You'll have games like this one. The last game of a 4 game road trip against a pretty good team and a hot goaltender spelled trouble from the get-go. One might have hoped that the team's rare perch looking down on the entire rest of the league might be enough to get them motivated expand the lead, but no.
It didn't help that they were missing some of their energy players - Bradley home delivering a baby, and the always ebullient Perreault out sick. Plus Knuble. The result was a fairly relaxed effort for the first two periods with few attempts to go to the net or get the puck deep. Despite the slow start there were some opportunities early that could have changed the direction of the game but shanked shots (OV on a wide open net) and big saves (Morrison on an equally empty net) kept them off the board.
Once the Caps brought some heat in the third period it was all Ryan Miller who truly made some big stops - I mean gaze-at-the-rafters-in-frustration-bring-the-home-crowd-to-its-feet kind of stops.
The shutout loss ended one of the more remarkable streaks you'll see - 30 straight games where they had the lead at some point in the game.
The diving call on Alex Ovetchkin - in addition to being absurd on its merits - helps to confirm a nagging suspicion of mine: he's being targeted by refs for extra attention. He's had a series of very marginal calls go against him over the last half-dozen games and I'm not expecting that trend to end any time soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment