Hurricanes-Capitals – Winners & Losers

Winners:

Jason Chimera.  Welcome to 1st place.  And just what Caps fans need.  Another player acquired in a trade who has a last name that nobody can pronounce.  (Cristobal Ew-Ay anyone?).

Alex Ovechkin.  Sigh.  Another goal, another assist.  Japers’ did a piece on 2009 stats for Young Guns a few days ago.  Looks like Ovi is now a hat trick away from 60 goals in the calender year.  That’s in 75 games, folks.  Absolutely incredible.

Eric Fehr.  Last game, he was in the ‘Losers’ and this is what it said:

Right now, we’re back to the 11-minute Fehr that whiffs on shots and gets negative plus/minus ratings. Fehr needs a Bradley-like bounce to get going again like we know he can.

Wow, that’s exactly what happened.  Lucky bounce and everything.  Check and mate.

Medium:

Mike Green.  A goal and not much more.  30 minutes is just too much.  Especially when Milan Jurcina Karl Alzner only gets 14.  I feel like Team Canada saying this but I would like to see Green playing with as much energy in the defensive zone as he does in the offensive zone.

Boyd Gordon.  Welcome back Gordo.  It’s really hard not to like Boyd.  That being said, he is expendable, and becomes a RFA at the end of the year.  I’m not saying he’s  bad and the Caps should dump him.  I’m saying that frankly, he needs to stay healthy and work his butt off if he wants a contract here next year.

Losers:

Brendan Morrison.  See below.

Face-offs.  Losing by a margin of 33 to 26 looks innocent enough, right?  Well in the first period alone, the Caps (excluding Mr. Steckel who went 7/9) combined for a lousy 1/8.  Heck, in eight draws against Brendan Morrison, Matt Cullen only lost one of them.

Jose Theodore.  This was a tough one because Theo made some nice saves on the night.  He also allowed five goals.  But how many were his fault?  I think the main thing Jose needs to work on is rebound control.  And I think the main thing Bruce Boudreau needs to work on is starting the goalie that has won three straight starts.

Energy.  Coming out flat results in penalties and a 3-0 first period deficit.  Maybe because they don’t have a Captain, they weren’t motivated to play.  Yeah, right.

Other Thoughts:

• Four shots in the first is certainly the lowest amount in one period in recent memory.
• Brooks Laich had one more shift than Mike Green, but 12:00 minutes less of ice time.
• With Eric Staal and Jussi Jokinen both notching +4 ratings, Rod Brind’Amour still managed a -1 rating in just 4:19 minutes of ice time.  He’s now sitting at -22.

Finally, being away from Twitter when the trade went down, I could only speculate as to what was going on as I was getting text message updates.  All I heard was ‘Columbus’ and ‘blockbuster’, so here are a few trades that I considered.  Some preposterous, some plausible.  Here goes:

• M. Neuvirth and A. Semin for R. Nash
• K. Alzner and A. Semin for R. Nash
• K. Alzner for N. Filatov
• A. Semin for N. Filatov and a crap load of picks
• K. Alzner, M. Neuvirth, and A. Semin for I. Kovalchuk (see what I mean when I said, ‘preposterous’?)

Without internet, I was thinking about how dominant the mythical line of Ovechkin-Backstrom-Nash would be.  What else is there to do while waiting at Jiffy Lube?  Predict how many goals Chris Clark won’t score for Columbus?

Tags: blue jackets, postgame