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We Like To Watch – May 5th

By 1517

Last night: Penguins 3 – 2 Capitals (OT)

It’s never a good sign when your goalie is bus-tossing the rest of the team, but there was Braden Holtby doing just that. I’m not sure how you don’t run over a team without Letang and Maatta at least in terms of possession, especially when the replacements are Justin Schultz and Derrick Pouliot. Trevor Daley had to skate big minutes and yet the Pens were not buried. That’s… that’s not good. I’m not sure the Caps are doing that much wrong but they’re certainly not doing enough right. They have one goal from the bottom six this series, and this was a team that spread out the scoring all year. It can’t buy a power play goal. Holtby’s been good, but he’s getting outplayed by Matt Murray who wasn’t in the league until two months ago. And it was the fill-in for Brooks Orpik who Brooks Orpik’d the Pens the winner last night, with a sweet set up from Mike Weber for Patric Hornqvist. Now we’ll see what they’re made of and if Barry Trotz can overcome his usual conservativeness and unleash the hounds. They’ve played scared of the Penguins on the counter attack, but they should be able to score enough being aggressive to overcome that. We shall see.

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Crow For Hart

By 1480

Yesterday I tweeted out the hashtag #CrowForHart, mostly tongue in cheek but with some sincerity. It’s only based on the fact that I like to jump all over pretty much anything Eddie Olczyk says, and for the past little while Eddie Plugs has been saying that Holtby should not just win the Vezina, but should be a finalist for the Hart Trophy as well, along with Patrick Kane and I assume Alex Ovechkin (though Seguin, Benn, and especially Erik Karlsson would have serious cases as well).

So the following comes with some caveats. One, this article only works if you believe in Eddie’s claim that Holtby should get Hart consideration, because I’m going to show you why then it makes more sense that Crow should get that if you believe that. Second, really, a goalie should probably always win the MVP, because no one holds more sway over a team in any sport. Seriously, the Panthers would probably be looking at competing for the #1 pick without Luongo instead of leading the division until the weekend. The Rangers probably would have made the playoffs once in the past decade without Lundqvist. We can go up and down on this. So if you think that goalies should be contained to to just Vezina consideration, I totally understand.

Anyway, let’s do it, and we’ll start with this:

Screen Shot 2016-03-07 at 1.39.16 PM

Everything Else

Fireside Chat

By Fifth Feather 1461 0

A few things to cover this week, some from Tuesday night’s affair and some that have nothing to do with Tuesday night.

–It only took about 15 seconds for the Capitals to put Joakim Nordstrom to the test. In their first four power plays, the Capitals were running their power play on whatever side Nordstrom was playing on. Nordstrom, understandably so, was caught in between a lot of times, having a difficult time deciding whether to take away time and space or give his man room.  Skill guys like Mike Green and Alex Ovechkin chewed that up.