on the 35 shots he’s faced in the NHL since 2016. While Barry Trotz and his propensity for grinding goalies into dirt might be gone (due to some of the dumbest ass reasons ever), Holtby might have to play 70 games again out of necessity. He’s always generally been up to the task as one of the most consistent and stable goalies in the league and has a Vezina to prove it, but the modern game just simply can’t ask goalies to play that much.

Defensemen: Someone was going to pay John Carlson an exorbitant amount of money this past off season, particularly after the playoff run he had where he scored 5 goals and 20 total points from the back end, and given that the Caps actually walked away with hardware this time, it makes a certain degree of sense that it would be them to keep the home grown product in the fold. Carlson is the de facto #1 defenseman here, and he’s certainly paid like it, but it’s the goddamnedest thing that his game picked up right around the time that the Capitals acquired Michal Kempny from a long-out-of-it team with a coach that somehow couldn’t or wouldn’t figure out how to properly use him. Kempny’s coming out party in the post season earned him a contract of $2.5 per over four years, which will be an absolute steal if he plays the way he did in Washington post-trade. Matt Niskanen and Dmitry Orlov provide a fair amount of offensive punch themselves, however one of them is still going to be dragging around what’s left of the wheelbarrow full of cinder blocks that is Brooks Orpik. Orpik was traded, bought out, and resigned back with Washington for $1 million for this year, which probably figures to be his last as he turns 38 a week from today. It’s a solid grouping, but it still kind of hinges on Michal Kempny not being a fluke.

Forwards: The strong suit of any team that has Alexander Ovechkin on it. The sheer firepower that Ovechkin has produced in his career, particularly having occurred in this era, has been poured over at length in this space. Having just turned 33 on Monday, he’s not quite the force of nature that he once was, but he can still basically get whatever he wants on the ice whenever he wants it, even if he probably didn’t fully deserve the Conn Smythe he was awarded in June, which should have gone to Evgeny Kuznetsov and his 32 post season points. Kuzya’s emergence has given the Caps some true center depth as Nicklas Backstrom ages gracefully into a slighly reduced role as a #2 center, and Lars Eller slots in nicely as a #3. Timothy Jimothy Leif predictably did not put up the Mike Bossy-esque shooting percentage numbers last year that he did in his contract year, and the game he plays at 31 would indicate that age is going to hit him in a hurry when it finally catches up, and a summer of being dick in the dirt drunk probably won’t help that. Andrei Burakovsky will be counted on to take the next step while providing some size on the wing, and Brett Connolly and Jakub Vrana will certainly contribute some zest from the bottom six. Tom Wilson is now paid $5.16 million dollars a year to attempt to injure other players and generally be a pus-seeping carbunkle on the ass of the league.

Outlook: After the absolutely boneheaded decision to not pay Barry Trotz like the top tier head coach that he always has been in the wake of his and the franchise’s first Cup, and Todd Reirden has subsequently been giving his first ever head coaching job as Trotz has fucked off to Long Island/Brooklyn/wherever they play. Given how publicly and infamously the Capitals partied this year, having a rookie coach in the room doesn’t exactly seem like a great way to get everyone back on task to making another run at things. This team is still stacked given the restraints the salary cap imposes, but it took a lot of tread off the tires just to get to #1, and they may just not have it in them anymore. Given the personnel, the team can only get so bad, and they’ll probably ride Holtby until he collapses in the regular season which could very well win them an iffy division, but in all likelihood everyone will probably run out of gas by the time the inevitable post-season matchup with the Penguins comes around again.

Previous Team Previews

Detroit Red Wings

Buffalo Sabres

Boston Bruins

Florida Panthers

Montreal Canadiens

Ottawa Senators

Tampa Bay Lightning

Toronto Maple Leafs

Carolina Hurricanes

Columbus Blue Jackets

New Jersey Devils

New York Islanders

New York Rangers

Philadelphia Flyers

Pittsburgh Penguins

Everything Else

Night Songs – That’s How Ovie Does It

By Sam Fels 2590 0

Call me a sucker for these moments.

I’ve certainly had my issues with the Washington Capitals. I’ve definitely reveled in their failures along with everyone else, spiced with a tinge of frustration with them for not making good on the promise of so many teams in the past (don’t tell me Caps-Hawks in ’10 wouldn’t have been a much better series than the Flyers, not that I care now). Tom Wilson’s presence. Timothy Leif, though if Oshie had become a Hawk once upon a time he’d be one of our favorites I’m sure. Bruce Boudreau. Barry Trotz at times. They’ve been far from the most annoying team in the world, and if you’re a hockey fan for just two to three years or so you’ll be annoyed by every team that isn’t yours.

But I don’t know how you didn’t smile watching Alex Ovechkin last night. Sure, it’s not like any professional athlete will “suffer” when they don’t win a championship, given the perks that come along with it. And yet this is what they’ve been trained and drafted and deployed to do their whole lives. It’s been their raison d’etre, and if it’s not they can expect a torrent of horseshit thrown their way (for evidence, check out Pat Boyle calling out Jonathan Toews on his podcast/propaganda).

And especially when it’s Ovie, who’s basically had to eat all the shit for the Caps for 13 years without ever balking. Writers looking for an easy scapegoat, who wouldn’t dare call him a choker or accuse him of not caring if he came from Swift Current. Coaches trying to cover their own incompetence by laying it as his feet. Caps fans will deny it now but there were a fair few calling for him to be traded after whatever playoff failure you want to choose. The constant comparisons to Sidney Crosby.

And Ovie had to swallow all of that Caps-Pens bullshit, even though most of it came well before he was even thought of as a prospect. Ovie’s Caps and Sid’s Pens have only met in the playoffs four times. And one of those was 10 years ago. Does it even count? The Caps-Pens “thing” is basically only slightly more of a “thing” than Hawks-Canucks or Hawks-Wild. Fuck, the Hawks and Predators almost have the same recent playoff history. And yet Ovie and the Caps had to choke it all down because the Pens went on to win a Cup each time after beating them, which doesn’t really have much to do with them, does it?

You see Ovechkin last night, quite simply the greatest scorer the game has ever seen, and what it meant to him. Or those fans who flooded Chinatown and elsewhere last night in DC (wishing Chicago might have found a gathering space for the Hawks once, but oh well. I wouldn’t have been there anyway, because I needed to be punching Killion at the bar). You can’t help but smile. It’s been a good hockey town, whatever you think of it. And you see them do it for the first time, and just maybe you remember what it was like the first time for you. It’s always good to be reminded why you bother with this in the first place.

I saw a lot about how this clearly isn’t the best team and how this is how the NHL works. And maybe it is. At this point, we know the regular season standings don’t tell a complete story. I think you take the teams that have 105 points or more and you basically throw them in a “top group” and they’re all the same. The Caps won a division that produced five playoff teams. They clearly don’t suck.

Matt had it right yesterday, that when you get to this stage, it’s usually the chalk. You may say this team or that team wasn’t the best one, but there hasn’t been a Cup winner in a very long time that came from nowhere. They’re almost always among that “top group.” You can get some weirdos in the Final, and then the team with more future Hall of Famers wins. The Caps have at least two in Ovechkin and Backstrom, and Kuznetsov could be one day if he maintains this level. It’s not that hard.

I wonder where Ovie goes from here. After Sid won his first he had his first 50-goal season the next out, seemingly freed of what had been expected and placed on him since he was a teenager. Does Ovechkin have anther 50 or 60-goal season in him? I wouldn’t ever doubt him.

It’s funny, because most of this playoff run, this Caps team has been somewhat derided as “not a vintage Caps team.” And yet if one of the previous two that were better than this, had just gotten a bounce or two here or there against the Penguins, and won a Cup before this, we’d say this version did it on know-how and confidence, much like the ’15 Hawks. It’s still the same core, they just got a little more luck, a little more goaltending, and there it is. Looking back at our local outfit, Game 7 OT in ’13 could have gone any direction. The Bruins were a post away from going up 3-0. Two multi-OT games against Nashville in ’15 would have swung that series, or Pekka Rinne not drinking a bathtub of cough syrup before every game would have. And then what would the narrative be?

It’s why talk of “windows” is hardly the whole discussion. There isn’t really more the Caps could have done to now be a multi-Cup winner, a save here or there or a deflection here or there. I guess that’s the magic of it all. Teams can only put themselves in position, but after that so much of it is out of their hands. It’s fascinating theater and torturous following.

Good for Ovie. Good for Trotz, who coached his ass off this spring. Holtby too. It’s a good ending. Maybe not the best. But good.

Anyway, Vegas Eulogy Monday.

Everything Else

Night Songs – Stanley Cup Final Game 4

By Sam Fels 2047 0

And now we’re on the brink, though everyone already writing the tributes to the Capitals might want to check their history when leading a series 3-1. Even this grouping, for the most part, was around when they blew one of these to the Rangers three years ago in one off those Caps-Rags series we’ve all tried to burn from our collective memories. So yeah, if you love history and gremlins and such, you know this one isn’t over.

As the Caps were laying the wood to the Knights last night, there were far too many top-of-the-profession writers remarking on how the “magic” had run out for the Knights. They’re either willfully trying to push an angle that doesn’t exist, or they’re collectively stupid. Or both, I suppose.

If you watched the last round for the Knights Who Say Nee, even though it ended in five games it was hardly a dominating effort. The Jets ran the show for long stretch of that series, and yet kept running up against a very toothy wall in Marc-Andre Fleury. .950. There’s nothing else to say. There’s no planning or method to defeat a goalie who is throwing a .950 at you. If you can’t really conceive of that, just know with a goalie playing that well it takes 40 shots to find two goals, and even if your goalie is paying really well the other team can probably find two bounces off something for two of their own. At the very worst, Vegas was always gaining a shot at a coin-flip. This is the sport, really.

.845

That’s Fleury’s SV% in this series. And sure, it’s not like the Capitals are just a bunch of escaped wildebeests that got loose or something. Kuznetsov, Ovechkin, Backstrom, Oshie, Carlson, with help from Eller and his ilk, there’s a lot of talent here even if they lost some from previous seasons. But .845 is .845, and you’re going to lose when that happens. The Knights are losing, plain and simple.

Mostly, if you go by the underlying info, the Knights and Caps have been pretty much even, with the Knights just shading it. Some of that is they’ve been chasing the game more than any other series, but the fact that they’re chasing the game is down to Fleury suddenly turning into Tigger as much as anything else. This is still a team that’s basically one line, whatever inflated narrative Eddie and Pierre want to make about Reaves and Nosek on the 4th line, and it’s not really built to come from behind.

Sure, the Caps are fast enough to try and attack the defense of the Knights, which is not gifted with the puck other than Schmidt (and Engelland is AWFUL and the Caps have finally showed that). But the Jets did too, they just didn’t have an answer for the final boss in the crease. He’s basically provided the Caps a cheat code.

-While it’s been easy to discuss how the Knights are made up of players nobody else wanted (which isn’t totally true, I’m sure the Pens would have loved to keep Fleury as a backup, except you don’t pay backups $6 million and Fleury wouldn’t want to be that anyway. James Neal, Schmidt, Theodore, one or two others are players that those teams would have loved to keep but thanks to the expansion and cap rules, they simply couldn’t), the Caps have their fair share of weird pickups.

Oshie was acquired for Troy Brouwer (a deal I actually liked for the Blues at the time, and now Troy Brouwer has turned into a Jalopy). Michal Kempny…well, let’s not do this again. Lars Eller was discarded by two teams who didn’t appreciate him for Jaro Halak and and two 2nd round picks. As strange as it sounds for a 1st round pick, Kuznetsov actually slipped farther than he should have because teams knew he wouldn’t come over from the KHL for a few seasons. Matt Niskanen was allowed to walk from Pittsburgh.

It’s not just the Knights who can profit off the idiocy of others.

-What the Knights also can do like every other team is act like a bunch of asshats when they’re getting their dicks handed to them on the scoreboard. There’s Ryan Reaves doing Reaves things because his team is fucked for the night, which proves exactly nothing.

While Gerard Gallant is going to walk with the Coach Of The Year award, and he should, keep in mind he couldn’t keep his team wrangled in last night when the contest was over and they ended up losing without any class (and don’t fool yourself, there is not such thing as “message sending.” It’s just childish, bad losing). He’s also the coach who in two straight games when his team needed a goal and his net empty put Reaves out as his extra skater because he somehow doofus’d his way into two goals in two games (one a penalty). Even the best at the moment are prone to moments of completely, blithering stupidity.

Everything Else

Watching The Party – Stanley Cup Final Preview

By Sam Fels 2034 0

 vs. 

SCHEDULE: Game 1 Tonight, Game 2 Wednesday, Game 3 Saturday, Game 4 Monday

When it’s been 90 degrees for a few days you’re probably not thinking about hockey. You’re even less likely to be thinking about hockey between these two teams. This was not the Final predicted, and in the NHL’s supreme marketing strategy it’s going to put it’s showpiece curtain-raiser up the night after LeBron had THAT Game 7 and Game 7 between the two best teams in that league tonight. Good thinking. Anyway, this series has a chance to be good, and it also has a chance to be bad, because predicting anything with these two the past two rounds has been folly. Let’s get through it and then get about our holiday.

Goalies: He’ll be the least talked about goalie in this series, but Braden Holtby certainly has nothing to apologize for. He’s carrying a .928 throughout the playoffs since he came in on his white horse against the Jackets. While the Caps certainly played it back at times against Pittsburgh especially and the Lightning at times, he didn’t give the Bolts much at even-strength at all. Other than last year’s minor slip against the Penguins, Holtby has been a playoff stud for pretty much his whole career. Sure, it’s his first trip here, but it was his first trip to the thrid round and that didn’t seem to phase him much.

Then again, it might not matter. Nothing the Caps do might matter if Marc-Andre Fleury is going to continue to look like something from North Of The Wall in net. The numbers at this point are stupid, and while a five-game win looks like a pounding, in point of fact the only reason the Knights got out of that series was Fleury and the top line. Fleury isn’t being shielded in any form like Holtby has, and it hasn’t mattered. Ok, sure, Fleury will be seeing an inspired Ovechkin, but he just turned away the Jets who have at least three lines of scoring. If Fleury keeps this up, you really don’t have to dig much farther than that. If Holtby continues his form, you might see a lot of 2-1s in this series.

Defense: On paper, this is a pretty big advantage for the Caps. And they’ve seen what the Knights are modeled after in the Penguins and found a method for keeping them bottled, which was keep them in the neutral zone. The top four has more mobility than any of the teams Vegas has seen so far, and more discipline to go with it. Sure, Brooks Orpik is going to need an oxygen tank on the bench, but he’s been well-spotted and it hasn’t cost the Caps much and it’s unlikely to now. Carlson and Orlov are a threat to help get play the other way when the Knights get stretched as well. The stage might jar them, the script won’t.

I’ve written it four times but they got here with this blue line so I guess I have to stop. Still, I’d only want Nate Schmidt on my team but again, the Caps don’t have the firepower the Jets do and they just beat them. That said, the Jets carried a lot of that series and even though the Knights do their best to take their defensemen out of the equation by just asking them to get the puck out, the Caps won’t be as caught off-guard by it. The Caps do have enough speed to expose McNabb and Engelland and whatever other goofus is back there. But then so did Winnipeg. It doesn’t have to make sense because it’s hockey. That’s what “Hockey Is For Everyone” actually means, that every player will get his day because the sport is basically random.

Forwards: I’m sure if Ovechkin doesn’t get a goal in every game the stories will be about how he froze in his first Final, but he and his line have been excellent. Fleury kept Scheifele and Wheeler on a leash in the last round, but one thinks if Ovie sees some of the same chances He might score a couple more. Backstrom and Oshie on the second line and Eller on the third actually give the Caps slightly more depth, based on what’s been going on lately. But with the way Fleury is going, if Kuznetsov and Ovie don’t score and probably score a fair amount, they’re going to be up against it. And sadly, if this series is going to get national attention away from the Warriors third title in four years, it’ll probably be because Tom Wilson did something assholic.

While the going story about the Knights is how they’re “All For One” and all that, really they’ve been the top line and grunts for two rounds now. Marchessault, Reilly, and Karlsson have kicked everyone’s skull to dust to the tune of a near 60% attempts-share, and everyone else has kind of been backing up. Sure, Tuch, Haula, and Neal have chipped in goals here and there, but the process has been in efficient. Sure, the fourth line has been good as well, but the Caps have one as well and I’m not going to sit here and tell you that Ryan Reaves is going to be a difference maker in this series without renouncing everything I am as a human being. If the Knights’ main trio doesn’t remain dominant, Fleury might not even save them. The Caps top pairing has more mobility and smarts than they’ve seen in the playoffs, as Trouba and Byfuglein (in his own end) were both awful in the last round. Chances are Niskanen and Orlov won’t be, and Carlson and Kempny aren’t likely to be either.

Prediction: You’d feel pretty stupid going against Fleury now. Continuing his .947 means they win, plain and simple. Holtby has been really good too, and the Caps have kept pulling rabbits out of their hats. The Lightning were a better team than the Knights. The Penguins certainly had more pedigree. Feels like this one goes the route but again….947. Knights in 7. 

Everything Else

Night Songs – There Isn’t A Record Of Anything Until There Is

By Sam Fels 2088 0

It’s probably harder to compare to other eras, but it feels like across all sports we’ve seen the breaking down of a lot of “truths” the past 15 years or so. “Truths” in that teams that would never win or couldn’t get past a certain point have done so. I suppose it starts with the Red Sox in 2004. Then the White Sox…wait, that never happened. Sorry. But then the Colts, who it was thought would never break through (PUKE). Phillies. Saints. Hawks. LeBron. Giants. Bruins. Kings. Seahawks, though they didn’t really have the tradition. Royals. Cleveland in any way. The small matter of a plucky baseball team on the Northside. Eagles.

Not that that list is completely correct. The Royals had won somewhat close to that before, but you get it. And now the Capitals are going to play for the Cup. It’s not a total, out-in-the-wilderness story, because if you really rack your memory files you may recall that the Caps were in the Final in ’98. You don’t remember anything about that series, because it lasted just two games and then afterwards the Caps became the first team to surrender, such was their outsized deficit in every category to Scum. I think Peter Bondra was on that team? I know it didn’t matter, and the Caps basically were stand-ins and and extras for the rest of the league until Alex Ovechkin showed up. The only other memory I, and probably every other hockey fan my age, have of the Caps before Ovie was Dale Hunter poleaxing Pierre Turgeon ten seconds after Turgeon scored to essentially send the Caps out of the playoffs in 1993.

But since Ovie debuted, and ever since he basically became the game’s greatest scorer–and that’s what he is, given the environment and style of the game today–the questions have followed of when he will win a Cup. The skepticism started before he’d ever played a game, given his nationality and given the leanings of hockey media. They only got louder when it took Sidney Crosby, with whom he has been and will be forever linked through no doing of his own other than playing in the same conference, only took three seasons to get to a Final and four to win it. Being that he wasn’t born on these shores, and being that most of hockey media has never had the patience to mask its xenophobia with much more than a Kleenex,  the questions and commentary quickly gained a sharp edge.

And Ovechkin and the Caps kept running into the same wall. Well, two walls. Either it was the second round or it was the Rangers. The latter doesn’t make any sense, because the Rangers have never been remarkable in any way other than their goalie. The former did, because it was usually Crosby waiting. But Crosby had Malkin. And Crosby had a goalie playing out of his mind, be it Fleury or Murray. Ovie had Backstrom, but something always went wrong, and it was never Ovie. Oh sure, he took the blame. And he never shied from it, because that’s what you do when you’re the face of a team for over a decade. You could tell it hurt him. You could tell he cared, perhaps too much, which frustrated the amassed writers as it robbed them of a favorite cudgel that they used to beat players from the other side of the Atlantic. How could our beloved trophy mean as much to “dem ferners?!” But it was obvious it did to Ovie. So they had to find other things. So did his coaches and team. He didn’t backcheck. He only cared about scoring. He didn’t work hard enough. Bruce Boudreau, Dale Hunter and Adam Oates tried to cover their own incompetence by throwing Ovechkin under the bus, and given they were “good hockey men” it must be true, right? Perhaps Trotz’s greatest move upon arriving was just letting Ovechkin be Ovechkin and not prepare him as a human shield when things went wrong. Strange how Trotz and Ovie are now where those three coaches have never and will never be, mostly because Hunter really likes yelling at children.

After the last two years, when the Caps were probably the best team in the league and absolutely no one thought they would beat the Penguins and then promptly didn’t, you’d be forgiven for thinking it would never happen. They had their best bullets, they missed, and you know the lesson when you come at the king.

You could write all those things about Barry Trotz as well, who is also here for the first time. He’d never been this far either, and was discarded from a team that thought he couldn’t ever get them there. While it hasn’t always been the most pleasing on the eye, Trotz has coached the hell out of this team. They’re not as good as the Lightning. They might not be as good as the Penguins, whatever the standings might have said. Maybe they are. And they’ve roundly beaten both at times. Sure, maybe they got bounces in Game 7, but they earned their spot there by beating the shit out of the Bolts in Games 1, 2, and 6. They also did so in Game 4, and didn’t get the luck. The Caps have trapped at times. They’ve attacked weak points furiously at others. They’ve done everything, and Trotz has gotten this team to buy into whatever he’s asked that night. This is his masterpiece.

And here they are. They’ve broken through, with one more step to go. Should they get four more wins, there won’t be too many teams that will remain “cursed,” as bullshit as that term is. Ill-starred maybe. The Canucks for sure, who have lost two Game 7s in the Final without ever winning. I guess the Leafs, their fans do talk about it on occasion. The Blues, though there’s nothing epic so much has comedic about their history. But the Sharks haven’t been around long enough. Neither have the Panthers. Or the Jackets. No one cares about the Senators enough, and same thing. The Flyers would like to tell you it’s them, but it isn’t really.

The list is dwindling. And that’s the thing about sports. As Barry Petcheskey pointed out on Deadspin today, “the story is always being written.” Whatever narrative is current among your team, it’s not forever. Even if it takes 108 years, in some cases. The Caps were that team. Now they may not be. Some times hockey just bends that way. Sometimes sports bends that way. 1000 monkeys and 1000 typewriters and such.

Go get it, Alex. You’ve more than earned it.

Everything Else

Watching The Party – FFUD’s Conference Final Previews: Capitals vs. Lightning or You Come All This Way For Nothin’

By Sam Fels 1738 0

 vs. 

SCHEDULE: Game 1 Friday, Game 2 Sunday, Game 3 Tuesday, Game 4 Thursday

They’ve broken through. After more than a decade in the Ovechkin Era, and repeated attempts to run head-first (sometimes literally) through the forcefield between the second round and the conference final, the Caps finally found the weak point and got into the back half of the journey toward the Cup. Good for them, Ovie certainly deserves it. Seems a shame it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a very long stay, because they’re going to find an unholy machine waiting for them.

Goalies: Before this whole thing started, we said it might be better for Braden Holtby, who’s not ever really been a playoff dog except for last season, to come in and be the white knight to bail out Barry Trotz and the Caps after trying Phillip Grubauer in the first two games against the Jackets. That didn’t work, this did work, and now Holtby is playing awfully well. He only gave up 13 goals in the six games against the Pens, but then again he wasn’t asked to do all that much. The Caps only gave up more than 25 shots twice in six games, and that’s just about the best they can do. Holtby isn’t going to have a full-out meltdown with that kind of workload, but sadly that workload is probably going to get a whole lot heavier in this round.

You could say Vasilevskiy has had even less to do. He only had to face one player in the first round in Taylor Hall. He only had to face one line in the second round against the Bruins, and after Game 1 he gave up only seven goals in their four wins. He only saw over 30 shots once in those four wins, but the Lightning can probably hold the Caps to the same kind of output which certainly isn’t the case vice versa. Neither Holtby or Vasilevskiy have been here before so we have no idea how they’ll react. When this is all over, I doubt it’ll be because of either goalie primarily.

Defense: The Caps defense in the second round was basically what it was all season. John Carlson scores a ton on the power play, some at evens, and then they kind of turtle well enough to keep the other side from tearing the walls down. Orlov and Niskanen have been more than just useful, and basically nullified Crosby and Guentzel when the last series got decided. They’ll get the Stamkos and Kucherov assignment you’d think as often as possible, and based on how the last series ended the Caps are probably going to send their stall out to help them as much as possible with a trapping style that’s going to make you really understand Ibsen and welcome the void into your life.

I’m still not totally convinced by the Lightning’s defense, but because it hasn’t been seriously tested, and the Caps are likely to play this very conservatively, I don’t know that I have to be. Hedman might be enough, and will see plenty of Ovechkin with McDonagh you would think. Or if they wanted to play a funny joke they could throw McDonagh and Girardi at Ovie’s line just like the Rangers did and it always seemed to work even though everything tells you it shouldn’t. Also, Dan Girardi sucks. Anton Stralman isn’t much better these days as he gets older, but he’s enough. What the Bolts do have that the Caps don’t is a young, third-pairing bum-slayer in Mikhail Sergachev who has run wild most of these playoffs. That is when he’s played which really has been barely at all. Cooper needs to let this guy off the hook because the Caps will not have an answer and they’re probably going to need all the neutral zone busters they can find as the Caps dig trenches and set up barbed wire there.

Forwards: Even if the Caps were fully healthy, this is where the Lightning have the biggest advantage. And Backstrom and Burakovsky are not healthy. If they could not make the bell for an elimination game against the Penguins, only Washington’s Sisyphusian boulder they finally got up the hill, you have to imagine they’re really hurt. They’ll suit up at some point in this series, though Backstrom’s status for Game 1 is up in the air. Without him, this team is really just one line, and we saw what the Bolts did to a one-line team the last round. Lars Eller is great and all but he’s not enough. Especially when Tom Wilson is assuredly going to give away a couple dumbass power plays to the Lightning by trying to eat someone’s face in a bid to one-up Marchand or something.

We derided Swingin’ Jon Cooper’s choice to send Brayden Point and Palat and Johnson out against Boston’s main threat after Game 1. They spent the rest of the series giving that line a swirly. That goes with Stamkos and Kucherov and Miller (who’s been great) on the top line. Killorn and Gourde are a very decent third line. Basically, the Lightning are two to three times deeper than the Caps, and there just isn’t much they can do about it.

Prediction: The Caps have to gum this up as much as possible. They cannot run with the Lightning in any fashion. They don’t have the depth at forward. They’ll get outscored. So they’ll have to make everything 2-1 and hope Holtby goes nuclear or Vasilevskiy goes blind. They’re counting on Ovechkin or Oshie getting really hot, but if neither do they just don’t have the goals. The Lightning have the guns and they have the numbers. Crash before my eyes…Lightning in 5. 

Everything Else

Night Songs – Round 2 Opening Weekend: This Is Better

By Sam Fels 1639 0

I think we can all admit without turning in our hockey fan cards that the first round was pretty middling as far as entertainment. And that’s actually fine. When you have a few, clear, really good teams as the NHL does, the first round probably should be underwhelming. The Jets, Preds, and Lightning were always going to bludgeon whoever they saw (which the Preds eventually did). The only long series of intrigue really as the Leafs and Bruins and that was more for the comedy of what we all knew was coming. But this round shaped up to be the true must-see theater, and it really has been.

Jets-Predators goes plaid, and 1-1

It’s with a slight twitch of pain that I say this, because it’s always cool knowing your team played in the best playoff series of the post-lockout era even if it lost it, but this Jets-Preds has every chance of being as good if not eclipsing Hawks-Kings ’14. The pace last night simply was ridiculous, and both of these teams seemingly have accepted they’re going to give up chances to get their own. Last night was an example of how the Jets defense might be the first to crack, as on Arvidsson’s goal Chiarot got caught wandering and the Preds have the forward depth to make that a problem, and then for the winner a clearly still rusty Toby Enstrom got caught on a pinch and Byfuglien played the ensuing 2-on-1 like the dog that he is in his own zone. He was awful from the 3rd period on and it’s a small miracle he didn’t help create the winner for the Preds before that.

Encouragingly for the Jets though, it was the top line that basically had to do everything for Nashville as Winnipeg rolled over the rest. Not encouragingly is that Peter Laviolette was happy to let the top lines go at each other and Scheiele did not come out ahead, but also he kept throwing Byfuglien out behind them. Maybe Paul Maurice thinks his top line is enough protection for Buff and Enstrom, but it most certainly was not last night. Look for Trouba and Morrissey to be the ones getting the assignment in Winnipeg. And for this series only to get faster and more frantic, which is great for all of us.

Sharks and Knights split with 2OT as well

Clearly the Sharks weren’t ready for Vegas in Game 1 and everything that could have gone wrong did. They were hellbent on slowing the game agains the Knights in Game 2 and it mostly worked. You get in trouble with Vegas when you let them get behind you in the neutral zone or hit the line with speed with or without the puck and harass your d-men. The Sharks made sure their d-men backed up at the first sign of trouble, basically put three across their own line so even when the Knights dumped it in they couldn’t come over the hill like starving Scotsmen painted blue on the forecheck. It requires you basically bury a good percentage of your good chances because you won’t get as many as normal, but the Sharks did. Interesting to see if they can do this at home with a more expectant home crowd. Then again, Fleury can’t keep this up, can he?

Pens Caps Is Pens Caps

I’ll admit I basically thought that once the Caps coughed up a two-goal lead in the time it takes to take a shit in Game 1 at home that this series is basically over. And it may still yet prove that way. Of course, this being the NHL, we can’t talk about how it’s been really entertaining and both Ovechkin and Crosby are giving this series the battling star-power the league has been dying for because it’s overshadowed by either the league’s incompetence or stupid shit like Tom Wilson braining Brian Dumoulin.

Do I know it was a goal? No, I don’t but you can’t tell me the call was confirmed when there was no call. The refs just blew the play dead and then high-tailed it for the headphones. And I get that different angles can skew things, but we can pretty much conclude that thing was over the line. As for Wilson, he’s lost any benefit of the doubt and the league would do well to try and cap any future stupidness from him by sitting him again. But they won’t, and it’s not like it would work from a real life Venom anyway.

Bs kneecap Bolts

This was a surprise, but sometimes the team that’s sat around for a while just isn’t as sharp as the one that played two nights ago and this is what that looked like. Also, why is Brayden Point and Anton Stralman your choice to deal with the best line in hockey? If you have any hope of beating the Bruins you have to keep Pastrnak-Bergeron-Marchand on a leash and you’re not doing that with Brayden Fucking Point, whatever his season was. And Stralman might be dead, and if he isn’t he’s definitely on a lot of tubes. The Bolts might have the second best line in hockey so they should be fighting fire with fire and if Victor Hedman is a Norris candidate then he should be out there trying to keep Bergeron’s line in their own end. Ryan McDonagh is fine but he’s a second pairing guy now. Then again, if they’re going to insist on pairing Dan Girardi with Hedman maybe that’s the problem. They’re going to have to figure out something, because letting that line go off or multiple goals is a great way to assure you’re going to enjoy the Florida sunshine full-time right quick. Ha, just kidding, no one enjoys Tampa.

Everything Else

Watching The Party – FFUD’s Round 2 Preview: Penguins vs. Capitals or The Gods Must Be Crazy

By Sam Fels 1488 0

 vs. 

It’s kind of amazing, while feeling completely inevitable, that we ended up here again. The Capitals were not supposed to be good, much less win the Metro again. The Penguins flirted with both ends of the spectrum this season, flipping between simply awful and simply brilliant sometimes game-to-game. So it was thought the Penguins might have lost by now, or that the Caps would. All of that conveniently forgot that the rest of the division has to wear a helmet both on and off the ice at all times, and were never going to get in they way of these two again. But for once, it’s probably the third-best and third-most anticipated series of this round instead of being the main event of the entire playoffs as its been the past two years. Could that lessening of the spotlight be what the Capitals need to finally get one over their black and gold clad tormentors?

Let’s run it through:

Goalies: The Penguins don’t have any questions. Matt Murray wasn’t excellent against the Flyers, but he didn’t have to be while the Flyers were recreating the Budweiser Frogs in net all series. He’ll probably have to be better here, you’d think. Ovechkin doesn’t tend to lose his mind and principles in the playoffs the way Claude Giroux does, and he comes with Kuznetsov, Oshie, Backstrom, and some spiky bottom-sixers. Murray beat them two years ago but was injured last year so it was left to Fleury to stand by and watch the Caps hilariously fold in on themselves. Murray wasn’t particularly good against the Caps this year, going 2-2-0 while turning around 12 times in four games. But then he wasn’t particularly good in the regular season overall and he still finds himself here.

It would appear the Caps are now settled on Braden Holtby, who gets the chance to make amends for what was a very disappointing season. The incoming hero seems to have brightened his mood, as he threw a .932 at the Jackets in five appearances. But the Jackets don’t come with anything like Crosby, Kessell, Malkin (if he’s healthy), Hornqvist, Guentzel, and a host of others who have proven to be dependable playoff scorers. But Holtby already knows this. He was excellent two years ago and it wasn’t his fault that the Caps lost three OT games. He was pretty awful last year and was a big reason the Caps lost. He’s going to have to at least split the difference here, and unless you play a Guy Boucher-trap-until-everyone-strokes-out system to protect your goalie, these Penguins just don’t get goalie’d.

Defense: The Penguins defense always seems to play above its head, no matter who’s in the lineup and who isn’t. Dumoulin, Letang, Maatta, and Schultz were mostly excellent against the Flyers, and they were under serious pressure at times. The Penguins do make it easier on their d-men where they’re not asked to connect on breakout passes all the time but simply chips into space in the neutral zone for their speedy forwards to latch onto. This certainly helps them. Ruhwedel and Oleksiak are limited but aren’t asked to do much, and the Caps don’t quite have the depth they used to to really get at them.

At first, it looks like John Carlson was adding to his UFA presentation package with nine points in six games against the Jackets. But all of them came on the power play and the Penguins are just not going to be as forgiving. That said, the Caps top four on paper matches the Penguins’, if not better. And that includes Michal Kempny which makes me want to put my fist through a wall and eat the drywall that ends up on the floor. Just like the Penguins, Orpik and Djoos have their issues on the bottom pairing, but the difference is that the Pens do have the forward depth to really expose them, at least if Malkin plays and Brassard isn’t asked for more. Home ice once again matters… or it would if this weren’t the Caps.

Forwards: At this point everyone knows the deal with the Penguins. A lineup loaded with fast, shifty wingers bolstered by perhaps the best center-depth in the league. That depends on the health of Evgeni Malkin. He won’t play Game 1, is a stretch for Game 2 but is probably back after that. Even without him, the Pens put up eight goals in Game 6. Brassard is a decent enough stand-in, though they leave him on the third line with Sheary and Rust and Sheahan fills in between Kessel and Hagelin. Either way, the Penguins can and do get you from everywhere, and expect Orpik to look completely bewildered at times.

This isn’t the Caps group you remember, as it is far top heavier than it was. If Ovie and Kuznetsov and Oshie don’t score in this series, at evens or the power play, the Caps are toast. Smith-Pelley and Eller and Vrana are the kinds of players you’d expect to provide support scoring, and they’ll need to. Even with all that, Tom Wilson is going to take a really dumb penalty or 12 that the Penguins will cash in on that will shift the series. It’s just what happens. There is more depth here than the Caps get credit for but it’s not the same as the past two years. And it wasn’t enough the past two years. If Malkin misses the first two games then Backstrom and Kuznetsov have to take advantage. As soon as the Caps lose a home game all the gremlins in their heads come out to dance again.

Prediction: There’s a part of me that really wants to pick the Caps here, just for something different. But everywhere you look, you can’t see where they’re markedly better than the Penguins, if better at all. You’re counting on something you can’t predict happening for them. Maybe Holtby plays incredibly. Maybe Ovechkin binges. Maybe Lars Eller goes off. Maybe their power play stays so hot. But when looking at things that are on the baselines for both these teams, everything for the Penguins just seems likelier. Pens in 6.