Talk about facing the firing squad. Capitals goalie Tomas Vokoun allowed five goals on just 28 shots in Monday’s 6-5 shootout win over Southeast Division rival Tampa Bay. With seven minutes left in the game the Verizon Center crowd dropped a Bronx cheer on him after a routine save. Hard to imagine a worse start with a new team. But I’m not sure I could write words more critical than the ones Vokoun laid upon himself.
“It just shows how strong this team is,” Vokoun said. “They literally won today without goaltending.”
Tampa Bay scored three times on shots from below the goaline. Not all of them were Vokoun’s fault. The first struck defenseman Mike Green’s skate and deflected past Vokoun (Teddy Purcell, 2:22, 1P). That was luck. But Bruno Gervais (8:35, 1P) later caught Vokoun off his post when he fired the puck from about the same area Purcell did. Somehow the veteran goalie gave up enough room for it to sneak through. That was ugly.
Dominic Moore – noted Caps killer – was left alone at the left circle when defenseman Roman Hamrlik lost the puck in the left corner. Ryan Shannon found Moore all alone 56 seconds into the second period. That was on the “D”.
At 7:42 of the third Nate Thompson had a sweet deflection of a Brett Clark point shot. Vokoun strayed to his right. The puck went back to his left. Tough break there. But with 7:04 left, Clark put Tampa ahead when he whacked another puck from behind the net. Vokoun appeared in position to cover it, but it again it banged off his skate and into the goal for a 5-4 Lighting lead.
“I can’t tell you the last time I remember having as bad a game as I did tonight,” Vokoun said. “We won the game – certainly not thanks to me. The team played great and I think it shows a lot of character. Guys battled, came back four times. I’m going to make a promise I’m going to get them back sometime when they need me.”
Vokoun is a notorious slow starter. But this was ridiculous. When the free-agent market collapsed this summer and Vokoun had to settle for a cheap one-year contract, at least, he said to himself at the time, he could choose to play for a winning team. That will likely remain true. But Vokoun needs to play better if he wants to keep Michal Neuvirth out of the net. I’d expect Bruce Boudreau to go right back to Vokoun on Thursday for a road game at the Pittsburgh Penguins. At the very least, his performance late against Tampa Bay was encouraging.
“I would have been so mentally out of it. You touch the puck and the crowd is booing you and it’s your first game in there and you want to make an impression,” Boudreau said of his goalie’s mental state. “Your agent has spouted off in the paper about it being a slap in the face and everything. And he comes up and he makes those big saves and then he makes the save in the shootout. It told me a lot about his character and it ends up as a positive thing even if he didn’t have a positive game.”
Vokoun said he spent the majority of the game just trying to “pull it together.” A goalie, after all, doesn’t have the luxury of simplifying his game like a forward or defenseman can. Flub a puck, watch your confidence drop and the next shot is sure to find you from a bad angle. But eventually the game became so frenetic, according to Vokoun, that his mind finally shut off. And that’s a good thing when you’re all alone in goal.
“I’m old enough to know you’re going to go through bad games and bad breaks,” Vokoun said. “You just don’t want to have too many of them. Then it’s not an accident it’s happening.”
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