Thursday, February 7, 2008

Worst To First In 10 Weeks! - WAY TO GO CAPS!!

I missed last night's game due to business commitments and other priorities but I did go over the game recap as soon as I got free last night at 10:30PM. Like all Caps Fans I was pleased to see a win over a tough Flyers team on Philadelphia's home ice. Some interesting stats from the game that I noted:

- Olie Kolzig's save percentage for the game was 0.912 - one of his better games in the stats department for sure.

- John Erskine?!? led the Caps in Time On Ice with 21:46 including 2:41 of penatly killing time; even though he took two hooking penalties he even in the +/- catagory for the night though he was the Cap in the Sin Bin for the Flyers last goal at 19:06 of the third period. Erskine's play has been getting better every game of late, I'm sorry I didn't see how he played with so much ice tiome but in Tuesday Night's game in Columbus he had some excellent plays. The Caps' improvements since Thanksgiving now seem to be flowing over to the broader group of Caps Blue Liners - that's a good thing as they drive for the playoffs.

Go Young Guns: - Mike Green had a good night with 21:30 of ice time; +2 and the first star of the game; - Alexander Semin was +2 in 15:43 and once again had a disciplined, penalty free game; - Nicklas Backstrom - 1 point; even on +/- and 16:58 of time on ice; - Alexander Ovechkin - goal # 46 - the game winner; 18:17 of ice time; even +/-.

- Secondary scoring was present and accounted for as 3 of 4 goals came from OTHER THAN THE FIRST LINE.

- The only negative from a stats perspective was the Flyers won 57% of the faceoffs and the Caps took a lot of penalties - 6.

LETS GO CAPS - tomarrow's game at the Phone Booth against the Hurricanes should be a good one - the Caps can get a better hold on a playoff spot since they are fighting Atlanta and Carolina for the division lead. Who would have thought we'd be talking about that when we were eating our Turkey on Thanksgiving.

1 comment:

DMG said...

I think Erskine is a passable player and I do like his grit, but I think as soon as the Capitals get another defenseman or two (Alzner? Pokuluk? a free agent?) he's either out the door, in the press box or in Hershey because he is just too much of a liability in the skating department