Recap

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of Game 2

Illustration via EPoole88

The Capitals fell to the Pittsburgh Penguins 2-1 on Saturday night in Game 2 of their best of seven series. You already knew that, but I have to start my article somehow. The Caps were outplayed for much of the game, but still had a chance at a victory, unfortunately our old friend Eric Fehr scored a big goal to secure the win for Pittsburgh. As I drove home from the arena, three things stuck out to me about this game, and they clearly fit into a theme of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

The Good

Sidney Crosby was held off the score sheet, again. In the first round playoff series, Washington held Claude Giroux to just one assist. In eight games, each opposing team’s best player has been held to one point combined. That is an incredible defensive job being done by this team. Braden Holtby has of course been terrific, but Matt Niskanen and Karl Alzner have played some tremendous minutes against top talent and performed admirably. The Backstrom line has proven effective against Sid’s line, and it will be interesting to see how that match-up is changed when the series shifts to Pittsburgh. The Penalty Kill unit was again perfect at 5 for 5, and has killed 96.8% so far this post season. Also of note, Backstrom was an incredible 18 for 20 at the face-off dot in Game 2 (highest face-off win percentage in the NHL playoffs since 1987-88), mostly victimizing Sidney who went 13 for 33, with most of Sid’s wins coming on the Power Play against other Centers.

The Bad

The anemic offense during the first two periods put the Capitals on a pace to have less shots than Philadelphia had in their historic performance against the Caps in Game 5 of the previous round. Sure Pittsburgh blocked some shots, but the attempts were way down as well, and Washington just wasn’t possessing the puck. Passes weren’t sharp, breakouts were terrible, and zone entries were failing. Most of the team looked out of sync which forced Trotz to begin tinkering with lines to find some combination that would click. Braden Holtby and the penalty killing kept the Caps in the game, but for much of the contest, it was really bad. At one point in the 3rd period, Justin Williams was demoted to the 3rd line and Andre Burakovsky was moved back up to the 2nd. I’d like to see that experiment again to start Game 3 to see if that can spark the Capitals offense.

The Ugly

I’m a lifelong Capitals fan, and we don’t claim to be unbiased journalists here at Capitals Outsider, but I pride myself on being relatively objective when it comes to penalties and suspensions. That Orpik hit on Maatta was ugly tonight, and Orpik probably does deserve a suspension. It was pretty damn late, and it was a forearm that came up into Maatta’s head. I’m sure some Caps fans and writers are searching for ways to defend the hit, but it’s fairly indefensible. Orpik went too far, and he’s lucky he didn’t get kicked out of the game. The Capitals again out-hit the Penguins (74 to 50 in the series), which I applaud, but I think they may be looking too often for the big hit and its costing them penalties. Common hockey theory is that those hits will add up and benefit the Caps later in the series, but if they don’t stay out of the box, the series may not be long enough for that plan to work. Hit them hard and often, but hit them clean.

Philip Van der Vossen

Philip Van der Vossen is the Founder of Capitals Outsider. He is a former beer league player, a lifelong Capitals fan, and was a season ticket holder for 20 years.

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