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(photo by Brian Murphy)

You ever have one of those days when you wish you could just crawl back into bed?  That’s pretty much the only way to describe the feelings defenseman Jeff Schultz felt after the Washington Capitals lost via shootout to the Toronto Maple Leafs Monday night.

Not only did his team find a way to blow a 4-1 lead in the third period against a mediocre opponent that had lost eight-straight road games, but the 24-year-old was forced out of the game midway through the second period with a broken thumb that reportedly will sideline him for four to six weeks.

I had the chance to catch up with fourth-year pro Tuesday to see just how bad the injury is and to see if there’s any chance he’ll be able to play in the Winter Classic on New Year’s Day.

“I broke the top bone in my thumb and they’re saying three to four weeks,” he said. “I’m crossing my fingers for less time with the Winter Classic coming up.”

How long did it take for you to realize that now because of this injury, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll have to miss the Winter Classic?

“Yeah, it’s one of those things that everyone wants to play in,” Schultz said. “But I want to be good enough condition and strength wise to not be a liability out there. I don’t want to be out there hurting the team. I want to be able to do my job and make a difference.”

As if the loss and the broken thumb wasn’t bad enough, Schultz also took a stick to the face courtesy of Maple Leafs forward Colby Armstrong just under six minutes into the game. Like I said, clearly this wasn’t his day.

“I was struck in the face with a high stick and got this nice little scratch on my face here,” he said. “But they were penalized on the play and I think we scored on the powerplay, which was good.”

[Editor’s note: The Capitals didn’t actually score on that particular powerplay, but after the rough night Schultz had, I didn’t have the heart to tell him.]

Fortunately you didn’t need stitches for that cut, but seriously – at some point I think it’s pretty clear that Toronto was gunning for you. What on earth did you do to piss them off?

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(courtesy photos)

The Washington Capitals defeated the Atlanta Thrashers 6-4 yesterday in an old-fashioned slobberknocker of a hockey game, giving them wins in nine of their last 11 contests.

It wasn’t always pretty and both teams clearly looked sluggish for large chunks of this bout, but in the end, the Caps were able to walk away victorious thanks to defenseman John Erskine, who scored the game-winning goal with less than seven minutes to play in regulation.

Erskine also picked up a second win on the night – defeating Thrashers forward Eric Boulton in one of the best hockey fights you’ll ever see. In fact, Puck Daddy is already calling this instant classic a “fight of the year candidate.”

All in all, a good night for a gentleman who it’s safe to say isn’t usually the focal point of the Washington lineup.

“I had a lane. I shot as hard as I could and we had guys going to the net to create some traffic,” said Erskine, who had scored just eight goals in 340 career games prior to Sunday. “It was a roller coaster of a game. We had a letdown in the second and we came out hard in the third.”

While the Capitals were happy to walk away with two points on a night they clearly weren’t at the top of their game, there’s no avoiding the fact that this type of effort is going to cost Washington more times than not.

“It wasn’t very good,” said Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau of his team’s performance. “We made mental mistakes. It was ugly, but the good thing is they righted the ship. We talked about not wanting to beat teams 6-4. We want to shut teams down.”

To their credit, Capitals players fully admit they need to be better if they want to continue to be successful.

“We haven’t strung together a good 40 minutes,” said center Dave Steckel. “We come out with a good 20 and then our second 20 is lacking energy. Teams might not play their best in the first, then they come out harder and we’re not responding, so it’s something we want to fix. We haven’t played a 60-minute game in a couple games now.”

The Capitals also got goals from forward Alex Ovechkin, defenseman Mike Green, forward Matt Hendricks and an empty netter by Steckel.

Although he didn’t have his best game of the season either, the win gave Capitals goalie Michal Neuvirth his league-leading 11th victory on the season. Neuvirth, the NHL’s rookie of the month for October, is now 11-3 with a 2.60 goals against average and a .910 save percentage.

I bring all of this up because it gives me a great excuse to bring up something that’s been driving me crazy all season long. Whenever I saw a shot of Neuvirth with his mask off during a stoppage of play it always bothered me that he looked so familiar, but I couldn’t figure out why.

The 22-year-old clearly has a baby face, but it drove me nuts trying to figure out which celebrity he most resembled. That is, until this weekend when I finally put it all together that Neuvirth looks like Björk – the Icelandic singer-songwriter.

Now, I understand that some folks out there are going to think I’m taking a cheapshot at the rookie goaltender, but that’s not my intent. It’s just been bothering me since Neuvirth became a mainstay here in D.C., and I felt compelled to share with the class.

And honestly, if he keeps racking up wins at his current pace, I don’t care if the dude shows up for work looking like Lady Gaga. Anything to help the Caps finally exercise their playoff demons.

(photo by Nick Wass)

If the Washington Capitals were a football team instead of a hockey franchise, their regular season would be over.

After 16 games, the Caps proudly stand in first place in the NHL with a 12-4 record. To put that in perspective, the Redskins have won 10 games in a season only twice in the last 19 seasons, and you have to go all the way back to 1991 to find the last time the Redskins had at least 12 wins in a season.

So yeah, the Capitals are off to a pretty solid start. But that’s been the norm since Bruce Boudreau came to town, isn’t it? The Caps have won early and often since Gabby took over during the 2007-08 season – going 153-60-28 in the regular season.

After last night’s 6-3 win over the Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington is currently riding a six-game winning streak. But that’s nothing new for the Caps either.

Four different times last season the Capitals won at least five games in a row – including a franchise-best 14-game winning streak that saw Washington go undefeated for nearly an entire month of action. In all, this is the team’s ninth winning streak of five or more games under Boudreau.

Because most of our local sports franchises are mired in mediocrity, I’ve decided to go back and look at each of the team’s six consecutive wins to see how the Capitals have once again gotten off to such an impressive start.

Caps defeat Lightning 6-3

Washington improved to a league-best 8-1 at home with a convincing victory over a much-improved Tampa Bay squad. Although the Lightning have been down for several years now (the last time they qualified for the postseason was 2006-07), if the season ended today, they’d not only make the playoffs – they’d host a first-round matchup.

Led by 20-year-old center Steven Stamkos, the Lightning are now considered one of the teams most likely to break out this season. In just 15 games played, Stamkos has 14 goals (tops in the NHL) and 12 assists (seventh best) for 26 points (tops in the NHL). So if the Capitals were going to best the Lightning, someone had to step up and out-produce Stamkos.

The Lightning outshot the Capitals 41 to 26, but it was Washington’s enigmatic forward Alexander Semin who was the difference maker – picking up three goals and two assists to single-handedly ensure victory for the home team. He broke open a close game with a hat trick in the third-period and seemingly had his way with Tampa goalie Dan Ellis in the final frame.

Center Nicklas Backstrom finished the game with four assists and forward Alex Ovechkin finished with a goal and two assist. The win gave Caps rookie goalie Michal Neuvirth his 10th win of the season – which is also a league best.

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(photo by Mitchell Layton)

For the next five months, the Washington Capitals are practically in a no-win situation.

That’s what happens when you spend an entire regular season re-writing the record books, only to self destruct as soon as the playoffs start.

It’s as if a good chunk of the fanbase, as well as the national media, refuse to be satisfied until Washington proves once and for all that Bruce Boudreau’s high-octane brand of hockey can translate into playoff success.

Until that happens, regular season victories will continue to be downplayed. Unfortunately for the Caps, losses will continue to be overanalyzed – hence the no-win situation.

Capitals players can’t really do anything to improve their standing in the public’s eye, but they can still damage their reputation. If forward Alexander Semin storms out of the gate – scoring nine goals in the team’s first 14 games – there are still folks out there who will shrug their shoulders and say, “But can he do it in the postseason?”

Fair or unfair, that’s where we’re at. Defenseman Mike Green blasts an overtime winner against the Philadelphia Flyers to give the Capitals a 3-2 win Sunday (giving Green nine points in 11 games this season), but critics still rush to pick apart his game.

Even though the win was Washington’s fourth in a row and catapulted the Caps into first place in the Eastern Conference for the first time this season, no one seems in a hurry to pat the team on the back. And that’s okay. Even those involved understand there’s a lot of hockey left to be played.

“It’s only November 7th,” Boudreau said. “I know we can compete against these other teams. We’re in the mix. I’m not saying we’re better or we’re worse, but we’re in the mix to compete against the better teams.”

It’s smart for Boudreau to downplay the 14th game out of 82 and, like I said earlier, there are plenty of fans who now expect the Capitals to cruise to victory on a nightly basis. But that doesn’t mean I can’t stop and acknowledge a few things that have caught my attention during the first quarter of the season.

For starters, everyone knows the Capitals can score goals. They’ve scored 47 goals in 14 games, which is good enough for 3.3 goals a game (second best in the NHL). But the good news is that the Caps have improved dramatically on defense – allowing just 2.4 goals a game (eighth best in the league).

And while the powerplay unit is converting at a 20-percent success rate (10th in the NHL), the penalty kill – which has plagued the Capitals for years – is actually rated higher. At 86.7, the Caps currently have the seventh-best penalty kill unit in hockey. If the Capitals can keep both the powerplay and penalty kill ranked in the top 10 this season, then teams are going to have to think twice before getting physical with Washington.

Enforcer D.J. King was a nice addition, but a successful powerplay and penalty kill unit will go a lot further than any tough guy in tilting the ice in favor of the Caps. The fact that the team has been able to find this level of success while defenders such as Green and Tom Poti have been in and out of the lineup is impressive.

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(photo by Jim Mone)

That the Washington Capitals lost 2-1 on the road against the Minnesota Wild shouldn’t come as a surprise. After all, Washington has failed to defeat the Wild in six games at the Xcel Energy Center.

The troubling aspect of the loss though, is in the details.

There are going to be nights during an 82-game season when a team like the Capitals appears to be firing on all cylinders, only to be foiled by a hot goaltender or a fluky bounce. And then there are going to be nights when it’s difficult to muster up the necessary energy level on the second half of back-to-back games.

Well, this loss falls in the latter category as the Caps looked flat for much of the night, leaving coach Bruce Boudreau very few positives to walk away with.

“I can’t think of seven guys [who played well] off the top of my head right now,” Boudreau said following the loss. “It was really a disappointing effort, I thought, from our team for 50 minutes. You can’t play 10 minutes in this league and hope to win a game. I thought it was very disappointing.”

Capitals goalie Michal Neuvirth, who has easily been the best Capitals player this season, picked up his first career shutout in a 3-0 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes Wednesday night. Just 24 hours later, Neuvirth was stellar again – unfortunately, he was the lone bright spot for Washington against the Wild.

When the first period was over, the Caps had just four shots on net and trailed 1-0 on the scoreboard, thanks to a goal by Minnesota forward Chuck Kobesaw. This too is nothing new for the Caps, who have surrendered the first goal in seven of 10 games this season.

The Wild took a 2-0 lead late in the second period on a powerplay goal by center Mikko Koivu, and there was little reason to believe the Capitals were going to keep things competitive. After the first two periods of action, the only Washington forwards to register a shot on goal were Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and Mike Knuble.

In case you forgot, those three players comprise the team’s top line. Everyone else apparently remained in Carolina.

And that’s the problem for Washington through 10 games this season. Too often, it appears as if some players are content to just coast around the rink without contributing much of anything. How does a line of Alexander Semin, Brooks Laich and Mathieu Perreault fail to even get a single shot on goal through 40 minutes of gametime?

Even after it was all said and done, those three tallied no points, two hits and just two shots on goal. It should go without saying that it’s tough to win in the NHL when your second line is so badly outworked.

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