I've been out in Denver for the past few days, taking in the thin air and some college hockey. While I spent all yesterday watching Holy Cross beat RPI and Boston University winning the Wells Fargo Denver Cup by beating host University of Denver. But while I was watching those games, I missed the Caps beat the Rangers, and a couple of the most unusual fights I've ever seen.
Our old friend Sidney Crosby dropped the gloves against Brett McLean, who, funny enough, wasn't given a chance to pick his head up, never mind drop his gloves, before Crosby jumped him off the face-off. Pretty classless.
And while Alex Semin was responsible for the other odd fight, it was odd only because he clearly doesn't know how to fight, not because he fought dirty. He shouldn't fight any more than Crosby should, but at least he tries and gives the other guy a fair fight.
For the rest of the game, the Caps had the better of the defensive affair, getting the 2-1 win to make them 26-11-3 on the season, which is the best start after 40 games in franchise history. Mike Green added to his league-leading powerplay goal total with his 8th of the season off a nifty no-look pass from Semin. And Ovechkin netted his first shorthanded goal since his rookie season for the winner.
He rifled the shot far post, and beat Valiquette. It almost looked like Valiquette didn't expect him to shoot it, and the puck may have moved a little after the defenseman got his stick in the way. It was Ovie's 27th of the season, tying him for the league lead with Philly's Jeff Carter. He has played in 38 of the Caps' 40 games so far this season. Breaking down his season so far into 10-game splits, you can see that after a slow start, he has been putting up good consistent numbers.
| First 10 | 2 goals |
| Second 10 | 10 goals |
| Third 10 | 7 goals |
| Last 8 | 8 goals |
If you were to break down assists, they'd look like this: 6-11-6-3. You can see that after a slow start, and a big recovery, he has leveled out to about a 13 points-per-10 games pace.
Here's his numbers from the same span of games last season.
| First 10 | 6 goals |
| Second 10 | 7 goals |
| Third 10 | 8 goals |
| Fourth 10 | 9 goals |
He played two more games last season through 40 than this season, and had 3 more goals to show for it. But his assist numbers through that time was 7-2-6-5 for 20 assists through 40 games. His 6 more assists this season gives him 3 more points than he had at the same time last season, despite playing two less games. So if he keeps up this pace, he will best last year's 112 point season.
