Why we are losing...

[djotroy17]

The caps are honestly lucky to have won game 1...we played good hockey for the most part but gave philly way too many chances...our talent (Green & Ovechkin) bailed us out of that game. Philly did not put their heads down, they looked at their mistakes and corrected them, they realized their strengths and our strengths and played physical hockey to benefit them, they shut down Ovie because they know Backstrom and Kozlov are not real scoring threats, they played smart hockey and did not give our skill players any chances by playing safe smart hockey with minimal risk. They screened Huet and ruffed him up physically...I honestly believe they have gotten in his head because we have not seen Huet ever play this poorly. I won't blame the caps for game 2 because they were bound to loose sooner or later and Philly came out strong with a gameplan to counter ours; however the end of game 2 would of been the perfect time to send Brashear out there to mess someone up, many of our players look scared and intimidated...isnt this why we have Brashear? (I guarantee you if we were up 2-0 late in the game on Philly they would be taking LOTS of cheapshots and picking as many fights as possible). Then in game 3 we were outplayed and lucky to be down 4-3 late in the game...we deserved that loss and BB should have adjusted the gameplan after seeing Philly's new tactics, and again late in the game with the game out of reach we did not send anyone out to send a message. BB also critisized Huet in his postgame comments, a move that probly assures Huet does not re-sighn with us if we don't comeback and beat philly (winning makes people forget), and I don't think Huet deserved to be critized, Erskine needs to take a penalty or 2 next game on a guy like Brier...crosscheck him into the crossbar if he wants to mess with Huet, Brier is a smaller guy and if you hurt him he is going to be intimidated and focus on someone behind him ready to nail him rather then scoring more goals. Game 4 is huge and I trust BB knows what he is doing mainly because he deserves our trust because without him we are making tee times. BB needs to send a guy like Brashear out to send a message right off the opening faceoff...and I would even say send Erskine out the following faceoff to pick a 2nd fight within the first 30 seconds...I wouldnt send Bradley or Green because they have been very valuable and we don't need them in the box for 5 min. The lines that have worked so well for us the past month are not generating much anything at all...almost all our goals are from Green stepping up offencivley. Ovechkin can't score with the pressure they are putting on him, and Backstrom and Kozlov have shown they are not willing/able to get it done on their own, I personally would really revamp the lines to look something like:

Semin-Fedorov-Kozlov
Ovechkin-Laich-Bradley
Cooke-Backstrom-Fehr
Brashear-Steckel-Gordon or even Laing-Steckel-Brashear (Scratch Gordon)

Before judging these crazy wacky looking lines read my reasons:
These lines allow for a top Russian line where Kozlov may be able to do better with Fed & Semin. Semin has been great thus far and has generated more scoring chances then any1 aside from Green in my opinion. 2nd line will be much more physical and be able to keep puck possesion in Philly's zone a lot easyer with 3 players that are capable of winning battles along the boards on a line, Ovie will still be shadowed but Brooks Laich will have a lot more room and space to work with because of the extra attention given to Ovie...they will also have a much harder time containing Ovie with a guy like Bradley throwing his body around anything that moves and hopefully generating a lot of scoring oppurtunities for Ovie & Laich similar to the pass he gave Steckel in game 1, would also be great if Bradley could mess with Biron and get in his head. The 3rd line with Cooke & Fehr doing the dirty work to get puck possesion, both are capable of winning battles along the boards and physically taking a beating to get themselves parked in front of the net to make screens and pickup rebounds...in addition Backstrom who has seemed intimidated and has not performed well against Phillys #1 checking line will not have to deal with the Timonen line, The flyers will probly not focus much on this line because they will see shutting down the #1 Russian line & Ovechkin as bigger priorities, this should allow for Backstrom to really quarterback his line and give Fehr & Cooke real scoring oppurtunities that they are not used to getting. I would like to see Gordon benched for Laing, Gordon is small and is mainly used for PK & Faceoffs, but Steckel is in essence a better Gordon with more size...bring Laing in to block shots, one thing about Laing is you can count on him to always give 110% and maybe that will rub off on some of his teamates. BB should also do little things to confuse Philly and mess their matchups up, something like switching Ovie & Semin for a shift, or maybe make a sneaky on the fly change putting Semin/Ovechkin out with Backstrom & Fehr for a shift when they are unexpecting it and don't have a checking line out. Give Huet another game to prove he is the starter, and make sure we give him a REAL chance by protecting him and keeping the crease cleared at all cost. Defencivley bench Shultz (not just because he was re-injured) and bring Emminger back, Emmy has been horrific for us for a long time, but now he finally seems to be coming around and showing us why he was a 1st round pick, give him a chance to prove he has what it takes to stay with us a few more years. Defencivley we need to play smarter, we have a young core of D and just simple things like taking an extra second to make the smart pass could of saved us the goal Jurcina gave up...they need to be watchfull of players sneaking by looking to cherrypick, and Green should not do his 1 man rush from end-to-end, he has been our #1 scorer but none of his goals come from his rush, they are all from slap shots at the point except for the one where he read the play and pinched up to put in Fedorov's pass. Minimal risk defence, don't allow the odd man rushes, and MOST IMPORTANTLY clear the crease, don't allow anyone to mess with Huet or screen him...throw an elbow/crosscheck, even slash him hard in the back or on the thigh where theres no real padding if needed...MAKE THEM REGRET GETTING CLOSE TO HUET, make them think twice about what they are doing...giving Philly a 2 min power play is well worth it as long as pain is inflicted to the guy in front of the crease, hockey is a game of confidence and if you can instill fear in your opponent you can dictate the way they play.

If we were to for some reason lose game 4, it is time to give Olie the #1 spot and give him the opputunity to lead us to the cup he stuck around with us to win...I honestly think a goalie like Olie would be more effective then Huet against a physical team like philly that crashes the net, Olie is much bigger and covers more space which helps when a goalie can't see because of a screen...and in addition Olie is not afraid to blocker some1 across the face if they get in his personal zone.

These are just my own personal thoughts I wanted to throw out there to see if other fans agree/disagree with my views and ideas...feel free to agree/compliment/crtique however you feel...I am interested to see what you guys think about those lines I made up.

[The End]

we're losing because we are making mistakes at the blue line and within our own zone that lead directly to goals. That's what caused both goals in the game 2 loss, and the first 2 goals in game 3 that put us down. The 2nd prospal goal in game one was also directly off a turnover. We never made these kinds of mistakes in our zone during the stretch run at the end of the season, now, we're making 5 a game and most are turning into goals.

Also, our forwards aren't backchecking. That's why everytime Phily turns the puck up they are facing 2 defenders MAX and everytime we break it in, we face 4 defenders. Phili is building leads on our crappy play then ducking back into a shell for the 2nd and 3rd periods.

[JimR24]

You're losing because the Flyers have 7 20 goal scorers, not too shabby. AO and Green are very talented but when Brashear is out scoring Semin and Backstrom, something is wrong. The Flyers are taking the body early and often and it looks like it's throwing your guys off.


The Flyers are better than their 6th seeding. They hit a huge road bump with the 10 game losing streak. Before that, they were tied for first. It's only 2-1, long way from being over but the Caps stars have got to fill the net pretty quick of they will be filling buckets of range balls.

[SkinsHokieFan]

Paragraphs are your friend Troy

Quite simply, the team isn't initating anything now, unlike what they did in the 1st 5-10 minutes of game 1, where our guys were flying around and initating the hits

Out of the 180 minutes played so far, our boys have only played 25 minutes of playoff hockey

[triple6mafia]

i'm pretty upset that we have not picked any fights. how do the players justify letting huet get hit and knocked over continuously. Troy is right, send a message. When Danny Brierre ran into huet late in the game the defenseman (i forget who it was) should have punched him in the face and not just watched. They are shutting down our skill players as well. There is no opportunity to create because they are in front of every shot blocking it.

I was not aware that the flyers had that many 20 goal scorers this year. It also seems like they are faster than us and beating us up physically.

This sucks. Caps came a long way and made huge improvements this year. To watch our skill players get pushed around, our goalie get pounded and to not see anyone stick up for them is disappointing. I'm not saying its over by any means, but this is not looking good at all and I'm losing some confidence. Maybe thats just because we lost two straight and could have very easily lost the first as well.

[pjfootballer]

I think if we drew Ottawa first, we'd be in a better position, but it didn't go that way. I knew Philly would be tough, but I didn't think we'd get outplayed 3 games in a row, because all year long this team has had to fight for everything. It will be disappointing if we end up losing this series, but remember, we're still a VERY young team, we won a division title in a year that no one gave us a chance at finishing in the top 10 in our conference AND we still have some very promising players in the minors that will only get and make us better. If we're going down, I agree with others that we at least need to go down fighting.

[djotroy17]

I won't ever give up on this team...if we were down 3-0 I would not give up...they seem todo best when everything is on the line like at the end of the season. And even if we lost to Philly in the first round, I would chalk this season up as a success.

At the begining of the season my expectations were to make it to round 1 in the 8th round and loose to the #1 seed, give the team another year to grow and develop and figured next year would be our year. BB pulled this team together and even if it doesnt work out we are still a young team with a lot of future talent, this is a cup team for the next decade as long as we keep the team together and hang onto a good goalie (hopefully Huet).

I have already chalked this season up as a success, anything they do now is going above and beyong my expectations, and I feel this team has the players RIGHT NOW to win the cup.

[triple6mafia]

It takes me a little bit of time to get over these losses. But I'm with you dj, this team is never out. There were times in the season when we were almost out, but they kept fighitng every game.

I watched the game late last night (I had to record it cuase i had church softball games til 11 and didnt get back til like 1145) so please excuse me if I missed something. I just read that federov was with the first line or will be with the first line. I dont recall that change happening the past game, if I did, like I said, please excuse me. I like backstrom a whole lot, but maybe putting a vet w/ ovie might help. Who knows though. I feel like change is necessary, but at the same time thats been a pretty money line in the past and they just need something to get them going.

http://dcprosportsreport.com/ (in case its did not happen yet, which from the post it seems like it hasn't)

[djotroy17]

The line change with Fedorov on Ovie's line along with mixing up the 2 PP lines were made for todays practice; BB would not confirm if he was going to keep these changes for Thursdays game...I am assuming he will and he just does not want Philly to know everything he is doing.