A one-dimensional team?! Caps win 7-4 without Ovechkin and Green

November 8, 12:02 PMWashington Capitals ExaminerMichael Hoffman

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If you needed to go the bathroom or sneak a snack from the fridge I hope you did it in the first two periods of last nights Caps-Panthers game. Miss a moment in the third and you may have missed a goal as the Capitals, trailing after 2 by a 3-2 count came back with a 5 goal counterpunch en-route to a 7-4 victory. Oh and did we mention they did all this without one Alexander Ovechkin or Mike Green. Yeah, I think it’s safe to put away those thoughts that we are a one-dimensional team. 

Oh and as long as I spent much of that first paragraph throwing numbers at you, here are some more for the mathematically inclined. Last nights win gives the Capitals their tenth on the year, Mike Knuble had four points, (2 goals & 2 assists) Matthieu Perreault scored his first ever NHL goal and the Capitals now lead the NHL in team goals with 65. The second closest hasn’t even reached 58 goals. Oh, and the Capitals also had their highest goal output since a six goal first period in a March 3^rd, 2008 game against the Bruins.

Whew…

That this came on a night in which the Capitals played a back-to-back game makes this even more impressive. The opponent yesterday was Florida, (who the Capitals beat 4-1) so I suppose the Panthers have the same excuse, however excuses don’t follow the Bruce Boudreau way of life. “Fatigue never is a factor, it always is an excuse,” said Boudreau doing his best Jessie Ventura “I ain’t got time to bleed,” impression.

Anyways, let me give you the entire recap.

The Capitals will get the first two goals off the game on sharp angle shots near the net first from Knuble and then Brooks Laich on a power play tally that was set up near the net that was set up by a Chris Clark pass.    

But For every punch the Capitals threw through two periods, the Panthers would match them and eventually land an uppercut of their own as a Kenndal McArdle would take a pass near the net and force Jose Theodore to go down on his knees in expectation of a shot. McArdle though decided to swoop for a wrap-around attempt behind the net. This would not be successful but the loose puck on McArdle’s attempt would go right to Michal Repik who would tap the puck in near the net to give the Panthers the final goal in a three goal second period, and more importantly, a 3-2 lead to end the period. 

And as I sat in the press box, I could just think of the headlines that were set to come from my fellow scribes had the Capitals failed to win. We’d again be talking about a team that played well enough but lost their focus at key junctures in the game. We’d be talking about a team that continued to miss two of their top superstars.

Thankfully the Caps forced that plot to be shelved, and played perhaps one of their finest periods of hockey in a five goal third period. 

And as the Capitals flipped the script, who better to start it up then Mathieu Perrault, the diminutive 166 pounder (who Bruce Boudreau said was even smaller when he first saw him in a league in Quebec) who throughout his career has been called too small. What these scouts maybe forgot though is that you can’t hit what you can’t catch and in just over 10 minutes off ice time the “Flying Quebecer” was all over the ice.

Mathieu even succeeded in the tight corners where little guys are usually at a major disadvantage. In the opening minutes of the 3^rd period, Perreault would beat a Panthers defender for a puck behind the Florida net, and as the Florida defender could not get his body on him, Perreault in one quick swoop was able to wrap the puck off the pads of Panthers goalie Scott Clemmensen and into the net to tie the game at 3. In terms of hockey smarts, the 22 year-old saw something subtle on the play and knew he had a chance to strike. “I knew the goalie was looking on the wrong the side so I just tried stuffing the puck between the pads and it worked out,” said the forward who was seen afterwards in the locker room with a pie to his face, courtesy of one Mike Green. Hey, you score you first NHL goal and what do you expect, a gift certificate to Filene's Basement?  

But it is likely that we would not have Mathieu getting “pie’d” if the Capitals did not keep the pace up on offense. For that they were happy to oblige as just 40 seconds after Perreault’s goal the Capitals would get a goal from an even more unlikely source as for a sparking moment in time Matt Bradley and Quintin Laing would look like Nicklas Backstrom and Alexander Ovechkin.

Bradley would chase down a loose puck on the left side near the boards in the Panthers zone and flung the puck in the direction of a cutting Laing. Both the pass and the shot would be true as Laing would tap the fast moving puck into the back of the net to give the Capitals a 4-3 lead.

The Panthers though for one last time would not relent as Cory Stillman would niftily tap in a shot from Dmitry “Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs” Kulikov (who I though was the best Panther on this night) to tie the game at 4 with 14:51 remaining in the third.

Fortunately, this turned out to only be a minor diversion in the coming Capitals onslaught as Tomas Fleischmann would get his Mike Knuble on, firing a rebound in near the crease after a Nicklas Backstrom shot to give the Capitals a 5-4 lead with 12:38 left in the game.

And while the Verizon Center crowd was going crazy with the lead, the result still was not in the least bit secure as up till this point, every time the Capitals took the lead on the Panthers, they let their guard down, a fact we’ve seen again and again with this team, even with the positive results. In the third period though, the Capitals finally said ‘enough!’

From this point on the Capitals would spend the majority of their time in the Panthers zone, tailing two more goals, as both Mike Knuble and Tomas Fleischmann would both score their second goals of the game to give the Capitals the final 7-4 tally.  

But as good as the result is, the key for the Capitals is not to get too high and too cocky after one offensive explosion, just as the team didn’t get too down after losing a bad 3-2 game against the Devils in which Boudreau called a number of players out. As we all know, it’s a long season, which is why I liked hearing Knuble’s measured response after I asked him what the result meant for the team. “We’re happy with the weekend, but we don’t want to over-talk it and analysis it too much. It’s just one weekend. It’s good for us because it’s divisional games but it’s kind of what we had to do.”

It’s certainly not the type of deep stirring words that will move your soul to its core, but Knuble is exactly right in saying this type of game which saw the Capitals score a number of ‘ugly’ goals near the net. Without Ovechkin and Green (who may be back next game) the Capitals need to put the dancing shoes down and put the work boots on like they did last night. Not to end a very positive night on a negative note, but it’s a lesson that Alexander Semin needs to heed, as he again committed multi-penalties in last nights game and once in the second period tried to single-handedly beat three guys. It wasn’t the only time either that he tried being too cute with the puck, as although this guy has all the talent in the world, at times he needs to change his act.

Strange line of the night: Milan Jurcina: 18:43 minutes of ice time. -4   

I guess Semin wasn’t the only guy who had trouble tonight.

Tweet of the game: @cmasisak22: Quintin Laing blocked a shot with his ribs in the 1st, broke his nose in the 2nd and scored in the 3rd.

As Puckhead's Thoughts (@pckhdsthghts) noted. That’s a Quintin Laing hat-trick!