A little bit of everything: Canes 3, Caps 2

I have been to four Capitals games this year, and this was by far the most wacky.  To start with, I knew my friend Kevin and I were in for a good time because of the large, (probably drunk) Canes fan next to us who was already talking smack before the puck even dropped.  On the ice, the return of Ovi and Jason Arnott was sure to bring even more to the table.  

• I thought Scott Hannan started off rough.  He seemed to be a step behind everyone, being beaten by a Canes forward for a good scoring chance and taking a penalty.  Speaking of penalties, Washington gave up 5 powerplay opportunities, and that doesn't even count the penalty shot that was drawn.  That is far too many to give up, and has been becoming an area of concern for me.  Luckily the teams penalty kill has been fantastic, dispite giving up a goal tonight, but come playoff time, this trend could prove disastrous. 
• We had a little bit of everything going on with Sasha tonight.  Semin scored a goal and assited on Johansson's tally.  Bad Sasha though seemed to be on the ice more.  He took a crippling penalty late in the game, sapping all the momentum and energy the team had after they unleashed the fury. He fell down multiple times, missed shots, and just generally did the wrong thing at the wrong time.  I guess he scored a Semin hat trick, with the bad penalty, goal and assist.  Either way he seemed to have the worst game of anyone I've ever seen who became one of the three stars.
• Johansson's goal I thought was a thing of beauty.  It was just a strong move to the goal and he took advantage of a puck that bounced between a few players.  His strong play is a good indictator going into the playoffs.
• It looks that Dennis Wideman might be out for a while.  He got drilled on what appeared to be a head shot delivered by Tuomo Ruutu.  I don't know what it means that Ovechkin was the only person who seemed to take exception.  He went after Ruutu right away, and repeatedly attempted to hit him with varying degrees of success the rest of the game.  I really liked that as the captain, Ovi showed that it's not okay to mess with his players.  The thing that disappointed me, is that no one other than Ovi really seemed to go after Ruutu.  You don't really want to run the risk of Ovi getting hurt (again?).  I didn't notice, but one of my friends who was watching at home said that Ruutu appeared to only be on the ice when the fourth line (Hendricks, Gordon, Bradley) went off the ice.  Other than that group, the only other person who would normally go after someone would be Erskine, but he couldn't because Wideman was already done.  If this is true, very clever strategy by the Canes and Paul Maruice. 
• Finally, I have lost the faith in Semyon Varlamov.  I never thought I'd live to see the day where I was afraid to have him in net.  If at the beginning of the year, you told me I'd want to trade Varly out of the three goalies we had I would have thought you were crazy.  But times have changed.  Tonight, I thought Varly was horrendous.  His second goal was very weak and was probably the sole reason the game had to go to extra time and a point was left on the table when he dropped the ball in the shootout.  It could have been worse though.  Some how Varly avoided serious disaster this game, but he just doesn't seem to have the fundamentals down like Neuvirth or the puck handling of Holtby (even though as my friend Kevin pointed out, since Holtby has come up Varly has decided to try handling the puck more).  Varly relys far to much on his athletic ability, and this is pure specuation, but poor positioning may lead to him trying to do to much and injuring his groin.  All this being said, I want Varly on the team in the post season, but going forward I think we should jetison him.  In my ideal world, we would send Varly and Semin a little up north to a team in Jersey for one Mr. Zach Parise.  But I'm not the GM, so these fantasies will have to take place in my mind.

All in all, this game really wasn't that important to the Caps.  They basically have 2nd place locked up, the only thing to do is scoreboard watch and hope for a (somewhat) favorable matchup, but I'll save these thoughts for another day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Think about a world with no Alex Semin and a top line of Ovechkin, Backstrom and Parise.  If only.....