Beantown brou-ha-ha

I speculated about the Caps' odds in Beantown, but two holes were punched in my speculation before the puck even dropped. And neither hole was in the Caps' favor. One was that Thomas got the start in net for the B's, and the other was that Greenie got suspended for three games for his hit on Connoly last game.

And things did not start out looking too good for the Caps. The B's got a number of good chances early (leaving Lucic undefended on the doorstep was one), but TVo came up big quite a few times to keep it scoreless. Then the Caps got it into the O-zone, and the rebound of Alzner's shot went right to Semin, who knew what to do with it. Half a minute later, Hendricks fought his way to a short rebound that he put in the back of the net.

The Bruins got several more good chances, but it looked like the Caps might be able to take that lead into the dressing room. But then there was a lazy icing (by OV, I think), leading to a D-zone faceoff with 5.6 seconds left. Lucic managed to get the faceoff almost immediately, and put it past TVo, five-hole. That made the Boston faithful feel a lot better going into the intermission.

And Boston certainly came out buzzing, culminating in Marchand getting a steal in the middle of the ice, at the blue line and walking in to put it five-hole again. That woke up the Caps, and they picked up their play considerably.

When the puck went behind the Boston net, and two defenders ran into one another, Semin pulled the puck away from a Boston forward in the corner, and threw it across the ice to Beagle cutting in. Beagle didn't hesitate, and decisively put the one-timer into the twine to put the Caps ahead again.

Washington got a couple of power plays in this part of the game. The last of which was an absolute clinic the Caps put on, where they managed to take six shots. The last of those was a tip by Laich of a pass from Wideman that restored the Caps two-goal margin.

At this point, the Caps were up eight in shots and two in chances (the first period was 8-4 Boston in chances, with the second 9-3 DC), so things were looking quite good.

The Caps kept that margin into the third, but they seemed, for quite a while, content to just play defense in the third. Shots, at one point, were 7-1 Boston in the third. Things did improve a bit, as they started clearing the zone a bit more, and getting the puck in deep, at least, but it wasn't a huge improvement, as the shots ended 13-2 for the period.

But they did, at least, manage to keep the puck from going into the goal more than one more time, so they held on, barely. And let me tell you, when they iced it with 5.6 seconds left, again, I was really worried. But this time, they kept the puck to the sidewall until time expired.

So it was, overall, a very good game by the boys in white, but they don't have any time to celebrate. They'll head up to Toronto to take on the Maple Leafs tomorrow evening. Let's hope things go as well as they did, today (they should, given the relative quality of the competition, but you can't take that for granted).