BobRouse
Registered User
- Mar 18, 2009
- 10,144
- 374
bad bounces?
Nope. Injuries and hot goalie.
Only other teams are allowed to have reasons that factored into as to why they lost.
bad bounces?
Nope. Injuries and hot goalie.
Only other teams are allowed to have reasons that factored into as to why they lost.
Nope. Injuries and hot goalie.
Only other teams are allowed to have reasons that factored into as to why they lost.
the real issue is that the caps don't trust why they fail anymore. the team that lost to montreal was a freaking juggernaut. losing that series because of a hot goalie and a bad call in the clutch destroyed the team. it wasn't passed off as the bad luck that it was but destroyed their confidence and ended up forcing them to treat a small issue with a major transplant of their game. that lead directly to hunter and oates. a cup winner would have dismissed the circumstances of the series loss and kept the juggernaut going.
the choking history carries weight. it creates its own problems. many here claim it has no effect as one group is different from the one before. but here were are now. how many chokes on ov's record? trotz is fully invested.
the first choke. the islanders easter nightmare. created because bob mason's skate broke to create the late tying goal. straight up bad luck. freak deal. joel ward's high stick was a bad play. joel ward's goalie interference in game5 last season, bad call. its a nice mixture of bad luck and their fault.
esa missing an empty net was a bad play. its always something.
the real issue is that the caps don't trust why they fail anymore. the team that lost to montreal was a freaking juggernaut. losing that series because of a hot goalie and a bad call in the clutch destroyed the team. it wasn't passed off as the bad luck that it was but destroyed their confidence and ended up forcing them to treat a small issue with a major transplant of their game. that lead directly to hunter and oates. a cup winner would have dismissed the circumstances of the series loss and kept the juggernaut going.
no question that each choke job makes the next choke job more likely, not less likely. but what BR says is also true. the caps were hot goalie'd v montreal and hosed on the knuble call. if a hot goalie or a bad call or a bad bounce is good for buffalo, then it applies to the caps. how many cups do they have in buffalo?
its also true that every ridiculous bad break plays into the caps history. am I remembering wrong or didn't the caps get a break v buffalo that allowed them into the finals? a toe in the crease when it was not allowed at the time? BR?
40 years of failure, man. More blown 2 game leads than probably any other franchise in a major NA sport.
It's more than luck. Luck is a coinflip. The odds against a coin coming up tails 30-40 times in a row are astronomical. It's a curse or it's an institutional mentality.
The series against the Habs exposed our biggest weakness. If we kept going with the same team the year after, a hot goalie like Thomas would've put an end to our run again.
The 2010 Caps were an offensive juggernaut. It worked well against teams that didn't have a brick wall in nets.
Series 3: We got a break on a offside/icing call non-call...don't recall which. But it gaves us an OT win. Then there was Bondra slightly bumping Hasek causing the glove throw incident. If that was Knuble in the modern day he probably gets called.
This illustrates my point. Buffalo fans will view that Bondra thing the way we view the most recent Ward no-goal. Every team has moments like these that they can point to and say "we got screwed in that series".
Also have to go back and look at how we got on this tangent from "league news"...this is sounding more like Caps history discussion.
edit: Oh yeah, Briere talk.
Some teams far more than others.
I think Buffalo has had their fair share of skrewery.
In 92-93 they had a pretty good team!! Lafontaine and Mogilny were tearing the league apart and they had a very productive Hawerchuck too. Fuhr was strong in net.
But...by the time they played Montreal Lafontaine, Mogilny and Fuhr were all injured. Derek Plante and Hawerchuk were their prime offensive threats. Hasek was not what he was a year later. They lost all 4 games to Montreal in OT despite this.
Then the Hull goal in game 6 the year they followed getting a couple bad calls against us.
Then against Carolina they lose their entire D.
Our history makes that look like nothing however!!
That's a good list but it's also from our perspective. Fans that follow teams religiously will have longer lists for their own teams than others due to familiarity. I bet Buffalo fans that go back 45 years can come up plenty more of these, same as every team.
The difference seems to be for the Caps it happens even when they're on the brink of victory, again and again. It's maddening.
But yeah, back to Briere, he's like a Brashear type to me. Not in playing style, but that kind of guy you really hate as an opponent but would love on your team. Imagine this team with Briere on it during the GMGM era...
The Penguins got Halaked that year too if you recall. They were the defending champs.
Sometimes a goalie gets hot for a span of a couple weeks and it just becomes near impossible to beat him. Halak was a historic example of that.
We should have kept the same coach, same system and just brought in a vet dman. Instead we changed the way we played and decided to trap.
...and 4 defensemen were out due to injury.
Well everyone knows you need to go 10 deep with solid NHL defensemen right...?
Their defense for game 7 against Carolina was Campbell and Lydman and then 4 AHL guys, Fitzpatrick, Jillson, Janik, and Nathan friggin' Paetsch. The last 3 played a combined 3 regular season NHL games that season.
That is unbelievable tough luck IMO...
The closest the Capitals have ever gotten to the Cup was last year? Huh?
You realize the team went to the ECF in 1990 and the SCF in 1998, right? Even among Ovechkin-era teams, they've been to game 7 of the ECSF multiple times.
Thats coming back to me. That team had some mojo going and injuries destroyed it.
In 08-09 - Pens had 35 PPs to our 19 with some especially suspicious calls.
If I remember right, they got tons of calls in every series and maybe all year long.
In 2012, we lost 2-1 in regulation
This year, it took OT, after being extremely close in game 5.
The way I remember the 2009 series is that Pittsburgh earned their penalties. We couldn't clear the zone at all. Which is no surprise as we had Morrisonnn, Jurcina, Green, Pothier, Poti and Erskine at the time. Go back and re-watch a game. It was nerve-wracking watching Crosby and Malkin skate around our horrible D like pylons. The only reason that series was close was because of Ovechkin and Varlamov. Which again brings up the point that it's hard to call the Ovechkin Caps cursed when they were horribly built teams with too many major holes to be considered contenders.
The way I remember the 2009 series is that Pittsburgh earned their penalties....