It's very early on Saturday morning, and I'm getting ready for a breakfast meeting with Ellen Blanchard and Allen Clark prior to today's rare Saturday matinee between the Caps and the Panthers. I'll be in the box while Ellen will be down at ice level with the camera. Also in attendance today will be Liz Chang, the DC Sports Chick.
As we all know, the Caps are coming off a four-game road trip where the team dropped three, though it managed to salvage a 5-2 win on Thursday night against the defending Stanley Cup champs in Carolina.
I'm sure I don't need to remind everyone that these are the same Panthers that hung seven on the Caps last Saturday, something that put a bit of a damper on the Hockey Day in Canada get-together last week over at Gustafson's.
Here are your pre-game previews:
Mike Vogel
NHL.com (AP)
Capitals Fanatic
Caps Chick
Southeast Shootout Live Game Thread
With five goals in his last four games, Caps Captain Chris Clark earned himself a profile in today's Washington Post:
"I take things personally," said the 30-year-old right wing, who has scored five goals in the past four games. "I take things more to heart, especially losing streaks. I ask myself, 'What could I have done better?' I think about a lot of stuff. And I think about it at home."
One person who won't be in the box this afternoon is Dave Fay, Caps beat writer for the Washington Times. Dave, who's been fighting cancer for some time now, underwent additional surgery earlier this week. Here's wishing him a speedy recovery.
That's all for now. See you from the press box.
UPDATE: I'm back coming to you from downtown at Verizon Center. Our friend Liz Chang just arrived. One funny sight already: There's an entire midget hockey team stuffed into the visiting team's penalty box along with their coach. The kids look like they're in heaven.
On Frozen Blog is running a poll on Ted Leonsis' proposal to bring ice girls to the Verizon Center. Currently, kids from local youth hockey teams are used to clean the ice surface during breaks in the action, and the fans seem to like that. Then again...
More in a bit.
STARTING LINEUPS: FLORIDA: G: Belfour; D: Salei, Van Ryn; W: Gelinas, Olesz; C: Stumpel. CAPS: G: Kolzig; D: Nycholat, Green; W: Semin, Pettinger; C: Gordon. Way to go Gordo, getting the start between Semin and Pettinger. And it's a relief to see Green back on the ice after it looked like he might be gone for a while with a foot injury.
SCRATCHES: FLORIDA: Kamil Kreps. CAPS: Brian Pothier and Jameson Hunt. Welcome to Washington, kid. No grab a seat in the press box.
That's it for now. Ellen will be posting pics in between periods, and I'll be back with the postgame just seconds after the final horn.
The recap is after the jump.
END OF FIRST PERIOD: CAPS 1 FLORIDA 0: Perhaps the most boring first period of hockey I've seen all season long, one that left me wondering whether or not both teams as well as the on ice officials spent a long night at Fado.
* Caps catch an early break with a 5-on-3 power play, and cash in thanks to Dainius Zubrus. Semin was down low on the left wing when he passed the puck to Ovechkin at the top of the slot. He found Zubrus alone down low next to the Florida net, where Zubrus tapped it in. 1-0 Caps.
* With Kris Becch already in the box for cross checking, Jeff Schultz gets the gate for hooking at 6:13, putting the Caps down two men. Luckily, the Caps get one man back when Martin Gelinas gets rung up for hooking at 6:41. Then ex-Cap Joel Kwiatkowski heads to the box for the seventh penalty of the period. With the exception of an earlier Gelinas penalty for goaltender interference, most of the stuff I've seen called today is pretty weak.
* At just inside 12 minutes Jamie Heward pinches in on the rightwing boards to hold the puck in the zone, but it skitters past him giving Florida a two-on-one breakaway. Luckily, Pettinger back checks hard and breaks up the play.
* At 14:17 Donald Brashear gets two minutes for interference, presumably for getting too close to Florida goalie Belfour on the forecheck. It was a funny sequence, with Brashear skating hard into the zone and then throwing his hands into the air once he crowded Belfour. As Brashear skated away, Belfour clutched his stick as if we was going to crown him baseball-style, but he resisted the urge.
* I'm picking up a very faint chant of "Let's go Panthers" to my right.
* Steve Eminger continues to play with a nasty edge, this time delivering a nice check to Juraj Kolnik.
* Florida outshot Washington 8-6 and won 12 of 22 faceoffs. With Pothier out, Lawrence Nycholat got the most ice time at 8:53. At the backend, Heward only saw 1:52 and I don't expect to see him get much more after that muff at the point that almost cost the Caps a goal.
END OF SECOND PERIOD: FLORIDA 2 CAPS 1 :
* At 2:42 Florida evens it up as an unmolested Martin Gelinas gets an easy tap-in. Assists to Anthony Stewart and Oli Jokinen. Somebody blew an assignment, I just don't know who.
* The brutally bad Caps power play gives up two short handed chances in succession. Kolzig stops an Rastislav Olesz breakaway on the first chance, but Stumpel cashes in on the second at 5:59 when he beats Kolzig glove side from the left wing to make it 2-1.
* For one 90 second segment spanning a pair of Florida power plays, the Caps can't get out of their own way, and only Kolzig is keeping them in this game.
* At 14:15 the Caps finally record their first shot of the period. Pathetic.
* The most recent Caps power play generated all of one shot.
* For the period, Florida outshot the Caps 18-3. Florida has also won 23 of 40 power plays. With the exception of Ovechkin, Clark and Zubrus, it's hard to find anybody who seems to be mentally engaged by today's game. Here's hoping Clark is ripping a couple of new ones back in the locker room.
FINAL: FLORIDA 4 CAPS 1: After a listless second period, the Caps show some signs of life, but can't close the gap. Overall, this is one of the worst efforts at home since the 7-1 loss to Toronto in November.
* Inside of the two minute mark, Kolzig gets crossed up on a bouncing puck, struggling to punch it away with his blocker.
* Caps just broke double digits in shots for the game.
* Kolzig saves the Caps again, stopping Jokinen with a kick save at the left post.
* Ovechkin just got 2 minute for roughing on a play that used to be called finishing your check.
* On one of the few genuine efforts I've seen all day, Brian Sutherby dives to push the puck to Eminger at the point to hold it inside the Florida zone.
* After another horrible power play, Eminger makes a mistake in his own zone that essentially ends the game. Backing up into his own zone with the puck along the right wing boards, he sends a weak cross-ice pass to Mike Green that Nathan Horton pounces on. He shuffles the puck to Ville Peltonen who makes it 3-1.
* There are two fans a couple of rows below the press box wearing t-shirts that read, "Release Brashear". A few moments after I spy them, Brashear unleashes a nice one-timer off a pass from Eminger.
* At 18:30, the Panthers send the puck over the glass from inside their own zone, but Bill McCreary refuses to call delay of game. Amazing, especially after the number of phantom calls I've seen today.
* And an empty-net goal from Gelinas ends the scoring.
* More from the locker room in a bit.
POSTGAME: The locker room cleared out pretty quick and the postgame presser with Glen Hanlon was brief -- not a real surprise as folks are trying to get out of town ahead of a six-day break.
The theme coming from the guys who did stick around to talk -- Mike Green and Jamie Heward -- was that the Caps were simply getting outworked and that was unacceptable.
Tarik el-Bashir kept asking everyone if there was something that the Panthers did differently these last two games (where the Caps were outscored 11-4), but the answer kept coming up no. From Hanlon: "It's not them, it's us."
Hanlon: "Olie was great. Biggest disappointements is that you only get so many performances like that from a goaltender," every season.
Matt Swenson from the Washington Post Express asked the last question of the Hanlon presser, asking what the one key to the second half of the season might be for the team to make the playoffs. A clearly irritated Hanlon finally said "sound defensive play" after making a point that he was struggling to be respectful "in the media scrum". With that, Hanlon ended things and the cameras went dark.
Not much else to say here, other than you simply don't know which team is going to show up to play from one game to the next. The way they're playing now -- especially in that inexplicably bad second period -- this is simply not a team that can expect to be playing hockey at the end of April.
From Green: Foot isn't 100 percent, but he'll be playing in the Young Stars game in Dallas.
Next up: A six-day break before next Saturday night's game against Carolina. See you then.
