3 things the Capitals need, that the Flyers and Blackhawks have

Dustin Byfuglien has some words with the refs. (AP Photo)

It’s an unfortunate fact in life. When you fail to meet a goal, it’s necessary to sometimes take a deep breath, suck in your pride, and look at what someone else in your place did differently in succeeding. In that sense, the Philadelphia Flyers who play sixty minutes of high octane hockey, and the Chicago Blackhawks who have more depth than any team in hockey, offer an interesting lesson to these Washington Capitals. Here are three key things that I believe they have that the Capitals simply do not.

1.       Great depth at center- When veteran Danny Briere is your second line center and your team is lead by 25 year-old center Mike Richards who plays about 5 years older than his age, you’re good. When you add the always intense and vastly improving Claude Giroux to the mix as your third line center, the position suddenly becomes downright elite.  As for the Blackhawks, with playoff point’s leader Jonathan Toews leading the charge and the spectacular and rarely unsteady Patrick Sharp centering your second line, what Chicago has at the center position is downright scary.

The numbers back up the dominance of both teams in this area. Take the top two Flyers centers and take the top two Blackhawks centers and you have three of the top four playoff scorers before the Stanley Cup Finals even began. 

That those at the top have a high level of depth at the center position is no mere coincidence either. I would argue that the hated Penguins are the only team that has the Flyers and Blackhawks beat in this area with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin serving as a deadly Pittsburgh one-two punch. How bout the team that lost to them in the finals and won the Stanley Cup the year before? The center on Detroit’s first two lines were and still are Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk, two of the most creative and dangerous centers in the league. Not too shabby, and between the last four Stanley Cup finalists, I would argue that Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago and Philadelphia are 1-4 in terms of having the best center depth in the NHL. This again is no mere coincidence, as we know that so much in terms of starting and finishing a rush on offense begins at the center position.

In comparison, the Capitals have one of the best centers in the game in Nicklas Backstrom. But when Brendan Morrison, who is well over 30 and could do little to nothing late in the year is your number two center, you are nowhere close to elite in terms of having talent at the position. The other options like Tomas Fleischmann or Eric Belanger don’t make the Capitals particularly scary at the position either outside of one guy. As we have shown, one great center simply isn’t enough to win in this league.    

2.      Steady defense with the ability to scare- The first line defense pairings of the Blackhawks and Flyers are emblematic of everything the Capitals are not. Chris Pronger for all empirical evidence lacks a chemically balance in his head, (much like Dan Carcillo) but he makes up for by being a stone cold son-of-a-gun who takes no prisoners in front of the net.

As for Pronger’s partner, Matt Carle, in essence Matt is Joe Corvo without the manufacturing defects. Like Corvo he is a good skater but is far steady steadier and does not get caught up the ice on risky jumps into the offensive zone. Together they make a very nice combo.  The Flyers also have a veteran presence in Kimmo Timonen, who while less than solid during the regular season as a -2, is getting better as the games are getting bigger.

But as we look for the paramount model of defensive consistency, (hockey’s holy grail) one need look no further then the starting defensive tandem for the Hawks in Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook. Both are +7 in the last 9 playoff games and from watching these playoffs, it just seems like if either Duncan or Brent has an off night, the other guy helps make up for it. Can we say that about any Caps defender yet? No. I expect we may soon be saying that about John Carlson because already at the age of twenty he is just that damn good, (for the record I thought Carlson was the Caps best defender in the Montreal series) but as defensive-defenseman go, the Caps are just not at that level yet as even the great Jeff Schultz I thought didn’t play at his highest level in the playoffs.

But to go back to the Hawks for a second, this is not a core that will often make many boneheaded mistakes. I’m not saying they are perfect though. We’ve seen two games in these Stanley Cup Finals that show they aren’t, but more often than not, you’re going to leave a Blackhawks game viewing a defense that did more than enough to give their forwards a chance to win.

And unlike the Hawks, we’ve seen some of our backliners at times engage in an identity crisis worse than a RuPaul runway show by rushing up ice but than forgetting about their defensive responsibilities. You don’t see the Hawks and Flyers for the most part doing the same thing. For the most part, their defense is much more boring which is where the Capitals need theirs to be.

Finally, we all know Mike Knuble is our go-to-guy to get to the goal crease, but who do we have that specializes in forcing the other guys out of ours? The Flyers certainly have that “guy” in Chris Pronger, and until the Capitals can get a defender who treats the area around our net more like a slaughterhouse than a social area, I’m not sure we’ll go as far as we wish.

3.       More guys who “go like cattle”- “We go to the net. We're like cattle. I mean, you know where you're gonna eat down there, so you're gonna keep going back." That’s Mike Knuble’s great quote before the playoffs on how he goes where “the goods are” to score most of his goals directly in front of the goal crease. But while Mike said “we,” instead of “me,” seemingly everyone outside of him and Eric Fehr were afraid when it really mattered to drive to the net hard in the playoffs.

 In comparison, when you look at guys like Claude Giroux, Scott Hartnell, Aaron Asham, Dan Carcillo, and even Jeff Carter and Danny Briere who aren’t really that big, there are actually very few Flyers who do not drive in to the net and work on scoring the “garbage” rebound goals that Knuble is known for. The Capitals have one great center and one great net crasher, but if these playoffs have proven anything, it’s that we need more than one.

Highest priority: Get a great second line center- The Capitals as a “finesse team with edge” are much more comparable to the Chicago Blackhawks than they are to the Philadelphia Flyers. There is one huge difference though between the make-up of the Hawks and the Caps.  Chicago has great depth at center, we do not. It is important to note though that Chicago also has much better stay-at-home defense than we do which is why acquiring a steady and hopefully “scary” defender is very close as a number two need. It would be nice to get more players who crash the net well. But if we do those first two things, I believe we have a very strong chance to win the cup.