Was at the grocery store last night, and needed to pick up some cereal. I normally eat unsweetened shredded wheat, of some sort. Post was at full price, and there was no store brand. But, looking for the store brand, I saw the Kashi 'Autumn Wheat', which looked pretty comparable. They do healthy stuff, right?
So I spent a couple of minutes looking. Kashi has sweetener (dried juice, I believe), and uses organic whole wheat, instead of whatever Post uses. Should be better, shouldn't it? Well, slightly fewer calories (odd, given the sweetener), and more iron, but no B-vitamins, which Post has quite a few of. And Post had small amounts of zinc and... one other mineral.
So, overall, the Kashi is less good for you. Who'd'a thunk it?
20120216
20120213
Shark-bit
Well, I can't say as expectations of the Caps winning were all that high coming into the game tonight against San Jose. Even if we were to ignore how the teams are doing lately, there's also the matter of how lopsided their head-to-head record is. Punctuated, of course, by the score of their last encounter. And seeing Holtby in net for the Caps, given his record in the AHL this season, didn't exactly help matters, either.
But the Caps did manage to come out punching, giving up some chances, but getting a few of their own as well. In fact, the first period ended pretty even; the Caps were down a goal, but were up one in shots. They were looking pretty good, actually, despite the score. And they managed to keep it that close despite being 2-0 in penalties given up. As I said, not too bad; especially against the Sharks and playing for the second night in a row.
But things went a bit wobbly pretty quickly in the second. Pavelski got his second goal three and a half minutes in with a complete fluke from center ice (doesn't that sound familiar?). The Caps continued to play well, but surrendered another with four minutes left on a deflected shot that bounced off Holtby's arm, and over his body, and was pushed in by Marleau (both of those goals were on the power play). I was about ready to turn it off when that one went in, since it seemed things were not going the Caps' way, but am glad I didn't. Orlov managed to put a slapper past Greiss with less than a second left in the period (it was nice to be the one scoring one of those, for once, instead of giving it up).
I'm not sure how they decided it, and under what rule, but they decided not to drop puck for the ensuing face-off, and declared the period over (to be sure, there was only about 3/4 second left, which wouldn't be long enough to score, even off a slapshot off the draw, but I still don't understand how they can just declare the period over).
The Caps really came out roaring in the third, getting seven shots in the first two and a half minutes, but none of them found the back of the net. When San Jose scored again, two minutes later, I decided that I had had enough. It appears that I missed a Marleau power play goal (I thought we had a good PK, at home... Tonight? Not so much), and Hamr and Sarge adding goals to make it look more respectable.
Recker was called up for the game, in a move that completely baffles me. He played only a minute and a half, and somehow managed to get a misconduct penalty while on the bench. Not bright. Was that worth the bench spot? I'm pretty sure Aucoin or Knuble woiuld have provided more value. Enough to win the game? Of course not, but it's all about giving yourself the best chance to win, and I can't see how Recker is that.
I'm getting more and more disenchanted with Hunter as a coach. I don't know whether his system rots, or he's just completely failing to get the team to play it, but things are not really going right. Offensively, they're supposed to play for very good chances, I think. At least, that's the only way to explain the dearth of shots (tonight was much better in that respect, but again, much of the edge there was when they were down two or more goals). And if you're going to do that, you bloody well better have a high shooting percentage. But the percentage has dropped under Hunter (not a lot, but they didn't start out with a large margin).
Their "success" under Hunter has all been predicated on awesome goaltending. As pointed out earlier on Japer's (see JP's comments), the Caps have allowed a total of one goal (yes, combined) in all of their wins in the last thirteen games. That's definitely not a recipe for success. They must score more consistently.
I've pretty much given up on the team even making the playoffs this year (especially given the utter lack of good news on Backstrom). Trade Semin (maybe the Kings will be sufficiently desperate), trade Wideman (unless they can re-sign him for next year, which I don't think they can), trade TVo. Whatever. Stock up on picks and young studs.
Of course, that still leaves them with a coaching situation to be addressed, and I have no idea what to do, there. I don't think Hunter's the answer, but I can't say that I have any better ideas. French, from Hershey? No clue if that's a good idea or not.
In the shorter term, we've got another Florida trip coming up, with the Panthers on Friday and the Lightning on Saturday. If they can't pull out all four points, I'm all for blowing things up, at this point.
Update: After sleeping on it last night, I think I juxtaposed a few things in my mind last night. Or, at least, I was a bit harsher than deserved, because of being disappointed with the result. The effort was really good last night, and I shouldn't be as down about the cause of the shot differential, because it was still about even when the game was close. I'm still pretty pessimistic about the season as a whole, but shouldn't be so down on last night.
But the Caps did manage to come out punching, giving up some chances, but getting a few of their own as well. In fact, the first period ended pretty even; the Caps were down a goal, but were up one in shots. They were looking pretty good, actually, despite the score. And they managed to keep it that close despite being 2-0 in penalties given up. As I said, not too bad; especially against the Sharks and playing for the second night in a row.
But things went a bit wobbly pretty quickly in the second. Pavelski got his second goal three and a half minutes in with a complete fluke from center ice (doesn't that sound familiar?). The Caps continued to play well, but surrendered another with four minutes left on a deflected shot that bounced off Holtby's arm, and over his body, and was pushed in by Marleau (both of those goals were on the power play). I was about ready to turn it off when that one went in, since it seemed things were not going the Caps' way, but am glad I didn't. Orlov managed to put a slapper past Greiss with less than a second left in the period (it was nice to be the one scoring one of those, for once, instead of giving it up).
I'm not sure how they decided it, and under what rule, but they decided not to drop puck for the ensuing face-off, and declared the period over (to be sure, there was only about 3/4 second left, which wouldn't be long enough to score, even off a slapshot off the draw, but I still don't understand how they can just declare the period over).
The Caps really came out roaring in the third, getting seven shots in the first two and a half minutes, but none of them found the back of the net. When San Jose scored again, two minutes later, I decided that I had had enough. It appears that I missed a Marleau power play goal (I thought we had a good PK, at home... Tonight? Not so much), and Hamr and Sarge adding goals to make it look more respectable.
Recker was called up for the game, in a move that completely baffles me. He played only a minute and a half, and somehow managed to get a misconduct penalty while on the bench. Not bright. Was that worth the bench spot? I'm pretty sure Aucoin or Knuble woiuld have provided more value. Enough to win the game? Of course not, but it's all about giving yourself the best chance to win, and I can't see how Recker is that.
I'm getting more and more disenchanted with Hunter as a coach. I don't know whether his system rots, or he's just completely failing to get the team to play it, but things are not really going right. Offensively, they're supposed to play for very good chances, I think. At least, that's the only way to explain the dearth of shots (tonight was much better in that respect, but again, much of the edge there was when they were down two or more goals). And if you're going to do that, you bloody well better have a high shooting percentage. But the percentage has dropped under Hunter (not a lot, but they didn't start out with a large margin).
Their "success" under Hunter has all been predicated on awesome goaltending. As pointed out earlier on Japer's (see JP's comments), the Caps have allowed a total of one goal (yes, combined) in all of their wins in the last thirteen games. That's definitely not a recipe for success. They must score more consistently.
I've pretty much given up on the team even making the playoffs this year (especially given the utter lack of good news on Backstrom). Trade Semin (maybe the Kings will be sufficiently desperate), trade Wideman (unless they can re-sign him for next year, which I don't think they can), trade TVo. Whatever. Stock up on picks and young studs.
Of course, that still leaves them with a coaching situation to be addressed, and I have no idea what to do, there. I don't think Hunter's the answer, but I can't say that I have any better ideas. French, from Hershey? No clue if that's a good idea or not.
In the shorter term, we've got another Florida trip coming up, with the Panthers on Friday and the Lightning on Saturday. If they can't pull out all four points, I'm all for blowing things up, at this point.
Update: After sleeping on it last night, I think I juxtaposed a few things in my mind last night. Or, at least, I was a bit harsher than deserved, because of being disappointed with the result. The effort was really good last night, and I shouldn't be as down about the cause of the shot differential, because it was still about even when the game was close. I'm still pretty pessimistic about the season as a whole, but shouldn't be so down on last night.
Better Late than Never?
Yesterday's game started off on the wrong foot, with me not having the recording set. Fortunately, I went to turn it on pretty quickly after it started and only missed ten minutes or so. How did that go for the Caps? Not great, as they appeared to be getting outplayed by quite a bit. The silver lining was that there was no score, so they were far from out of it.
And they were generating a few chances of their own, at least.
But I ended up pretty irriitated at the whole game. The one strength of this team, under Coach Hunter, has been their ability to avoid giving up odd-man rushes. Really, that's been the only bright spot that might be attributed to the coach (the other bright spot being that the goaltending has rebounded to about where we expected it to be). And how did that go, yesterday? I saw either three or four 2-on-1's yesterday (the last one was on a power play in the third, and who was the one? That would be OV. There's no doubt about him having a lot of skills, but he's still just about the last player on the team you'd want back for that. As you'd expect, that turned out to be the winning goal).
How did Neuvy do, in goal? Very well, actually; the winning goal was the only odd-man rush on which the Rangers scored. All three of the goals would have been fantastic saves, if he had been able to make them. And he did make a few more fantastic saves to keep the team in the game.
One small (very small, actually) bright spot was that they did show appropriate desperation once they were down by a pair, which led to some great offensive zone shifts. That was the sort of play we want to see when they're tied, or up. You know, keeping play in the offensive zone.
But they still ended up behind on shots for the game, only having a slight edge in the third (you know, when they were down by two).
So, all in all, it was a pretty irritating game to watch. There were some nice moments, particularly Semin's sniping of the top corner for the first goal, and some of the saves. But it completely failed as evidence that things are headed in the right direction with this team.
And San Jose is coming to town tonight. Now would be a very good time to refute that statement, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
On the personnel front, Green is starting to skate, and Knuble has now been a healthy scratch in the last two games. I hope the team is doing something with him like they did with Sarge, because getting scratched in favor of Aucoin and Beagle is not a sign that team management is happy with you. Or that you have a future with the team. We'll see what happens, I guess.
And they were generating a few chances of their own, at least.
But I ended up pretty irriitated at the whole game. The one strength of this team, under Coach Hunter, has been their ability to avoid giving up odd-man rushes. Really, that's been the only bright spot that might be attributed to the coach (the other bright spot being that the goaltending has rebounded to about where we expected it to be). And how did that go, yesterday? I saw either three or four 2-on-1's yesterday (the last one was on a power play in the third, and who was the one? That would be OV. There's no doubt about him having a lot of skills, but he's still just about the last player on the team you'd want back for that. As you'd expect, that turned out to be the winning goal).
How did Neuvy do, in goal? Very well, actually; the winning goal was the only odd-man rush on which the Rangers scored. All three of the goals would have been fantastic saves, if he had been able to make them. And he did make a few more fantastic saves to keep the team in the game.
One small (very small, actually) bright spot was that they did show appropriate desperation once they were down by a pair, which led to some great offensive zone shifts. That was the sort of play we want to see when they're tied, or up. You know, keeping play in the offensive zone.
But they still ended up behind on shots for the game, only having a slight edge in the third (you know, when they were down by two).
So, all in all, it was a pretty irritating game to watch. There were some nice moments, particularly Semin's sniping of the top corner for the first goal, and some of the saves. But it completely failed as evidence that things are headed in the right direction with this team.
And San Jose is coming to town tonight. Now would be a very good time to refute that statement, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
On the personnel front, Green is starting to skate, and Knuble has now been a healthy scratch in the last two games. I hope the team is doing something with him like they did with Sarge, because getting scratched in favor of Aucoin and Beagle is not a sign that team management is happy with you. Or that you have a future with the team. We'll see what happens, I guess.
20120209
Jettisoning position
The game started out with great promise, with the Caps completely dominating play through the first period (to the tune of 12-4 on shots, 6-3 on chances). The scoreboard, however, showed nothing had hit the twine. The summary put up showed Hendricks doing great: something like a shot, a hit, and 5 of 7 on draws. Not too much to notice, there, I think, except that that meant that he took almost half the draws for the period (there were 15). I guess Halpern was getting thrown out of pretty much every faceoff for the period.
The second period was pretty even, with chances dead even at 5 and shots 12-11 in favor of the good guys. Again, though, the score remained deadlocked (though the Caps looked very dangerous in their lone power play).
It was the best game for watching in quite a while, though; the Caps were doing a good job of keeping most of the play in the offensive end.
It was in the third when things started to go sideways. The first ten minutes were pretty even, with, perhaps, a slight edge to the Caps. Then the Caps got a power play and scored in ten seconds. A couple of minutes later, they got a double minor, and scored in twelve seconds. The second half of that double minor had about thirty seconds of pretty atrocious play, but didn't allow any damage (and looked pretty good the rest of the two minutes). But then Hamr took a slashing penalty. The PK was looking good, but a minute and change later Laich was called for playing with a broken stick (he stopped a shot with it, and then passed to Brouwer, probably not even realizing that the shot had broken his stick).
And that's when all hell broke loose. Winnipeg had already pulled Pavelec, because of the power play, so now it was 6-on-3, and it was pretty ugly. They held it off for a while, but allowed a goal with only ten or so seconds left on Hamr's penalty. That wasn't too bad, but twelve seconds later, Big Buff took a shot from the red line which caromed off a defender's stick, and took a weird hop right into the net. Total fluke.
The Caps played pretty well the rest of the way, but were unable to solve the riddle of Pavelec, even through overtime. The 18 seconds of power play they got at the end of overtime didn't really help, either, so they went into the gimmick. And yeah, things didn't go so well, there. OV scored, which surprised me, but Semin and Perreault didn't really challenge Ondrej. And TVo didn't get a stop. *sigh*
Anticlimactic end to what had been, to that point, a very good game. I hope they take heart in the sixty minutes (well, 59:48) that they played really well, and can forget about the fluky lapse.
We'll see on Sunday, when they head up to New York to take on the Rangers.
The second period was pretty even, with chances dead even at 5 and shots 12-11 in favor of the good guys. Again, though, the score remained deadlocked (though the Caps looked very dangerous in their lone power play).
It was the best game for watching in quite a while, though; the Caps were doing a good job of keeping most of the play in the offensive end.
It was in the third when things started to go sideways. The first ten minutes were pretty even, with, perhaps, a slight edge to the Caps. Then the Caps got a power play and scored in ten seconds. A couple of minutes later, they got a double minor, and scored in twelve seconds. The second half of that double minor had about thirty seconds of pretty atrocious play, but didn't allow any damage (and looked pretty good the rest of the two minutes). But then Hamr took a slashing penalty. The PK was looking good, but a minute and change later Laich was called for playing with a broken stick (he stopped a shot with it, and then passed to Brouwer, probably not even realizing that the shot had broken his stick).
And that's when all hell broke loose. Winnipeg had already pulled Pavelec, because of the power play, so now it was 6-on-3, and it was pretty ugly. They held it off for a while, but allowed a goal with only ten or so seconds left on Hamr's penalty. That wasn't too bad, but twelve seconds later, Big Buff took a shot from the red line which caromed off a defender's stick, and took a weird hop right into the net. Total fluke.
The Caps played pretty well the rest of the way, but were unable to solve the riddle of Pavelec, even through overtime. The 18 seconds of power play they got at the end of overtime didn't really help, either, so they went into the gimmick. And yeah, things didn't go so well, there. OV scored, which surprised me, but Semin and Perreault didn't really challenge Ondrej. And TVo didn't get a stop. *sigh*
Anticlimactic end to what had been, to that point, a very good game. I hope they take heart in the sixty minutes (well, 59:48) that they played really well, and can forget about the fluky lapse.
We'll see on Sunday, when they head up to New York to take on the Rangers.
20120208
Weird thought
Just occurred to me; a bizarre, themed movie marathon:
8 1/2 (Fellini)
Nine (Marshall)
9 1/2 Weeks
10
I'm not sure what it says about me that I only have the first two of those, but have only seen the second two (not recently).
8 1/2 (Fellini)
Nine (Marshall)
9 1/2 Weeks
10
I'm not sure what it says about me that I only have the first two of those, but have only seen the second two (not recently).
20120207
Eye of the Tiger
The Caps looked really good tonight, opening the scoring only thirteen seconds in, and controlling play almost from end to end. Even when they were mostly just sitting back and defending (much of the third period), they still looked calm and methodical about it. It was a very good performance, highlighted by scoring at even strength (twice; Perreault and OV), on the power play (OV), and short-handed (Chimmer).
To top it all off, TVo stopped all 42 shots that made it to the net.
But maybe I'm just getting excited at puck luck. Now that I look, the Caps had 14 giveaways, and that's about ten too many. Also, the shot total was only 24. That's also too low; getting four goals on that many is quite a bit of luck. Still, that shot total was probably skewed a fair bit by the Caps large lead in the third, when they had only six shots (coming with some sustained offensive pressure, and one or two rushes (OV was trying hard for the hat trick)). But they mostly spent the third defending.
So I'm not sure whether to be too happy about this one. On the plus side, the special teams were very good, with nothing allowed on the PK (obviously), and scoring on the only PP opportunity. On the minus side, they need more shots, more power play opportunities, and fewer giveaways.
Still, it's nice to be back in the division lead, even if it won't last for very long (which it very well might not, given the upcoming schedule).
In any event, we won't have to wait very long, with Winnipeg coming to town Thursday. We'll see if any momentum was generated by this game.
Ah, and in a side note, Laich did play, if sparingly. So I guess it really was just a day-to-day thing. Hopefully, he'll be able to keep playing.
And I really need to not wait so long to write up games; I completely forgot about the two penalty shots in the Montreal game until I was watching tonight's game. I have no idea how that slipped my mind.
To top it all off, TVo stopped all 42 shots that made it to the net.
But maybe I'm just getting excited at puck luck. Now that I look, the Caps had 14 giveaways, and that's about ten too many. Also, the shot total was only 24. That's also too low; getting four goals on that many is quite a bit of luck. Still, that shot total was probably skewed a fair bit by the Caps large lead in the third, when they had only six shots (coming with some sustained offensive pressure, and one or two rushes (OV was trying hard for the hat trick)). But they mostly spent the third defending.
So I'm not sure whether to be too happy about this one. On the plus side, the special teams were very good, with nothing allowed on the PK (obviously), and scoring on the only PP opportunity. On the minus side, they need more shots, more power play opportunities, and fewer giveaways.
Still, it's nice to be back in the division lead, even if it won't last for very long (which it very well might not, given the upcoming schedule).
In any event, we won't have to wait very long, with Winnipeg coming to town Thursday. We'll see if any momentum was generated by this game.
Ah, and in a side note, Laich did play, if sparingly. So I guess it really was just a day-to-day thing. Hopefully, he'll be able to keep playing.
And I really need to not wait so long to write up games; I completely forgot about the two penalty shots in the Montreal game until I was watching tonight's game. I have no idea how that slipped my mind.
Tuermchen
My wife asked me, a few nights ago, "What is that tower you're working on?"
She had seen the shared view of my game of 'tiny tower'. It's kind of a goofy resource-management, building game. This one consists of building one tower, and filling it with residential and shopping (several categories) space.
It's a real-time game, which makes it more interesting. Each operation (constructing something out of an empty floor, or restocking a shop) takes a set amount of real time. It has two kinds of currency, coins and towerbux. The former is for building new floors and starting restocking operations, the latter is much more flexible. Towerbux can be used to hurry any operation, to quickly sell inventory for coin, upgrading the elevator, immediately finding residents, or directly traded for coin.
What makes the game interesting is that it can be played two different ways. One is to actively play, constantly monitoring things, and running people up the elevator (this accomplishes several things, but most directly, brings in more coin). Also, every few minutes, you'll get the option to find a given resident, which will give you a towerbux when you finish.
Or you can just let things run themselves, checking in every so often. The downside to this is that your inventory won't be handled as quickly, and you won't get towerbux. You also won't get such a high quality of workers. The upside is that you can do other things.
And, obviously, there's a balance there. The game never stops (there is no pause function), so you can't always be playing. So there's always time that you need to step away and let things run themselves. When you wake up after sleeping, for instance, there's always a lot of restocking to do.
So what do I do, strategy-wise? I always do the missions to find people. I keep more residential space than, strictly speaking, necessary. This allows me to get more residents. The advantage there is that I almost always kick them out, looking for people whose dream job matches stores that I have. That's a big key; you get two towerbux immediately for placing them, and you get double inventory when they work. That hugely raises your profit margins on goods, since you pay the same coin and time for stocking. Without that, there's almost no profit on level one goods (every shop has three goods, that give one, two, or three coins when sold), but the profit when stocked by dream workers is huge.
And you need to do something along those lines, if you want to build the tower at all quickly. The price (in coin) per floor goes up on a roughly exponential rate (5-10% per floor increase, it appears), and the time to finish each one goes up by half an hour.
One other advantage of playing actively, though, is that you will sometimes (it's random, but seems to be several per hour, on average) get VIPs appear. These people will help construction or restocking (taking three hours off, in either case), buy a lot of goods, or populate an apartment with as many people as it will hold (they hold up to five). And you can take added advantage by seeing what kind each VIP is, and maybe taking actions before selecting them to go to a given floor. (There are several tricks that can be played, this way, to maximize the benefit of each one.)
Anyway, there is no "goal" of the game, per se. You can try to achieve several accomplishments, and there are "awards" you can get in gamecenter for certain tasks. But mostly it's a matter of building as big a tower as you can, and keeping it functioning.
Is it fun, though? Yep, it is.
But don't use towerbux to hurry things early in the game, and you won't need to buy more bux, as I did shortly after starting. (Thanks for the gift card that paid for it, Richard.)
She had seen the shared view of my game of 'tiny tower'. It's kind of a goofy resource-management, building game. This one consists of building one tower, and filling it with residential and shopping (several categories) space.
It's a real-time game, which makes it more interesting. Each operation (constructing something out of an empty floor, or restocking a shop) takes a set amount of real time. It has two kinds of currency, coins and towerbux. The former is for building new floors and starting restocking operations, the latter is much more flexible. Towerbux can be used to hurry any operation, to quickly sell inventory for coin, upgrading the elevator, immediately finding residents, or directly traded for coin.
What makes the game interesting is that it can be played two different ways. One is to actively play, constantly monitoring things, and running people up the elevator (this accomplishes several things, but most directly, brings in more coin). Also, every few minutes, you'll get the option to find a given resident, which will give you a towerbux when you finish.
Or you can just let things run themselves, checking in every so often. The downside to this is that your inventory won't be handled as quickly, and you won't get towerbux. You also won't get such a high quality of workers. The upside is that you can do other things.
And, obviously, there's a balance there. The game never stops (there is no pause function), so you can't always be playing. So there's always time that you need to step away and let things run themselves. When you wake up after sleeping, for instance, there's always a lot of restocking to do.
So what do I do, strategy-wise? I always do the missions to find people. I keep more residential space than, strictly speaking, necessary. This allows me to get more residents. The advantage there is that I almost always kick them out, looking for people whose dream job matches stores that I have. That's a big key; you get two towerbux immediately for placing them, and you get double inventory when they work. That hugely raises your profit margins on goods, since you pay the same coin and time for stocking. Without that, there's almost no profit on level one goods (every shop has three goods, that give one, two, or three coins when sold), but the profit when stocked by dream workers is huge.
And you need to do something along those lines, if you want to build the tower at all quickly. The price (in coin) per floor goes up on a roughly exponential rate (5-10% per floor increase, it appears), and the time to finish each one goes up by half an hour.
One other advantage of playing actively, though, is that you will sometimes (it's random, but seems to be several per hour, on average) get VIPs appear. These people will help construction or restocking (taking three hours off, in either case), buy a lot of goods, or populate an apartment with as many people as it will hold (they hold up to five). And you can take added advantage by seeing what kind each VIP is, and maybe taking actions before selecting them to go to a given floor. (There are several tricks that can be played, this way, to maximize the benefit of each one.)
Anyway, there is no "goal" of the game, per se. You can try to achieve several accomplishments, and there are "awards" you can get in gamecenter for certain tasks. But mostly it's a matter of building as big a tower as you can, and keeping it functioning.
Is it fun, though? Yep, it is.
But don't use towerbux to hurry things early in the game, and you won't need to buy more bux, as I did shortly after starting. (Thanks for the gift card that paid for it, Richard.)
Caps weekend
I was pretty happy with the Caps game on Saturday against Montreal. I wasn't able to pay total attention to it; I had to watch both of my kids while my wife was doing work. But they looked pretty good, from what I did see.
They weren't outplaying Montreal by much; it was a much closer game than the score would indicate. But things were moving in the right direction, I think. And I'm pretty sure the scoring chance numbers after two periods were indicative of that.
Like the Tampa game, they were moving play more in their own direction. Not as much as I would like, of course, but baby steps are being made. (Of course, maybe it's just a case of Tampa and Montreal not being very good teams, so I'm reading too much into nothing. :) I just hope that they keep making these steps until they're tilting the ice in their own favor, even against the good teams.
Unfortunately, I watched too many other things since the game, and don't really remember anything more specific.
And that's despite missing the Boston game entirely. For some reason, the DVR didn't record that game at all. The only thing I can think of was that it got confused when I stopped the upcoming recording of the NBC Sports hockey game, and stopped recording of both games.
I will say that it went about as I expected, though I'd certainly hoped for better. The shot totals are slightly encouraging, but only slightly, because Boston was leading in shots and goals after one. It was only once they were behind that the Caps managed to get ahead.
And Brooksy went out with a knee injury. Oy. If he's out for any length of time (and yes, I know Hunter claimed that it is day-to-day, but so was Green, before he went out for four weeks and change. Then went out again almost immediately for another six weeks. Yep, I totally completely believe team injury reports), I'm beginning to think that the Caps should be deadline sellers, and just write off this season. Sad, I know.
They weren't outplaying Montreal by much; it was a much closer game than the score would indicate. But things were moving in the right direction, I think. And I'm pretty sure the scoring chance numbers after two periods were indicative of that.
Like the Tampa game, they were moving play more in their own direction. Not as much as I would like, of course, but baby steps are being made. (Of course, maybe it's just a case of Tampa and Montreal not being very good teams, so I'm reading too much into nothing. :) I just hope that they keep making these steps until they're tilting the ice in their own favor, even against the good teams.
Unfortunately, I watched too many other things since the game, and don't really remember anything more specific.
And that's despite missing the Boston game entirely. For some reason, the DVR didn't record that game at all. The only thing I can think of was that it got confused when I stopped the upcoming recording of the NBC Sports hockey game, and stopped recording of both games.
I will say that it went about as I expected, though I'd certainly hoped for better. The shot totals are slightly encouraging, but only slightly, because Boston was leading in shots and goals after one. It was only once they were behind that the Caps managed to get ahead.
And Brooksy went out with a knee injury. Oy. If he's out for any length of time (and yes, I know Hunter claimed that it is day-to-day, but so was Green, before he went out for four weeks and change. Then went out again almost immediately for another six weeks. Yep, I totally completely believe team injury reports), I'm beginning to think that the Caps should be deadline sellers, and just write off this season. Sad, I know.
20120202
I've got sunshine, on a cloudy day...
Well, the Caps' trip down to the Sunshine State didn't go all that well. They brought home one of the four points they could have earned, leaving Florida ahead by a point for the division lead with a game in hand.
And yet, I'm not terribly upset. Mildly disappointed, yes, but actually feeling a bit better about how they played. Shot totals were moving in the right direction; they were still outshot (and outchanced in FLA; I didn't see the chance numbers for TAM. Verdammt NBC Sports), but at least it was closer.
Neuvy had an odd night last night; he looked great quite often, but also let in a couple of clunkers (especially the first one; although kudos to Samuelsson for being able to put the puck on-net from that range when not looking).
Sarge managed to get onto the ice last night; I was surprised, as I thought he was in team purgatory. Still, as usual, he looked decent, if unspectacular.
Rechlicz managed to get signed, in an odd choice. He tried to get a couple of people to drop the gloves in his two and a half minutes of play. Sadly, no one was willing to take him up on that. Let's hope that he can convince Bourque to do so when they face Montreal on Saturday. With Backstrom still out, I wouldn't mind him taking a bit more punishment.
In any event, getting back to the play, I'm still not thrilled that they're riding the edge of competitiveness so much. Getting OV back will help a lot, and will Backstrom and Green (whenever those happen), but they really need to stop trying to turn every game into a coin flip.
They really need to focus on sustained offensive pressure; sitting back against withering attacks by the other team is just a terrible way to play. I did like that, interviewed during one of the two games, Hunter said that the problem with the power play is that they need to take more shots. That's definitely not just a power play problem.
Actually, the biggest problem with the power play are the zone entries. Once they get the puck into the zone, the power play looks quite good. But they spend too much time trying to get into the zone. They should really be looking to control the puck in the zone at least half of the times they skate up the ice. I think they're more like 1/4 (maybe less).
But I'm glad that Hunter is aware that they aren't shooting enough.
The only really good thing I can say about recent play is that they very rarely give up odd-man rushes. That's certainly a good thing, but seems to come at the cost of not being able to puck up-ice (the only thing I can think of is that they're not spreading the ice enough on the break-out, so they're easy to defend. But that's just a guess).
There's glimmers of hope, but not large ones. I'm about ready to close the book on Hunter already, sadly. We'll see; there is quite a bit of season left.
And yet, I'm not terribly upset. Mildly disappointed, yes, but actually feeling a bit better about how they played. Shot totals were moving in the right direction; they were still outshot (and outchanced in FLA; I didn't see the chance numbers for TAM. Verdammt NBC Sports), but at least it was closer.
Neuvy had an odd night last night; he looked great quite often, but also let in a couple of clunkers (especially the first one; although kudos to Samuelsson for being able to put the puck on-net from that range when not looking).
Sarge managed to get onto the ice last night; I was surprised, as I thought he was in team purgatory. Still, as usual, he looked decent, if unspectacular.
Rechlicz managed to get signed, in an odd choice. He tried to get a couple of people to drop the gloves in his two and a half minutes of play. Sadly, no one was willing to take him up on that. Let's hope that he can convince Bourque to do so when they face Montreal on Saturday. With Backstrom still out, I wouldn't mind him taking a bit more punishment.
In any event, getting back to the play, I'm still not thrilled that they're riding the edge of competitiveness so much. Getting OV back will help a lot, and will Backstrom and Green (whenever those happen), but they really need to stop trying to turn every game into a coin flip.
They really need to focus on sustained offensive pressure; sitting back against withering attacks by the other team is just a terrible way to play. I did like that, interviewed during one of the two games, Hunter said that the problem with the power play is that they need to take more shots. That's definitely not just a power play problem.
Actually, the biggest problem with the power play are the zone entries. Once they get the puck into the zone, the power play looks quite good. But they spend too much time trying to get into the zone. They should really be looking to control the puck in the zone at least half of the times they skate up the ice. I think they're more like 1/4 (maybe less).
But I'm glad that Hunter is aware that they aren't shooting enough.
The only really good thing I can say about recent play is that they very rarely give up odd-man rushes. That's certainly a good thing, but seems to come at the cost of not being able to puck up-ice (the only thing I can think of is that they're not spreading the ice enough on the break-out, so they're easy to defend. But that's just a guess).
There's glimmers of hope, but not large ones. I'm about ready to close the book on Hunter already, sadly. We'll see; there is quite a bit of season left.
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