SaucyJack

Seriously...luck or skill on Kyle Palmieri’s OT winner? (Here you can see the puck grazing the goalie’s head; what a tiny target to shoot for.)

For most of the year, the debate on which young Caps goalie, Ilya Samsonov or Vitek Vanacek, would lead the team in the playoffs, remained unresolved. The consensus was not to go out of the way to trade for yet another netminder. So...if you had 39-years and 359-days old backup Craig Anderson being the winning goalie for playoff game 1...you are tonight’s big winner! As former late-night talk show host David Letterman was frequently wont to say: “You can’t make this stuff up.”

Nice to see Ovenchicken finally get some ice time practice against AHLers. We’ll wait and see how he and Backs (and Osher and Kuzy?!?) do against NHL competition this weekend. It is very strange, by the way, to see this Washington franchise offer its McDonald’s “Chicken McNugget Minute” contest, rewarding fans if the team scores in the final minute of regulation. (Which occurred in both of the last two games)... ...I mean, duh, what the heck are they thinking, this team is built around Ovie, it’s all about OVEN BAKED chicken not that Mickey D deep-fat-fried poultry! Sometimes ya gotta wonder if anybody’s in charge here...

Elsewhere I misspoke saying the Caps had not defeated the Bruins in regulation this year. They did enjoy an 8-1 shellacking at Boston on April 11th. Other than that, 4 regulation losses and 2 OT “wins” (if 3-on-3 can be considered real hockey.) Advantage Bruins. Of course they play Boston in a meaningless regular season finale tomorrow night. Who would want to play, much less watch? Can they let their AHL farm teams play? Of course the bigger question is how many healthy COVID-Free Caps starters will be available once the real action starts. Terrible time of year to be suffering in these regards. (Well, Bayern Munich didn’t have Lewandowski and lost to Paris in the Champions League quarters...only to have Paris lose (might’ve anyway) to Man City in the semis with Mbappe out. Stuff happens at the wrong time in lots of places. Caps gotta figure out how to overcome, at least win 2 of the first 5 games, in time for healing to aid the cause.)

In recent years when events at ScotiaBank Arena did not go to Leafs’ fans pleasure, did they ever burst out in unison with a rousing chorus of ”NIIIINE-teen-SIIIX-ti-SEVV-un!” ? Also, four Cups since 1962 ain’t bad!

It never fails...tell a wry ‘joke’ on the Interweb and you’ll get interpreted literally. Thanks but I knew where The Whale ended up. Buf I didn’t know about their merchandise still being sold. Crap that makes this Isner Thing way less cool than I thought it was. Shee-ittt...

America’s John Isner defeated Russia’s Andrey Rublev today at the Madrid Open. This was his first defeat of a top ten tennis player in about 2 years. Isner served great. Now he has to play Dominic Thiem in a quarterfinal tomorrow. Tough task. But my concern lies elsewhere. I can’t find the forum section for the Hartford Whalers. Who can help ?!

January 13, 1978 - GOAL Magazine throws the then-woeful Washington Capitals franchise a bone, placing their Guy Charron on its cover. Better would have been another photo from that era, if one exists, when the lowly Caps inexplicably defeated the then-dynastic Canadiens in Montreal. This led to a post-game locker room celebration with the boys proudly taking turns lifting a big metal garbage can around as if it were the Stanley Cup. Ah, good times...

Ignoring the results of gimmicks (3-on-3 OTs and shootouts), the Capitals are a dismal 0 wins, 5 losses, and 2 draws against The Bruins this season. I gather that Zdeno Chara is not scaring his old mates a bit. As far as odd-man breaks, when it is the Caps, they often look like an NBA point guard driving pell-mell down the middle but without good vision, or plan, or enough savvy, to make an effective decision. I think it was the 5-3 Bruins goal where their 2-on-1 became a 3-on-2 where Carlson (who was with the 3rd attacker) went straight to net right next to the other defender and the goalie, all now close together, allowing that 3rd attacker a wide open shot for the goal. If Washington draws Boston in the first round, feggedaboudit...

True, but I recently subscribed for one buck a month, for 6 months. Pretty good deal. More details than I need, but it’s worth it at this price.

Perhaps. The WaPo article on the trade reminds us that Jakub scored a total of zero goals and zero assists in the last two Caps playoff years, after he scored 3 goals and 5 assists in the four series of their 2018 Cup run. I enjoyed watching Vrana, I suppose, but there is one substantial plus for Caps fans in having him traded. No longer will Washington fans have to suffer listening to TV commentator Craig Laughlin incessantly referring to him as “Jake the Snake”. Thank God that’s now of the past.

Just ask the Caps of the early 90’s like Rod Langway, Peter Bondra, Dino Ciccarelli, Al Iafrate, Dale Hunter, Mike Ridley, Kevin Hatcher, Calle Johansson, et al...especially their 91-92 squad... ...and they’ll have to admit that the likes of Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr, Ron Francis, Tom Barrasso, and the rest of their Pittsburgh Penguin mates were indeed CAP KILLERS responsible for greatly increased psychologist business in the DC region for several years. —————— As for Toronto, I’d root for the Bay Leaves, I think, were that their logo. Yeah pretty sure.

So of course, a scoreless draw late into tonight’s game results in the Caps surrendering a late 3rd period tally to the Islanders. Some run-of-the-mill defenseman named Chara got the puck swept off his stick behind the net, allowing a shot from the point and a rebound goal. (Can we get a blue-liner with just a little bit of experience, please?)

Interesting...that Toronto was not an original hockey hotbed during the infancy of the game. This is a bit off-topic except to cite some Major Irony...Toronto now being the home of HHOF and the center for replay reviews and perhaps now the unofficial center of The Hockey Game... ...nevertheless it has the honor and distinction of being credited with hosting the first NBA Basketball game. More here: https://nbahoopsonline.com/Articles/firstgame.html You just couldn’t make that up.

Even the Caps TV Production staff are harping on it. (This was before the Isles made the final 8-4.)

As my post under the Caps section of this forum said, their 3rd period goals against for the 2 latest months is alarming. The Caps are failing my ‘eye test’ most of the time in the 3rd. They just don’t look confident when pressed. They don’t often show the skill to ‘break out dangerously’ in such situations. (If this was basketball, any team would do well to go full-court-press in the latter stage of a game.) The much more eagle-eyed folks over at The Athletic only have Washington rated 9th in their latest NHL Power Ranking. In their division, the Isles (6th) and Bruins (8th) rank a wee bit higher.

Is it time to start worrying that the division leading Caps are just possibly pretenders? The Capitals goals-against numbers in the 3rd period are troubling...and not just these past two games against NYR where they gave up four third-period goals both times. I recall several 3-0 final period leads in recent weeks being just enough to hold on in regulation or OT. So I spent a few minutes tabulating their by-period goals-against for the past two months. I didn’t distinguish between home and away, and I didn’t count OT and shootout goals. x-y-z, where x is 1st period, y is 2nd period, z is 3rd period. February games: 9-13-17 March games: 7-7-21 TOTAL: 16-20-38 So for the last two months, opponents have scored a bit over HALF their goals against Washington in period three. I know the regular season can be a drag...little real reward for finishing first so why give anything close to a sustained supreme effort until playoffs. But if anything resembles the playoffs during the regular season, surely it is the 3rd period? This is not good, right?

I missed that excitement except for all the between-period time ESPNU had to show highlights. It was neat to see all the fans, mostly UND, by the glass standing (seemingly all the time) during OT play. I had a small reason to root for UND. An old supervisor of mine started his engineering career in the early/mid-1970s working missile silo systems near the Canadian border in North Dakota, before Cold War negotiations mothballed their project. He said their weekly social highlight was to travel down to Grand Forks on the weekend to go to a McDonalds. Ah the sweet life. (I see that Fighting Hawks is facing an uphill battle.)

Dude...no lie about that. I started watching at the start of 2nd OT. I was ready for a little bit of Fargo After Dark but not so much ‘Last Call.’ Bummer I know, I saw both of the Caps game 7 4OT losses (on TV) long ago. But 5OT is rough. Dude.

I’ve seen talk in the press that perhaps the Capitals would like a goalie more experienced than either Samsonov (age 24) or Vanecek (age 25).

Per the numerous galline references in this thread, and per the Further Exploits of Oven Chicken tonight (4th all-time on 2 goal games) and not to fowl things up too much further, I captured the following in the last minute of play in tonight’s Caps shutout of the Devils.

3 goals to go to tie this old time Blackhawks whipping during the expansion division era. http://www.flyershistory.net/cgi-bin/boxscore.cgi?19680290

This would be an interesting contest amongst all the unworthy nominees. May I put the NBA’s Washington Bullets/Wizards (or Buzzards if you prefer) name in the hat.

Especially as I apparently don’t know it now...Smith-Pelly not Pelle. Double Doh! What I remember about that lucky Lars Eller double OT goal (which looked like an “own goal” had this been soccer) was Smith-Pelly jumping up and down by the goal crease in rapturous so of course in my dull ‘remembered’ he scored it. —————————— As for Philipp Grubauer (sorry for the sidetrack here) I am glad to see he had some better success in the 2019 playoffs for the Avs despite a 2nd round game 7 loss to San Jose.