20111101

Duck, duck, duck... Goose!

Tonight's Caps game seemed a bit off, from the start. Erskine was back, which was good, but it led to shuffling the D combos, which wasn't. On the forward side, Knuble got demoted to the fourth line, Halpern was benched, and Eakin was playing off-wing with MarJo and Semin.

The play was not pretty, particularly at the start. The Caps were doing ok, although they were spending way more time in their own zone than you'd prefer.. To make matters worse, there were two defensive breakdowns between Hamr and Wideman that led to goals by the Selanne line.

Actually, this morning, I took a peek back at Selanne's numbers. I've always liked him, and I knew he'd had a good year, last year. So I was wondering how he was doing this year. Answer: pretty good. And tonight he was the wrecking crew with a pair each of goals and assists (I imagine he's probably among the league leaders at the moment). Ugh. Good for him, but I wish he'd picked a different night.

In any event, at the end of the first, the Caps were down 2-0, but looking decent outside of those breakdowns.

The Caps came out looking pretty good, but weren't able to score before Selanne got his second goal, nine minutes in. A cross-ice pass found him alone in the circle with an open net, and he buried it, as you'd expect.

At this point, Anaheim had three goals on less than eleven shots. The really bad part is that none of the goals were Vokoun's fault. He'd actually played well.

But the Caps finally started playing like a desperate team, and working hard. And the checking line was the one to start things going in the right direction, getting a goal from Ward and another from Wideman (with Laich and Ward assisting; if there had been a third assist, it would have gone to TVo, who had wisely iced the puck to Ward).

That left the Caps down a goal with a period to play, so things weren't looking too bad. Not great, but not terrible.

Just over nine minutes in, though, things were looking a bit worse. The Ducks got a power play, which started out looking very good for the Caps. But they got the puck into the zone, and put it in the net in a scrum with Vokoun down.

So things were definitely not going well, but the team was still working hard, and was getting quite a few chances. Two and a half minutes later, they finally buried one of those chances. Brouwer got the goal, assisted by Erskine and Wideman. The weird part of that whole setup is that Brouwers line-mates at the time were Perreault and ... Hendricks, I think.

The team kept working hard, but time was winding down. They did get a power play when Fowler accidentally shot the puck over the glass when trying to clear, but they looked really bad on that man advantage. But they finally managed to tie the game with less than a minute left, after pulling Vokoun. Backstrom did the honors, with Chimmer and Laich getting the assists.

In overtime, the play was fairly even, going up and down steadily. But the Caps were the ones to finally convert, with Backstrom again potting the vulcanized rubber (helped by OV and Schultz).

For the most part, the Caps actually looked quite good throughout this game. The two first-period defensive breakdowns were very frustrating. I wonder if Selanne's second period goal should also be considered a defensive breakdown, although not as bad a one as those in the first.

We are definitely missing Green. I thought we wouldn't be (well, not a huge amount, anyway), because we're so deep on defense (Erskine, for all his flaws, is excellent as a seventh defenseman, if, perhaps, a little expensive for that role). I thought, with Carlson, WIdeman, and Hamr, that we wouldn't have any trouble moving the puck up-ice. But with Wideman and Hamr mostly playing together, we're left with a third pairing that has a lot of trouble dealing with a strong forecheck. And the other pairings have been far from flawless, as well. I'm a little puzzled, really.

In any event, the good part is that the team was working hard through the game, never sitting back on their heels. Even at three-nil, they showed no signs of discouragement, and were rewarded for it.

All four lines looked good, at times. Eakin looked ready to contribute to the big club. I don't think he'll spend a lot of time up (and I'm not sure he should, particularly without significant injuries), but he looked ready for it. His line generated some very nice chances, and he was definitely part of that.

Perreault still looked very good. He was having a bit of trouble with the Ducks' size, but he was still making it work, and playing well at both ends.

Half the defense was on the scoresheet, which is nice. But they also hung TVo out to dry several times, which isn't. I'm not sure what to make of them, as a whole. I definitely don't want to see Alzner and Carlson split up again. Let's chalk that up as a failed experiment (for which I'm still not seeing the reason why), and move on.

The important part, though, is that we got the standings points we needed. And with the Ducks being out of conference, I don't much care about their consolation point. So things are good, I guess.

I just hope that Green's back for the Canes on Friday, the team is just a lot less dangerous without him.

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