How do you reward your goalie of the future for getting his 2nd NHL win in as many career games? Why you send him back down to Hershey of course. According to Tarik Varlamov looked upset by his demotion. But with Theodore back from his hip flexor injury, the Caps have no choice but to send Varlamov back down.
"At this time, right now, we have two healthy goalies and he needs to play a lot, not just once in a blue moon," Boudreau said. "He needs to get the whole back-to-back thing down because he gets really tired after games. We're really happy with him, but Hershey plays three times this weekend and he'll get a chance to play in maybe two of them."
McPhee also mentioned that European goalies have to get used to playing more games, and playing back to back nights. Johnson will get the start in net for the Caps, with Theodore backing him up. Although he left the game early against the Blues, Corey reports that he'll be back against the Flyers. Alex Semin is reported as day-to-day, but odds are he'll be out against Philly tomorrow. It's tough to get over an upper body injury when you're getting cross-checked from behind.
With that in mind, a few people have been wondering where the toughness is in the Caps lineup. Brashear hasn't fought in over a month, and Matt Bradley seems to come up on the short end of the stick in his fights. John Erskine has been known to shake things up once in a while, but he has been out with a concussion. On Frozen Blog thinks that things would be better with Captain Clark in the lineup. He isn't afraid to stand up for his teammates. And the farm system is a little thin on grit. So if the Caps want to stop guys from taking runs at their star players, they're going to need someone to step up and be a tough guy. That new aspect of the game could open things up even more for guys like Semin and Ovechkin to do their thing.
On the other hand, it's tough to call out the third and fourth line guys for not being tough enough when they are doing more than enough on the scoring front. It might be asking a little much to get both scoring and agitating out of the lesser lines, but in the big picture it's more important for them to defend their own guys than put a couple in the net.
And former Caps blueline Brendan Witt is whining that the reason he is -15 in 19 games isn't because of his own poor play, but because Scott Gordon's system is harder on defensemen. And recent Caps blueliner and current Bears captain will be captaining the AHL All-Star Canadian squad.
