A last minute opportunity came up from a friend, and I was able to attend the game today!!
Lots of changes, (mostly temporary, thank God), happening with the Caps right now.
Due to an unusually high number of STARTING players out, Rierden and staff, are put in a very tough position of having to make, and work with, all kinds of adjustments!
IMO, not just your normal, injured player, line adjustments, either!
The reason I say this is because of the TYPE of players we have injured, and also the “WHO’S”, that are inserted into different lines, to fill the void!
I mean, there were a lot of different combos out there on the ice today! Some I understood, and some were just head scratchers!
The overall game was a bit vanilla, despite the odd line, and PK combos. I do think the team effort was good though, so I can’t complain there.
One black mark for us, is the injured players that are HUGE, very effective, PK role players.
Hagelin, Dowd, and even Hathaway, have ALL been extremely effective hustlers on PK, and we’ve CERTAINLY witnessed a PK decline in recent games. Probably could even be said, it made the difference in the Rangers game, earlier this week!
It’s honestly hard to tell, for me, whether our PP, is just in a little dip, or if the chemistry has been altered, without Backstrom! But we most definitely can feel the loss of Nicky on the ice!
Either way, like Mick mentioned in his earlier post, this Caps team didn’t look or feel like the Caps that we’ve seen for most of this season, so far. With all the different combos, and relative no names out there right now, I guess it’s not a surprise that they don’t look like our regular CAPS!!
Kuzy on the first line, we’ve seen in the past, isn’t a good combo, generally!
Also, Eller on the 2nd line hasn’t shown to be fruitful either.
Right now, I guess the coaches don’t have much choice, and we have to just wait it out!
One noticeable, overall positive change this year, and regardless of personnel, is that this team seems to keep the general effort level up, both for longer stretches of the game, and closer to a full 55-60 minutes!
Along with that, the low energy periods, they experience from time to time, don’t seem to go as PATHETICALLY DEEP, as some of those “complete give up”, episodes we would fall prey too, and were extremely frustrating, from seasons past!!
Although there is plenty of hockey season to go, the regulation losses we’ve had, AND the higher than average OT/shootout games on our record, so far, have mostly shown decent levels of drive, and effort from our boys!
Some bonehead plays, and stupidly timed penalties, are all in the YES category, as solid reasons for our STILL, relatively few losses!!
Generally giving up, or lengthy, low effort levels, haven’t really been the case this year! THANK GOD!!
Provided the same atmosphere continues, this is a great and difficult change to have happened, especially for management and coaches, a hard thing to bring about.
But it does seem to have happened, and one of the reasons why I am quite optimistic, for newly fresh and different reasons, about our boys, and looking for our regulars to get back!!
Rush
