So in the 3rd period, Nicky is going down the ice back toward the Caps zone with Colin Miller and ties Miller's stick up as the puck goes by and it goes for icing against the Vegans. As soon as Nicky ties his stick up, Miller's head snaps back like he's been hit by a Jake LaMotta uppercut. It was ****ing comical. Nicky was just disgusted with him. He jawed at Miller the whole way down the ice as they went back for the face-off after the icing, and then did a pantomime of a fake head snap. Where is Don Cherry on that to ***** about honor in the game. There's Miller, a good Ontario boy, being lectured by a Swedish guy about not dishonoring the game with all that fake head snap crap. And then a couple of minutes later, Miller tries to mess up Oshie - and gets shellacked by Oshie's counter hit (just like what Neal did to Orpik in G3), and Gallant says his nose is broken, even though he went back out on the ice later. Maybe if Miller was more focused on just playing the game instead of trying to fool the refs into making a call, he might have more success.
And then there's this BS notion on the NHL Network last night that the Caps shouldn't have had their 1st PP unit out there w/2 minutes left after the Vegans take a couple of dirty penalties. That is absurd. First, we didn't have the first PP out there. Oshie was on the bench, which is why Connolly scored. But more importantly, you want to send Vegas a message late in the game that if you take a penalty, you will pay every ****ing time. They play an aggressive, high-pressure, attack the guy with the puck game, and their players often go right up to - or cross - the boundary of what's legal in terms of stick work, late-ish hits, etc. Fine. They've had plenty of success with it. One way to make them a bit less aggressive and a bit less pressurized on the puck is to make it clear that if they cross the line and get caught - they will pay every time. So of course you have the guys who are most likely to score out there. It's baffling to me why even normally intelligent guys on the NHL Network would question that.
