Post-Game Talk: Caps Rangers 12pm

Personally, I have no issue with the Bird coming out. Kuzy has been playing well and feeling it, so he does his celly! No different than other players. And you would think at 4-o in the third it was safe! Haha

 

Really good first two periods. Need to figure out the 3rd’s still. Thought Samsonov looked shaky throughout. Oshie’s awesome.

 

dont look now but Caps are tied for 1st in the league in points

 

I loved seeing kuzy do his eagle celebration ... he’s seemed tight and withdrawn good parts of this season

let loose
Feel free
It’s a game

 

Sammy can go from looking amazing to like a career backup. Consistency is what sets apart legit NHL starters from the rest. Hope he figures it out since he is still young.

 

OMG, you'd think there was no one else on the Rangers roster! First period Z, Z, Z, Z, Z.... second "oh the Caps are fantastic!". Third, "here come the Z's!, err Rangers with Zibanejad!". Passionately hate the national broadcast crew.

 

He is one of the biggest Pens homers on HF. I wouldn’t take him seriously lol.

 

yeah but we're 9th in the athletics power rankings lol

 

Hahha I know. He’s obsessed with the Caps. Not surprised to see him posting here.

 

Was it that year that Letang was hurt and Schultz was your 1RD?

 

Like who, exactly?

 

Well. Yes, but Ron Hainsey was our # 1 RD. Rofl.

 

Honestly one of the strangest things in sports is how much better Pittsburgh plays when they’re missing their best players. Crosby and Malkin always seem to play better when the other is hurt and then you have Letang being hurt that year which looked like a kill shot but nope. It’s real damn annoying, actually.

 

I wouldn’t say we played better with Letang out that year tbh. That team barely won every single one of those series aside from the CBUS one. If Nashville has a healthy RyJo they likely sweep us. Ottawa was a fluke goal away from beating us and Caps should have beaten us but for some reason suck at G7s against us.

But I get your overarching point. I think the main reason is it allows players to slot in a role that they succeed in versus trying to have two top dogs dictate games. And our two top dogs are the kind that are way too focused on the other guy’s success.

It is something I’ve always been envious of in terms of the Caps build team wise, especially on the PP because players don’t try to make fancy plays to another guy to help them out. They just play their role and get stoked on scoring. If Sid and Malkin were more selfish, tbh I think they’d somehow be even better. It’s why adding a player like Kessel made us so good. Because he seemed to say f*** you to Sid and Geno and just took over the PP QB role.

 

So.. Your suggestion is to not hurt them too much if we play them in playoffs?

 

Kuzy is coming back. He has shown flashes of God Mode. Let him do the f***ing bird celly.

 

Just watched this....

getting real tired of watching 2/3 goal leads evaporate in the blink of an eye.

O is doing well, D is until it isn’t, which usually isn’t a question of if, but when.

I know it seems counter to bitch when they’ve rolled to the current streak/record they have....but....playoffs are a different animal.

 

Hopefully Laviolette plays their best players more often when leading in the playoffs. Yesterday was another example of him stapling the more dynamic players to the bench in the third period. It was disappointing to see after he had played Kuznetsov more frequently in recent games in the third period after taking a lead. Predictably enough those games were their most successful in terms of shutting down the opposition after the Capitals got a big lead.

 

I guess Lavi is trying to give the dynamic players a bit of a rest. They are playing 7 games in 11 nights or something absurd like that.

I do agree that the dynamic players keep the opposition more on their heels and help preserve leads.

 

Lavi loves the 4th line. Dowd is up to 8th in the league in FO%. Lavi was giving HDH line lots of props today on the Junks

 

Nonsense! The coach cannot possibly have a meaningful plan nor be trying to achieve something specific at a given stage of the season. In fact, let's just dump the coach altogether and let the data analysts dictate how the team plays. What could go wrong?

 

What are you talking about?

ShiftChart - Hockey Shift Data Visualization

Kuzy played 8 shifts in the 1st, 5 in the 2nd, and 7 in the 3rd.



Who are the dynamic players that were stapled to the bench in the 3rd?

Guys who got stapled to the bench were Oshie, Panik, and Sprong.

 

They've been fairly solid, although the penalties haven't been great. I do wonder if he won't lean on that line too much when it matters and if they've got anything extra come playoff time. They could stand to be more physical if they want to be something along the lines of NYI's fourth line.

 

Kuznetsov, Ovechkin, Vrana, and Oshie. They all received less 5v5 TOI than the 4th line, and all received significantly less 5v5 TOI in the 3rd period than the 4th line.