WooBoy! The time/space continuem is already a dangerous place. When the Caps hit your ice, time and space become downright lethal. Ovie has been relativly quiet so far this season but his raving counterpart Alex II has not. (Capitals forward Alexander Semin had a five-game point streak end Tuesday, we can’t let him start another one.)Either of these boys get time or space tonight and Telly is in deep kimchee.
With our defense not quite there (unless all that practicing this week REALLY paid off) Alex, in either version, will be giving us fits all night. Washington will be looking to get back to their winning ways after losing to both the Devils and the Flames.
We have also lost the last 2 games (to OTT and MON) it wasn’t pretty. Unable to muster up any real offensive challenge and definitely sporting a broken winged token of a defense, we were easily ‘handled’ by both of those really good teams. BUT, we have used our small break to work on the lack. (Captain Shane Doan summed up the solution in one word: Volume. He then elaborated. ” We need to get more pucks and more bodies to the net and simplify things.”) head coach Wayne Gretzky weighed in also about the defense ( “First and foremost, what we are really concentrating on is really stopping in the defensive zone.” Gretzky said. “We are trying to get players to stop and protect the middle and slot area.”) Hopefully their words will be prophetic and we will come a few steps closer to the ideal envisioned when the system was created.
On any given day, the worst team can defeat the best team but we certainly have our work cut out for us tonight. Let us hope the home crowd fires the boys up enough to put on a rousing good effort against the Crazy Ovenchicken and his boys.
Danny is back in the lineup. PLEASE let the boy play. Let him leave the ice dotted w/ pissed off Capitals who can’t get back into their game (ummm but don’t hit Ovie DC, it just makes him score more). Let him rile up the crowd to deafening levels and get the boys into the right frame of mind to steal this one.
Smack Daddy is finally going to see some ice time. Interesting choice of a game to throw a non skater into. The Ducks game? when we could have really used him I could’ve gotten the relevance. But the Caps? Hope Brashear is up for a bout, cuz thats about the only action available for McGrattan to eaarn his paycheck tonight. Are we expecting trouble? or is this a game that TGO doesn’t ‘really’ expect to win and is throwin the Smack in to get him some TOI?
Keys to the game:
Containment - The Caps have so many options it is insane to think to stop them all. But taking away as much space and time from the 2 Alexs as possible is a great start. Don’t rouse Ovie. Let sleeping giants lie, he has not scored a goal in his last four games (if OV gets a wild hair, Telly will be the lil Swede kid with his thumb in a leaking dam… useless). Shut down the middle and give Telly as clear a view as possible to the outside shooters like Green.
Volume - as the good Captain has said… more bodies and pucks to the net… you can’t score if you don’t shoot. Play our award winning, choppy, scuttling game for all its worth. Remember they can’t hit what they can’t catch (and if they do hit you, it won’t hurt for long if we score on the play) so go for it. Time for the vets to stop holding hands and start puttin on the work boots and hard hats. This team can’t depend on the kids for anything except secondary scoring. At this point its mostly the kids generating our offense… get busy gentlemen… yeah I’m talking to you…Rhino, Doan, Olie and Special Ed. (Dude! err I mean Jovo, if you can’t provide some superior defense, the least you can do is friggin score)
Netminding Miracle - The Swedish Wolf has been known to stand on his head and play out of his mind in the most unlikely scenarios… let tonight be one of those miracles on ice. And let Jose “the open door” Theodore have a really bad night.
Looks like our roster is :
Shane Doan-Olli Jokinen-Mikkel Boedker
Daniel Carcillo-Kevin Porter-Peter Mueller
Daniel Winnik-Martin Hanzal-Viktor Tikhonov
Todd Fedoruk-Kyle Turris-Brian McGrattan
http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/preview?gid=2008102324
http://coyotes.nhl.com/team/app?gameNumber=98&gameType=2&page=Preview&season=20082009&service=page
http://capitals.nhl.com/team/app/?service=page&page=Preview&seas=20082009>ype=2&gnum=98
~thanx to Brother Q of the P6P for the graphic
