The Caps game a couple of nights ago was an interesting one to watch. It started out very frustrating, as the Caps were getting outworked, outhustled, and outplayed (gee, where have I heard that before) for the first ten to twelve minutes. Over that time, the Caps had one shot on goal, a blast from the point by Erskine, and gave up many scoring chances the other way. TVo was excellent over that time, though, and the score stayed even.
The Caps finally realized they were going to have to work hard to win, however, and did a very nice job of turning it around. By the end of the period, the stats were pretty even, with the Caps even having a slight edge in scoring chances.
The second period continued to go mostly in the Caps favor, but there was still no scoring, as both goaltenders were excellent.
And a large part of the third period went the same way, culminating in Brouwer getting a goal off a turnover forced by Eakin and Johansson at 15:14.
But things went downhill, fast, after that. On the next shift, the top line came out (huh?) and laid a goose-egg, leaving Shultz with half the ice and two attackers to deal with. And it wasn't, theoretically, an odd-man break. No fault to Vokoun on that one, Carlson on the back side and the forwards should have broken up the play.
Again, the Preds seemed the more motivated team, and managed to score again with half a minute left. And again, it was a defensive breakdown that left a forward with an open net into which to shoot (perhaps TVo was too aggressive taking away the angle of Erat, who passed to WIlson, who scored).
And then the Preds won the resulting face-off and buried a half-rink shot into the empty net to ice the game five seconds later.
So a depressing end to a promising game (and, frankly, a game the Caps should have won).
Let's hope that killer instinct shows up against Winnipeg tonight.
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