Game 6 Caps @ Rangers 4-26-2009 Post-Mortem

Care to revise and extend your comments again Maven??? Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• We have a Tom Poti sighting Ladies and Gentlemen! A nice 3 on 1 goal after coming out of the penalty box and three assists in the game for a four point day in the Garden where he's a returning hero. But he also turned in a fine defensive performance as well.
• He didn't get a goal but Shaone Morrrissonnn was stout defensively as well, posting a +3 on the day.
• After avoiding his shot for seemingly all series, Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green finally took his shot and scored his first goal of the playoffs and a goal on the Caps first Power Play of the game. A whipping boy for certain bald New York commentators over his defensive play, he also posted a +2 today.
• He doesn't like the matinee games but A.O. scored the other Power Play goal (the unit went 2 for 2) with a deflection in the slot past Henrik Lundqvist. A.O. also played well defensively, backchecking as well as we've ever seen him.

THE BAD:

• With the game well in hand in the second period, the Caps got too cute thinking the game was too easy. The Caps took only 2 shots on goal in the third period.
• The Penalty Killers yielded a goal on the first kill of the game which tied up the game just 1:06 after the Caps had taken the lead. If there ever was a time to tighten things up, that was it. The Caps were lucky to get away with something like that.
• We also got very concerned about the Rangers starting to run into the crease of Simeon "the Saviour" Varlamov in an obvious attempt to bump and rattle "the Saviour" because not much else was working for them. We don't want to see a replay of last year's first round series, especially with Game 7 coming up.

THE UGLY:

• Yeah, we won, but it was in spite of referees Bill McCreary and Brad Meier who called the Caps for 22 minutes on 11 penalties. The Rangers had 20 minutes on just six penalties but the Power Plays were 6 for the Rangers and 2 for the Caps. We noticed cross checks, hooks, trips, and even a slew foot that should have been called on the Rangers but weren't in addition to a couple of interference penalties that were missed. But the penalties on John "Coach's Pet" Erskine Bowles and Nicklas Backstrom to create New York's first 5 on 3 were all around bad calls as the referees seemed intent on letting the Rangers have their way with the Caps.
• Sergei (#3) Fedorov had a horrible game again today. He had a bad turnover in the second period that lead to a flurry around the Caps net while the game was still close.

Well here we are a little more than one year later and we're looking at Game 7 back in D.C. after being down 3-1 in the series. This one today was easy folks, almost too easy and we have to say that we don't like how the Caps finished out today's game. The Caps were up 5-1 and allowed the Rangers to get back into the game, yeah one of the goals came with just 6 seconds left but the game is sixty minutes long and how many times this season have we seen the lack of a full sixty minute effort cost the Caps? We cannont allow bad habits to creep into our game at this point because nobody is going to say good job if we don't win on Tuesday night. Can we expect a third poor performance in a row by Henrik Lundqvist? The Rangers didn't exactly roll over and play dead after the second period tonight and we cannot imagine John Tortorella allowing them to do that should they fall behind on Tuesday night. Besides, if we learned anything last year, it is that a victory in a Game 7 is anything but assured and the "x factor" can play a large role in the deciding game.