FanNation - The Republic of Sport

So, the Capitals fell in Minnesota last night, 4-3. On first glance, you look at the score and think, oh that wasn't a bad performance, only lost by a goal.

Yeah, right.

Everyone wants to go overboard and talk about the last 5 minutes of the game, when Matt Bradley, Russian Machine, and Nicholas Backstrom scored against Niklas Backstrom to take a 4-0 score to 4-3. Machine later whiffed on a wrister in the final 40 seconds that might have tied the game.

But why show all that heart in the last 5 minutes? How about 10 minutes? How about a period? How about 25 minutes? The simple fact is that the only way you beat the Wild in Minnesota is by outworking them. For the Caps teams of the past couple years, this is something you would have expected Washington to be able to do. But last night looked like one of those games where the Caps felt they could just roll out their talent against a team that doesn't score a lot of goals and they would get the win. 

Yeah, right.

Washington actually had a decent first period, but the Minnesota Backstrom stoned the Caps at every turn. The next 35 minutes, however, were utter crap. Maybe it was the fact that it was the last game of the road trip and they were just looking for a point from the start. But the same problems that I've been harping on here for however long now were there last night. Slow defense. Lousy marking. Dumb penalties. Power play goals given up. Lost.

Fantastic.

I mean, can someone explain to me why they gave John Erskine a contract extension? Does he get paid by the penalty? If he doesn't, his agent didn't negotiate very well, I'll tell you that. 

So yeah, it was a nice comeback. But if the Caps hadn't played like lazy bastadges for the previous 35 minutes, maybe it wouldn't have been necessary.

I mean, they let something known as a Cal Clutterbuck score not once but twice! CAL CLUTTERBUCK!!!

Ugh. The Caps are home Wednesday to Atlanta. I have my girlfriend and family in town this week, so I'm not attending the Atlanta game or the Montreal game on Friday (which is fine, those teams come back in later in the season), but hopefully the Caps will A) get some of their injured players back - Schultz and Gordon left the game last night; and B) not suffer from either looking ahead to turkey on Thursday or a turkey coma on Friday. 

Ugh. 

Sorry, litle worked up this morning.

OVECHKIN BY THE NUMBERS: Russian Machine had a goal on 6 shots. He has 9 goals and 16 assists in 19 games, on pace to play 80 games this season. AO has just 1 power play goal, but 6 PPA. For his career, Machine is 28 goals and 37 assists away from reaching 200 in both categories. Machine's shooting percentage (.092) is well off his career average (.126) and further away from his career high .146 last season. You might think that that's not much of a difference, but if he was shooting at that percentage this season, he'd have 14 goals.