All posts in hockey

(photo by Getty Images)

We double checked and it appears the NHL has declined our request to reinstate the Washington Capitals back in the playoffs. Although we’re devastated, we figure it would be more constructive if we turned our attention to the five biggest questions facing the franchise as they head into the offseason.

1. Does Alex Ovechkin need to change?

It’s safe to say this last year hasn’t gone according to plan for Ovechkin. Team Russia was an utter disaster. And then he caught flack for pushing a video camera away during some down time in Vancouver during the Olympic break. And there were the two suspensions. Finally, there was a first-round exit by his Capitals, who were leaps and bounds better than anyone else during the regular season.

So yeah, not good times for Ovechkin. If that’s not enough, now there’s talk that the reason the Montreal Canadiens did such a solid job defending Ovechkin is because he became predictable.

“Generally, you know what’s coming,” Canadiens defenseman Josh Gorges said in an interview with Elliotte Friedman. “When he comes in on the off-wing, he’ll try to step to the middle and shoot through you. You can bait him into that.”

“If you do go to the middle, he will try to go to the outside,” Montreal defenseman Hal Gill added.

Okay, for starters, Gill is an idiot. He’s basically admitting he shouldn’t have been part of the interview. A teammate says Ovechkin likes to come into the offensive zone by rushing down the wing with the puck, cuts towards the center and tries to fire the puck on net while using a defenseman as a screen.

We all know that to be true because Ovechkin has scored a thousand goals doing exactly what Jorges described. Gill jumps in and says, “Yeah. Or if you’re in his way, then he’ll go the other way.”

Of course he will. Where did you expect him to go? Backwards? Sideways? Just because Alexander Semin loves to curl back 40 times a game doesn’t mean Ovechkin will too. Not all Russians are the same, Hal. That’s profiling, and profiling is wrong.

Ovechkin skates fast and hard towards the net. If he can use a defenseman’s positioning to his advantage, he’s going to do so. The biggest knock we can put on Ovechkin is his lack of patience. There are times when nothing is there and he’s going to try to force a play anyway. But the guy is supremely talented and there are times when that’s enough to make something out of nothing. He’s got confidence in his abilities, so it’s nothing surprising that he’s trying to carry the team on his shoulders.

Boudreau needs to take a good, hard look at the footage of the Montreal series and decide if, indeed, his best player became predictable. If that’s the case, then he can determine if maybe it’s better for another player, such as Nicklas Backstrom should bring the puck into the zone.

Boudreau said that Ovechkin played four different positions on the powerplay during the series, so he’s obviously willing to tinker with things until he finds what works. There’s no reason to think he won’t be able to do the same with this.

2. Is Semin part of the problem or part of the solution? Ditto for Mike Green.

If we were running the show (and be thankful that’s not the case), Semin would be gone. At this point, you know what you’re getting with him. Dude’s got mad skills, but he’s a head case. He finished seventh in the NHL with 40 goals, but his other hobbies include taking ill-advised offensive-zone penalties and a steadfast refusal to go anywhere near the net.

We chatted with one Capitals player last season who seemed convinced that Semin ignores his coach’s pleas to go to the net simply because he’s afraid of the physical abuse opposing defenders dish out. If that’s the case, then really, how can the Caps pay him $6 million next season?

Moving Semin and spending a portion of the newly-available salary cap space on free-agent defenseman Anton Volchenkov would absolutely be a dream come true (which is why neither will happen).

As far as Green, much of what plagues him is off the ice or between his ears. Why do you think he skipped out on the team’s final media session, only to have a change of heart five days later? He’s young. He’s emotional. He knows a section of the hockey-viewing world is overly critical of him and thinks he should play the game a different way.

Critics say Green should be moved to forward because he’s basically playing the position anyway. Or he should take skating lessons because he only skates hard in bursts. Or he should stop trying to score and focus only on defense. Seriously, you can say he’s a millionaire athlete and with that comes a price, but damn.

We’re not sure how anyone could focus on playing hockey when every “expert” with an XBox 360 thinks they know the game better than Green or Boudreau. And of course, they all feel obligated to share their opinion.

It’s funny, because now that the Washington Redskins have mercifully parted ways with quarterback Jason Campbell, Green is probably the most polarizing player in D.C.

Many love him and many more love to hate on him. At this point, the best thing Green could do is just tune all of the white noise out and focus solely on what his coach asks of him. He’s in the NHL because he’s an above-average offensive threat, so why change that? Sure, he can refine some of his positioning and technique in the defensive zone, but anyone who thinks Green should turn into Rod Langway is delusional.

Let’s all take a moment to remember he’s only 24 and that the Capitals are much better with him than without him.

Read more →

(photo by Getty Images)

Now that the Washington Capitals’ season has come to an abrupt end and the locals have begun to settle down as the shock of the disappointing opening-round loss to the Montreal Canadiens fades away, it’s time to look ahead to next year and beyond.

The beautiful thing about the Capitals is that the core of this franchise is young – with 13 players on the final roster 26 or younger. And because Capitals general manager George McPhee and owner Ted Leonsis are smart, the bulk of the players on the roster are signed to short-term deals.

In fact, Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin still has a decade or so on his current contract and fourth-line center David Steckel is signed through 2012-13. Everyone else currently on the roster is signed for two years or less, giving the team tremendous financial flexibility moving forward.

Today we’re taking a look at which players are set to become free agents and taking a stab at who should be back and who might want to contact their preferred real estate agent this summer.

Restricted free agents

Name: Nicklas Backstrom
Position: center
Age: 22
‘09-10 stats: 82 games played, 33 goals, 68 assists, 101 points
3-year average: 82 games played, 23 goals, 63 assists, 86 points
Outlook: Backstrom was one of just four players in the NHL this season to eclipse the 100-point mark. Since the other three players in that category (Vancouver’s Henrik Sedin, Pittsburgh’s Sidney Crosby and Ovechkin) are all finalists for the Hart Trophy, as the league’s most valuable player, it’s safe to say the 22-year-old Swede has reached elite status (even if the rest of the NHL continues to underrate Backstrom).

Backstrom has never missed a game since joining the Caps and his goals, assists, points, plus/minus and shooting percentage have improved each of his three seasons. Basically, the Capitals would be insane to let Backstrom go anywhere and they know it, so expect news of a new contract to be announced in the not-too-distant future.

No one knows for sure what kind of contract Backstrom will net, but it’s safe to assume it’ll be somewhere between $7-7.5 million per year. But if that’s what it takes to lock up this top-line center for at least five or six years, then so be it. He’s clearly a superbly talented kid who the front office can feel comfortable building the franchise around.

Name: Eric Fehr
Position: right wing
Age: 24
‘09-10 stats: 69 games played, 21 goals, 18 assists, 39 points
3-year average: 51 games played, 11 goals, 12 assists, 23 points
Outlook: We’ve got a confession to make. Two or three years ago, we didn’t care much for Fehr. The Capitals used the 18th overall pick in the 2003 NHL draft on him and we felt he should be more of an impact player like Anaheim’s Ryan Getzlaf, Vancouver’s Ryan Kesler and Philadelphia’s Mike Richards – all players the Caps passed up to draft Fehr.

We saw two 50-goal seasons during Fehr’s time in the minors and couldn’t wait for his arrival in Washington. Sadly, he scored a grand total of six goals in his first three seasons in D.C. and we nearly gave up on the pride of Winkler, Manitoba. Thankfully, McPhee has more patience than we do.

Fehr’s salary this season was $771,750, which would seem to be a bargain for a 24-year-old who scores 20 goals a year. Let’s say through arbitration, Fehr’s salary were to double. He’d still only make $1.5 million (which is what Brendan Morrison earned this year). Something in the range of $1.5-2.5 million sounds fair to us.

Read more →

(photo by Mitchell Layton)

We know what you’re thinking. Right about now, you’re saying to yourself:

“Say it ain’t so. Tell us that it was all a bad dream and that the Washington Capitals didn’t just become the first team in NHL history to blow a three-games-to-one lead against an eighth-seeded opponent. Please, say something to help it all make sense now that the Montreal Canadiens are moving on to the second round while the Caps are sent packing way earlier than anyone around town could have possibly conceived.”

Well, we’re hurting just as much as the rest of you, but we’ll do our best to explain how things spiraled out of control for the best regular-season team in Capitals history.

For starters, lets take a quick peek at the numbers.

For the series, the Capitals fired 576 shots. Of those, 292 were on net. That means 284 were not. Canadiens players blocked 182 shots during the series and Capitals shooters missed the net completely 102 times. Montreal players did such a solid job of getting in the way and clogging up the shooting lanes on defense, that the Caps started to settle for long-range shots. Couple that with an overall lack of players willing to crash the net and suddenly Habs goalie Jaroslav Halak’s job just got a lot easier.

We’re not taking anything away from the guy, because Halak was clearly one of the best performers in this seven-game battle. But far too often he had a clear line of sight on a puck being fired from the space in between the faceoff circle and the blueline. It doesn’t matter how talented your shooters are, if you’re giving an NHL goalie that much time and space to locate and lock in on the puck, most of them are going to make the save. In related news, Halak stopped 131 of 134 shots in the final three games.

In Game 7, Halak made 41 saves. His Montreal teammates blocked another 41 Capitals’ shots. On the other side of the rink, the Canadiens finished the game with just 16 shots on goal, but scored twice. Sure, Halak outplayed Capitals goalie Semyon Varlamov throughout most of the series, but that’s not the point. Quality trumps quantity every time.

If Montreal’s offense happily settled for wrist shots from the blueline with no one camped out in front of the net, then Varlamov would have become the impenetrable force making 100 saves at a time. But the Montreal offense picked its spots and whenever possible, drove to the net. They didn’t create nearly as many scoring chances as Washington, but the degree of difficulty on the shots Varlamov faced versus that of Halak wasn’t even close.

Look, the primary reason the Washington Wizards failed isn’t because their best players brought firearms to the locker room. No, it’s because their offense was fundamentally flawed. With a core group of Gilbert Arenas, Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler, the Wizards were a team of jump shooters who were below average on defense. As long as their 20-footers dropped, they could hang around in a playoff series. But whenever the opposing team committed to defense, the Wizards couldn’t keep up.

There’s no denying that the Capitals are a much more talented team than the Wizards, and hockey is definitely a different animal than basketball. But you can still see our point: teams that settle for long-range shots on offense and don’t make defense a priority simply cannot win in the postseason. Halak might turn out to be a fine goaltender, but Washington’s passive offense transformed the goalie with the shaky water bottle into the second coming of Patrick Roy.

Sure, players like Mike Knuble, Brooks Laich and Eric Fehr attempted to crash the net on a fairly regular basis, but that’s a mindset that everyone in the lineup needed to commit to. When players such as Alexander Semin, Brendan Morrison and Tomas Fleischmann refused, the offense became stale, stagnant and predictable. Add in defensemen Mike Green and Joe Corvo and suddenly you’ve got an entire line of players who were slumping because of poor decision making.

Read more →

(photo by Jim McIsaac)

If you’ve just recently jumped on this Washington Capitals bandwagon (hence forth referred to as “pulling a Mike Wise“), there’s something you should know about your new favorite team as they head into tonight’s decisive game against the Montreal Canadiens – the Caps are just 2-6 lifetime in Game 7’s.

No sense in sugar coating it. No reason to beat around the bush. When the season is on the line, history shows that the Capitals fail to get the job done more often than not.

We point this out so that you, as the new guy on the block, can better understand the sheer panic surrounding a Capitals team that just finished the most successful regular season in franchise history.

You’ve undoubtedly looked around and wondered to yourself, “Why are so many Caps fans racing to throw themselves off of the nearest tall building? It’s not like Montreal has won anything yet.”

And that’s the beauty of being a newbie – you’re still in the infant stage of your Caps fandom. You’re too innocent too know any better. You haven’t been around long enough to know that the most dangerous thing a Capitals team can have (outside of a mentally-unstable Chris Simon) is a three-game-to-one lead.

Three different times in franchise history the Capitals have led an opponent three games to one and managed to lose the series. Right about now is when you start to second-guess your decision to “Rock the Red.” Trust us, we’ve all been there. But like a fat kid loves cake, we never stay away from the Caps for very long.

Not only are the Capitals 2-6 all-time in Game 7s, but they’re a mere 2-5 when playing those deciding games at home. So much for home-ice advantage.

Those individuals who prefer to focus on the positives can take solace in this – one of those two Game 7 wins came just last season, when the Capitals defeated the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals. It’s also worth nothing that the Caps are 6-2 when facing elimination in the playoffs under coach Bruce Boudreau. If there’s anyone who can lead this team to victory during a Game 7, it’s Boudreau. (Or at least that’s the story we’re telling.)

Before 2008, it had been 13 years since the Capitals played in a Game 7. And of course, this is the fourth-straight series the Caps have needed a Game 7 to determine a winner (with Washington going 1-2 in these pivotal matchups the last two seasons). Sometimes you want to pull this current incarnation of the Capitals aside and say, “You know, just because it’s a best-of-seven series doesn’t mean you actually have to play all seven games.” But we digress.

In order to best prepare you for what will in all likelihood be a tightly-contested matchup (five of the eight Game 7’s in franchise history were decided by one goal), here’s a look back at each of those eight series:

Read more →