Off Wing Opinion

After a nice long weekend for most of the team, the Caps are up in Montreal, ready to open up the 2nd half of the season against the Habs. They closed out the first half beating a Canadian team, let's see if they can open up the first half the same way.

Caps Nut has the feeling that the first team to get back into the groove tonight will come out with the W. But since the Caps seem to be a come from behind team under Boudreau, it seems like maybe both teams could hit their stride at the same time. Montreal could grab the lead, but that would put the Caps right where they want to be: a goal down and ready to storm back for the win. If the Habs draw first blood, you'll still need to wait until at least the middle of the 2nd to see where the momentum is. The Peerless seems to be thinking along the lines of Caps Nut, saying;

- Don

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 29th, 2008 at 2:33 pm by Joe Dumas and is filed under 2007-08 Washington Capitals. 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.

Thank God the Capitals are good at scoring goals, because it doesn't look like defense will be their meal ticket to the playoffs. Even without Sid the Kid Olie gave up 5 to the Penguins, but made it count in the shootout, stopping 2 of 3. But over the course of the season the Caps are giving up more than 3 goals a game on average. They've given up 20 in their last 5, 4 of which were wins. If they ever want to make it past the first round of the playoffs, assuming they make it, the defense needs to tighten up and Johnson and Kolzig need to sharpen up. Bleatings From a Caps Nut had the same idea, and felt that, "At least these teams have the firepower to overcome these bad decisions but as things tighten up down the stretch, they may not be so lucky." Japers' Rink was also critical of Olie, noting;

Clearly I was off the mark when I thought that Bruce Boudreau had gone to Plan B (i.e. playing the hot goalie). Rather than playing Brent Johnson (who didn't have a chance on any of the three pucks that Florida put past him in Saturday night's win), Boudreau came back with Olie Kolzig and just 4:30 into the first period, Kolzig spotted the Pens a goal when his positioning at his left post was, um, less than perfect.

But enough doomsday talk, and back to the great win pulled out last night in Pittsburgh. OFB's pucksandbooks took the most advantage of the game, and it earned him a sound sleep.

Although it

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 6:02 pm by Joe Dumas and is filed under 2007-08 Washington Capitals. 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.