Off Wing Opinion

Greetings from Verizon Center in downtown Washington, D.C. as I cover tonight's game between the Washington Capitals and the Atlanta Thrashers.

Tonight, I'm going to try to cover the game all in audio (so much for that idea!), with updates between periods and a wrap-up after the game. Over the course of the season, I'll be experimenting with all sorts of other stuff, and I'd like to hear what everyone thinks of the approach, and what else you might want to see out of game night coverage like this.

As for the folks in the press box, Dave Fay already waved hello and said, "Let me know if I can help." Shucks, that was awful friendly of him.

Click here for a preview of tonight's game. Tonight's starters in goal are Kari Lehtonen for Atlanta and Olie Kolzig for Washington. Don't forget, we'll be getting started a little late tonight owing to a pre-game ceremony to present Alexander Ovechkin with the Calder Trophy he won after last season.

In the meantime, see you in between periods -- I need to obey NHL media rules now, after all. If you've got any questions, send them my way at emcerlain-at-hotmail.com.

OTHER PRE-GAME THOUGHTS: Anyone who followed the Caps last season remembers how the team scoring stats looked last season: On top was Alexander Ovechkin, then came a yawning gap, and finally everyone else.

But although it's only three games into the season, we've already begun to see a subtle change with the Caps. As it turns out, Ovechkin isn't even the team's leading scorer right now, though with a pair of goal and an assist after just three games, I don't really think it's time to panic.

Then again, it's hard not to notice that Alexander Semin and Chris Clark are tied for the team scoring lead with five points each -- Semin with all five on goals and Clark with all five of his on assists. Defenseman Brian Pothier has four points, and we ought to expect him to pile up some more with all the ice time he'll be logging as part of the team's top defensive pair with Shaone Morrisson. Next, tied with Ovechkin with three points is second line center Kris Beech -- a man who might find himself a whole lot richer in short order if he can keep his place beside Semin in the lineup.

More later ...

STARTING LINEUPS: For Atlanta: C Rucchin; LW Kovalchuk; RW Hossa; D Sutton and Havelid; G Lehtonen. For Washington: C Zubrus; RW Clark; LW Ovechkin; D Pothier and Morrisson; G Kolzig.

Funny moment here at the arena: Rink announcer accidentally listed Kolzig as a last minute scratch, which would have been big news if it had been true. But don't worry, Kolzig is fine and will make the start.

We've got an audio problem, have text updates after the game.

Here are my notes that I live blogged from the press box tonight.

CAPS GOAL: 5:41 Jamie Heward, PPG, his first of the season. Assisted by Alexander Semin and Mike Green. Caps were on the power play thanks to a penalty against Bobby Holik for hooking Dainius Zubrus. 1-0, Caps.

THRASHERS GOAL: 15:25 Scott Mellanby Marian Hossa*, PPG, fifth of the season assists by Steve McCarthy and Kovalchuk. It's 1-1. The goal came with Rico Fata in the box for hooking.

IN BETWEEN PERIODS: A rather lackluster first period, and one during which the Caps power play has had lots of trouble not grinding its gears even though it managed the Heward goal on the power play. Working the points on the top two units tonight are Heward and Green, while Pothier and Clymer have seen regular time.

My head popped up as I saw Heward working the point with the extra man, as I didn't think he'd be seeing that much time this year thanks to all the extra bodies getting ice time on the blue line. Guess head coach Glen Hanlon wanted to mix things up.

The Caps only other scoring chance came on a breakaway from Richard Zednik, but his wrister was easily turned aside by Lehtonen.

ATLANTA GOAL: 1:24 John Sim with his fifth of the season, assisted by ex-Cap Glenn Metropolit. Sim just banged it home in the middle of a scrum in front of the net. 2-1, Thrashers.

CAN'T CASH IN ON 5-ON-3: Thanks to back to back penalties, the Caps got a 5-on-3 power play, but couldn't convert. With the two man advantage, the Caps were finally able to get set, but it didn't seem like anybody wanted to take a shot on net, leading Hanlon to call timeout with 6:16 reamining in the period. It didn't help, as the Thrashers killed the rest of the PP.

This is a problem that isn't going away. The question is whether or not there's any easy solution available or not.

CAPS GOAL: 15:38 Clark 1st of the season, assist by Zubrus and Clymer. Zubrus really ought to get all the credit in the world for the goal as he played keep away along about 50% of the perimeter of the Atlanta defensive zone. The guy is not playing like he's got a bad knee.

Caps almost got another one off the ensuing faceoff, but video replay says that the goal judge pulled the trigger too quickly at 16:53.

BETWEEN PERIODS: The Caps get to the last break tied 2-2 and a man down thanks to a tripping penalty to Brooks Laich.

Through two periods, the Caps have outshot Atlanta decisively, 29-13. But while the Caps have been moving the puck easily up the ice and into the Atlanta zone, most of the shots they're taking on Lehtonen are from long range, allowing him to get a good look at most of the shots he's seeing. The Caps are simply not generating enough traffic in front of the net, and it's a real gift to Lehtonen. And that's how a goalie keeps his team in the game even as they're being outshot by better than 2-1 through two periods.

If any one play sums up things tonight for the Caps, it had to be seeing Bobby Holik harass Pothier so intensely on the forecheck deep in the Caps defensive zone that Kolzig was forced to freeze the puck. Unreal, so to speak.

ATLANTA GOAL: Mellanby at 2:10, his second of the game, assists by Andy Sutton and Kovalchuk. And Mellanby got it on a tap in as everyone on the Thrashers crashed the net and created the sort of traffic you need to score consistently.

KILLING OFF A TWO-MAN: With Jakub Klepis and Chris Clark in the box, the Caps probably had their best 2+ minutes on the ice killing off the 2-man advantage.

CAPS GOAL: Zubrus goes top shelf on Lehtonen at 14:20, assisted by Ovechkin and Heward. Total skill goal from Zubrus, and he's looking like an All-Star tonight

THRASHERS GOAL: And it's a beauty off the stick of Ilya Kovalchuk assisted by Slater at 3:02 of OT. More thoughts later when I get out of the post game crush.

POSTGAME THOUGHTS: Don't know what more I could really add at this point. Glen Hanlon seemed pretty even tempered during the postgame press conference, making the point that this was just the sort of game that you're going to lose occassionally, even though you got the better of the play throughout. He also pointed out that with 6 minutes left in the second period, the Caps were up 27-11 in shots, a pretty good indication of how things were going up to that point.

A couple of the players in the locker room said that they felt the loss was, "inexcusable," but Hanlon went to pains to point out that he didn't necessarily agree.

Here's a quote from the visitors locker room from Thrashers head coach Bob Hartley: "Kolavy followed the program until the last shot ... Kolvy is going to sleep like a baby tonight."

No doubt. It was a highlight reel kind of goal.

Some other quotes from Hanlon -- this when he was asked if the Caps were beat by a hot goaltender:

"He played very well, he's played well this year, he's had the shutout streak to do it. We had some oppotunities to score even on the 4-on-4. It was a couple good saves and we had some good chances on the power play, we just didn't capitalize."

And on why he took a timeout on the 5-on-3:

"It was a chance for us to catch our breath. Those are the five guys we work with on the power play and we had 26 seconds left on that powerplay. We needed to execute on the 5-on-3 and complete giving and receiving passes. There were two or three fumbled passes on the 5-on-3 and once that happenss it nullifies your chances."

That was certainly the case tonight, as it looked for long stretches that nobody wanted to shoot on that power play.

Speaking of the power play, here's Brian Pothier:

"I think we need to just realize we really can't play 1-on-1 hockey on the power play. We need to get shots through and get rebounds. We need to be a collective five-man unit out there instead of just one or two guys just trying to do all the magic. We're working, we're figuring it out. Tonight we got a nice goal on a back-door from Jamie. We're slowly figuring out what will be succesful for us."

As for the word, inexcusable, it came from Brian Sutherby:

"They (Atlanta) had a tough loss last night and they obviously wanted it. We're sitting here and we got them where we want them, they're a tired hockey club. We've got to make sure we close out games like that. It's kind of inexcusable. We've got to win games like that."

And finally, Jamie Heward: "Those are the games we need to get under us to become a better hockey team."

Other thoughts: Zednik remains scoreless on the season, even though he had two great chances tonight, the second on a backhand in close where Lehtonen just made a great save. When I think of a top star tonight for the Caps, I think it has to be Zubrus (G, A). I simply don't remember seeing him play this well during his entire tenure here in Washington. There were plenty of moments where he was simply controlling the game with his stick handling.

If his knee is hurt, it isn't showing on game night.

OK, that's it for now if I want to get my car out of the lot that it's in. Learned a lot tonight, and have a better idea of what I can and can't get done once I'm here. See you all back here on Wednesday night when the Caps play las Panteras.

Good night.
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*They've been changing this goal back and forth all night long. Apparently Mellanby went to the official scorer and told him it was Hossa's goal after the game. Go figure.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 14th, 2006 at 6:11 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.