Capitals 1, Flyers 7

25-6. 12-9. 4-9. 15-13. Those were the totals in shots, hits, giveaways, and faceoffs for the Capitals and Flyers in the first period of yesterday’s game, numbers that are indicative of just how one-sided a period it was.

Of course, domination in these statistics doesn’t really mean all that much if they aren’t converted into scoring chances. By not picking up at least a two goal lead and instead actually going into the first intermission down a goal, the Capitals gave the Flyers not only an opportunity to regroup, but an opportunity to realize that despite being (almost) completely dominated in the first period, they were in a position to win the game.

Say what you will about the Flyers, but there’s no doubt Philadelphia has a very talented hockey team with more than enough blue-collar work ethic, and there was not way they were going to let this one get away unless the Capitals responded quickly. The Caps, of course, could not do so and although this game wound up 7-1, it was all but decided when Jeff Carter scored to put the Flyers up 2-0.

Usually when a team goes down by six goals there’s plenty of blame to go around, but that’s not really the case today. The bangers banged, the fighters fought, and the skilled players pressured Antero Niittymaki and the Flyer defense. It might be tempting to point the finger at Brent Johnson’s unspectacular performance (three goals allowed on thirteen shots), which was magnified by Niittymaki’s brilliance (47 saves on 48 shots) at the other end, but it is awfully hard to blame the goalie when his team only scores once.

Ultimately there’s no complex series of reasons that the Capitals lost today. Niittymaki stole two points for his team and, well, sometimes it’s just not your day.

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Quick Hits

• Presumably yesterday’s game will end talk of Donald Brashear being unwilling to fight anymore. His two fighting majors give him seven for the season, which comes out to one every 4.57 games or .212 per game. That puts Brashear on pace for 17 fights this season. The last time Brashear had as many was 1998-99. If he’d be allowed to drop the gloves with Aaron Asham he’d be on pace for 20, a number that would have put him sixth in the league last season.
• I know Tom Poti was hurt for part of the game and I know the Capitals spent a lot of time on the powerplay, but asking Mike Green to play over 29 minutes while still coming back from a shoulder injury is too much.
• Sean Collins was the lone Capitals play with a positive plus-minus, at +1.
• People can say what they want about the Capitals missing out on the chance to draft Ryan Getzlaf.  Missing out on the chance to draft Mike Richards is a lot more painful.

From Barry Melrose Rocks:

Thanks to a tipster, I have found out about an injustice taking over our Wikipedias at this hour. Apparently, some Flyers fan out there is a little pissed that Barry Melrose isn’t crying foul for the Flyers over a play that happened last night. So, in retaliation, said fan is taking it to Melrose’s Wikipedia page. Because that’s a logical conclusion. I’m also still trying to figure out what point it is supposed to prove. More on that later. That is, if I can figure it out.

From Wikipedia:

Barry Melrose (born July 15, 1956 in Kelvington, Saskatchewan) is a former hockey player, coach, and general manager, and is currently a commentator for ESPN. He is a poor commentator with no edge. He completely ignored the outrageous call on the Flyers in game one of their series on 25-April-2008. He has given up the right to fight for what is right, simply because he wants to keep his sweet job.

Folks, we simply cannot let idiots like this run our internets. If there’s an outrageous call, I don’t see why a commentator can be blamed. They’re allowed to agree or disagree. Since when did we stop haggling the referees?!?

Oh and next time you want to pull a fast one like this, you should probably check your dates. The Flyers didn’t play tonight. Idiot.

Unsurprisingly, Melrose’s Wikipedia page has already been fixed.

While this the case of just one knucklehead Flyer fan bringing bitching into the 21st century, it’s pretty funny the Flyer faithful are finding new ways to express their “us against the world” attitude.

or: How the NHL’s Feel Good Story of the Year Became an Embarrassment to the League

Capitals 2, Flyers 3 (OT)

The Capitals first playoff series in five years, along with the team’s most exciting season in a decade, came to an unceremonious end at Verizon Center last night as Joffrey Lupul tucked a rebound behind Caps goaltender Cristobal Huet to win the game, and the series, for his Flyers.

This series held so much potential for the NHL: a matchup of past Patrick Division rivals, the league’s most exciting player in Alex Ovechkin, most improved teams in the Caps and Flyers, the feel-good story of the year and even the “good versus evil” angle pitched as the plucky comeback kids battled the reincarnation of the Broad Street Bullies. Yet the story of this series was officiating from Game 1 until Game 7 and ultimately played an undeniable role in the series’ outcome.

Capitals fans will be upset about the Flyers’ second goal last night’s game and rightfully so: it was an embarrassingly bad missed interference call on the part of the referees. But it’s not as if this were the only bad call (or non-call) and it’s not as if the poor officiating never benefited the Capitals; to insist otherwise would be sour grapes. But between the non-calls on the Flyers who goaltender interference throughout the series, the bad call for goalie interference by Viktor Kozlov, a missed double-minor high stick by Nicklas Backstrom on Mike Richards, the officials not noticing the puck going out of play in last night’s game and too many missed interference calls to count (it’s illegal to set a pick in the NHL now, shouldn’t referees know that?), the NHL came across as a league unable to drag competent officials out even for a playoff series.* The result: what could have been a shining moment for the league instead became an embarrassment, the only saving grace being the hope that the casual fans the NHL would have been appealing to in this series don’t know enough about the game to realize how much of an impact the referees had.

As much of a right as Capitals fans have to complain the problem here goes well beyond this game and this team - with how closely this series was contested and the repeated poor officiating, it’s impossible to say how things would have played out if the referees had done well, and it’s certainly no guarantee that the Capitals would have won.

The larger issue is a league-wide one. The NHL is doing a pretty good job of crawling its way back towards respectability in the major sports world: ratings on Versus and NBC are up, attendance appears to be up, Sidney Crosby and Ovechkin are true “crossover” stars, the league’s Winter Classic was well received and many nontraditional markets are being revitalized. But many long-term fans have noticed the deteriorating officiating over the last couple seasons, a problem which seems to getting worse almost every game. It seems strange, but the problem of the NHL’s rapid expansion might not be spreading the hockey talent too thin but rather in coming up with enough people to adequately officiate these games.

*It’s also worth noting that, excluding automatic penalties like high sticking and puck-over-the-glass and matching roughing, slashing and fighting calls, the officials called 27 first period penalties, 20 second period penalties and 13 third period penalties. Sure there’s bound to be some discrepancy but fewer than half the number of calls in the third than in the first? That’s a clear example of referees putting their whistles away. While that approach has it’s proponents, the fact is that a penalty in the game’s first minute should also be a penalty in its last minute.

Capitals 3, Flyers 2

I’ve never really been one to believe that a young team needs to “learn” how to win playoffs games. After all, a team is playing the same sport they’ve played countless hours in their lives to that point and although playoffs games do have a different feel, one would expect the players to be prepared for them given how much the players do know about hockey. Yet it seems that almost every year a young, talented team fails to live up to its promise in the postseason.

Thus far this year it has been the Washington Capitals, who dropped three straight to the Philadelphia Flyers after a comeback victory in the first game of the series between the two teams. The Capitals do appear to be learning however: they played much better in Game 4 than in Game 3, and better in Game 5 than in Game 4. Given the Capitals’ impressive run to end the season and the fact that they seem to be finding their groove the question is: is the pressure now on the Flyers?

After all, the orange and black missed their first opportunity to close out the series on Saturday afternoon when they let the Capitals come out and dictate the flow of play. Game 6 is going to be the Flyers best chance to close out the Capitals because if they lose the Capitals going in to a Game 7 at home, with momentum. While the Flyers do have the home ice advantage, the home ice advantage comes with pressure; pressure not just to win but to win in style and to please the crowd (especially in Philadelphia, where fans can be…unforgiving, to say the least). The Flyer faithful love their team’s Broad Street Bullies persona and that, coupled with the fact that Capitals controlled the physical play on Saturday, means the Flyers have the potential to put themselves on the penalty kill both early and often. Playing against a Capitals team that’s clicking on the powerplay for the first time this postseason the Flyers could be down and out if they succumb to the pressure of trying to close out the series at home and become undisciplined.

Capitals 3, Flyers 4 (OT)

For the first time this season, the Capitals lost a must-win game, and in heartbreaking fashion too. Allowing Mike Knuble the time and space to get two good whacks at the puck in the second overtime session cost the Caps the game and will send them home down 3-1 in their first playoff series in five years.

It wouldn’t necessarily be unfair for Capitals supporters to question some of the officiating during last night’s game (and after this season the league should definitely run a clinic for its officials on “goaltender interference” and when setting a moving pick is supposed to be a penalty these days), the Capitals have by and large shot themselves in the foot in this series, going the better part of the first three games with nothing in the way of clearing their crease, crashing the Philadelphia net, or consistent forechecking, all while trying to do too much with the puck. The good news is that the Capitals seem to have corrected these problems. The bad news is, of course, that they’re now down 3-1 in this series.

Do the Capitals have one more great comeback left in them? Should they even have hope of winning this series? History, statistics, the series to this point and perhaps even common sense say ‘no’. But if there’s any team, in any year, that can do it, it’s this team, this year. The most important thing for the Capitals to remember at this point is that they can only make up one game at a time. The focus needs to be on wining in front of their home crowd on Saturday afternoon and trying to garner some momentum. If they can do that, well….hey, you never know.

Sometimes I wonder if there really are sports gods. Then I remember than no major Philadelphia team has won a championship in nearly 25 years.

During the Capitals 2-0 loss to the Flyers is became pretty readily apparent that they need to make some changes to their gameplan if they hope to succeed in picking the win in at least one of the two games they have this week in Philadelphia. The changes that need to made include:

(1) Scratch John Erskine. This isn’t number one necessarily because I think it’s the most important one, but I do think it’s the most obvious. Erskine can hit pretty well and he can fight, but that’s about all he has going for him; for Erskine a successful game is one where he doesn’t give up a scoring chance because of his suspect skating ability or take an unnecessary penalty. I like Erskine as a reserve defenseman but why he’s playing while Steve Eminger, who’s quicker, more agile and has more offensive upside, sits in the press box is a mystery to me.

(2) Improve play in front of the nets. It didn’t come back to bite the Caps in Game 2 but they were still letting the Flyers have far too easy a time setting up in front of Cristobal Huet, and that’s something the Capitals aren’t going to be able to get away with for an entire series. At the other end Caps players are going to the net but they’re doing so only to look for rebounds and as a result aren’t creating near enough havoc in front of the Philadelphia net in terms of screens, potential deflections and drawing penalties.

(3) Simplify. In the neutral zone this means looking for a pass, only carrying the puck when there’s space and dumping it when necessary (I’m lookin’ at you, Ovechkin, Green and Semin). In the offensive zone this means getting pucks to the net, getting traffic in front of the net and battling in the slot for rebounds rather than endlessly passing the puck while looking for a perfect chance. Last game the Capitals passed up more good scoring chances that I could count.

None of these changes are particularly complex, but I’d expect each of them to pay dividends.

Capitals 0, Flyers 2

After the Capitals’ 5-4 comeback win in Game 1 of this series the Flyers were admonished for only playing forty minutes of a sixty minute game. While that is indeed not an admirable characteristic, it’s not really much better to adopt logic that the Capitals seem to have: that it’s okay to only play a good twenty minutes as long they’re the last twenty. The Capitals didn’t get anything going Sunday afternoon until the opening minutes of the third period and even then it wasn’t nearly enough to pull out a win. However, despite this I don’t think the Capitals’ effort was as poor as it seemed on the surface.

The story of yesterday’s game was individual efforts: the Capitals were done in by mistakes by defensemen John Erskine and Mike Green and stymied offensively by the individual effort of Martin Brion, who made 24 saves. Without Erskine getting caught in front of R.J. Umberger and Green making a bad turnover, the Flyers don’t get to dictate the rest of the game and without the efforts of Biron, the Caps probably net a pair. It’s not that there aren’t adjustments needed and it’s not as if the Capitals deserved to win this game. I just think it wasn’t as one-sided as it looked.

Regardless of that the Capitals did lose which means, for now at least, they’ve squandered their home ice advantage. The upcoming game in Philadelphia on Tuesday could end up being the make-or-break one for the Capitals. On the one hand they’ve still only lost back-to-back games once under Bruce Boudreau and that took some poor officiating and Nicklas Backstrom scoring into his own net to happen and the last time the Capitals lost they responded by reeling off an eight game winning streak. On the other hand, none of the games they played during that stretch were as difficult as the one on Tuesday is likely to be.

Quick Hits

• I usually like the NBC broadcast team but they were definitely off today: it only 13 seconds for someone to mispronounce Shaone Morrisonn’s name, Pierre Mcguire estimated that half the fans in attendance were rooting for the Flyers and Ed Olczyk had a number of errors: calling Scott Hartnell’s goaltender interference penalty “incidental contact” despite that Hartnell, who was not pushed, bowled over Cristobal Huet well into the blue paint, adamantly calling a phantom elbow on Backstom and saying the the Flyers exploited the the blocker of Huet on the Flyers’ second goal, a play on which Huet had no chance.
• Show me a Capitals fan who was surprised it was John Erskine who got beat on the Flyers first goal and I’ll show you a fan who doesn’t know who John Erskine is.
• Mike Green’s played six period of playoff hockey. One was stellar, five have been terrible.
• Sunday’s game wasn’t nearly as physical as Friday’s: total hits decreased from 76 to 57.
• The Capitals had 18 giveaways. The Flyers had 7.
• Of the Capitals 18 giveaways, nine were by defensemen. The only Washington defenseman who did not have a giveaway was Shaone Morrisonn.
  

All photos AP/Getty by way of Yahoo!

Capitals fans probably remember Patrick Thoresen’s shot block last night; afterwards Thoresen lay injured on the ice while Mike Green collected the puck and used the extra space to deposit the puck into the Philly net for his second goal of the night. As it turns out, Thoresen’s injury is pretty serious:

Thoreson went down to block a slap shot by Washington Capitals defenseman Mike Green with the Flyers clinging to a one-goal lead early in the third period. The puck struck Thoresen between the legs with such force that after the game he was taken to a Washington hospital.

Flyers general manager Paul Holmgren said Thoreson might need to have a testicle removed.

“Right now we’re not sure how serious it is,” Holmgren said after the Flyers blew a two-goal lead en route to a crushing 5-4 defeat in Game 1 of their Eastern Conference quarterfinals. “But he may need surgery. There is a chance they may have to remove one.”

Now that’s something you never want to see happen. Here’s hoping Thoresen makes a speedy recovery.

Capitals 5, Flyers 4

The Capitals are capable of being an electric team, playing with grit and talent to spare, able to quickly strike in the offensive zone or bottle up the opposition in their own end and of being, quite possibly, the best team in the NHL on any given night. Why they have to be down and out, gasping for air and all but dead to rights for them to play that way is anyone’s guess…but I guess there are worse characteristics for a team to have.

For forty minutes the Flyers executed their gameplan almost perfectly: they crashed the net of Cristobal Huet, played a physical game without getting burned by penalties and successfully controlled not only Alex Ovechkin and his linemates, but the secondary line of Alex Semin, Sergei Fedorov and Matt Cooke as well.

But then, NHL games go sixty minutes, not forty, and the Capitals completely controlled the final frame, outshooting the Flyers 12-3 and of course outscoring them 3-0.

It seemed only fitting that Ovechkin netted the game winning goal (and even more so on an individual effort play) but the story of ‘The Great Eight’’s first playoff game with another talented youngster, Mike Green. Green had, frankly, an awful first two periods. He failed to clear the net on the play that led to the Flyers first goal, giving Huet no chance because of the screen and failed to step up on Vinny Prospal, giving him a wide open path to the slot and the chance to score his second of the night. Then, to top things off, Green took a delay of game (puck over the glass) penalty in the second period’s closing minutes forcing his teammates to finish off the frame a man down and try desperately not to allow the Flyers to pick up a three-goal lead.
Green was indeed picked up by his teammates and he returned the favor, notching two goals in 6:26 to tie the game in the third.

Of course, his teammates weren’t the only people Green picked up with his stellar third period, as an already raucous crowd went into near bedlam when Green’s slapshot hit twine to make the score 4-4. As someone who was at the Capitals last playoff game five years ago, one which was attended by a largely listless crowd of about 13,000 and described as having the “feel of a well-attended preseason game”, it was great to see the whole building behind the home team. I don’t think there’s any doubt it helped the Caps win.

As excited as Washington fans and players are is about how concerned Philly fans and players should be. Sure, the Flyers went into the second intermission ahead 4-2 and it took a great comeback for the Capitals to come out with the win. But if my allegiances were to the orange and black I would still be a little worried because the Flyers executed their gameplan perfectly for most of the game and still wasn’t enough to secure a win. That, plus that the Capitals now have momentum and confidence again and have experienced playoff hockey, means the Flyers are in for one hell of challenge Sunday afternoon at Verizon Center.

DMG’s 3 Stars
(1) Mike Green - 2 goals, 1 hit, +1
(2) Alex Ovechkin - 1 goal (game winner), 8 hits, +1
(3) Matt Bradley - 2 assists, +1, 7 hits

Quick Hits

• Everyone was predicting a physical series and, well, sometimes the majority is right: the two teams were credited for a combined 76 hits, 40 of which were doled out by Washington, led by Ovechkin (8), Matt Bradley (7), Matt Cooke (6) and Milan Jurcina (5).
• Is it just me, or does it seem like interference is apparently not a penalty in the playoffs?
• Bruce Boudreau’s decision to put out the Fedorov-Semin-Cooke line after Ovechkin’s goal was great. Man can those guys cycle the puck.
• It would have been understandable for Caps’ fans to have been concerned about the playoff readiness of their team, but that first game did a lot to calm my nerves. In addition to Green and Ovechkin I thought Tomas Fleischmann, Milan Jurcina, Alex Semin and Matt Bradley looked ready to go.
• I have to admit I’d been wondering a bit how David Steckel was a 30 goal scorer in the AHL. His goal last night did a lot to help explain it to me.
• Federov’s pass that led to Green’s first goal was beautiful both in concept and in execution. I guess that’s why he leads all active players in playoff assists.

All photos AP/Getty by way of Yahoo!