Their mood ranged from upset and angry to philosophical and resolute. The Caps took eight penalties in Sunday’s 3-2 loss to the New York Rangers. Some may have been cheap calls – the hooks and holds that officials this postseason aren’t just letting go. Others were perplexing. Nicklas Backstrom seethed over a tripping call he earned in the third period. Some were bad luck – Mike Knuble flinging the puck out of the defensive zone while under little pressure – and others were just not smart. Rookie John Carlson was baited into a co-minor with New York’s Brian Boyle that led to the winning goal and earlier he was issued a cross-checking penalty in the second period.
We knew going in. Precedent had been set in the other games around the league,” Knuble said. “You watch the games yesterday and you see Philly-Buffalo, 10 power plays each, or whatever. You know they’re looking — it’s not playoff hockey of old. You get sticks on guys, somebody stumbles, you can-open a guy a little bit, you’re going to get called. Is it always a penalty when you get a stick on a guy? Not necessarily. But that’s the standard being set and we’ll live by it.”
That’s the measured, veteran response. Backstrom didn’t go so gently into that good night.
“Obviously it’s disappointing. I don’t know. Some of those calls wasn’t a penalty, I think,” Backstrom said. “That’s what happens in the playoffs, and you just have to get ready for the next game.”
But like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, killing so many penalties has corrosive affects you won’t even see. Guys like Boyd Gordon and Brooks Laich and Knuble become taxed when out on the ice so often. And a team’s offensive cohesion suffers, too, from that parade to the box.
“It wasn’t me. It was the ref,” a frustrated Backstrom said about that lost momentum in their own zone.
We often forget how young Carlson is. Still just 21, he put himself in a bad spot with his two penalties. Boudreau wasn’t happy and said so after the game. You can be quite sure the veterans in the room will have something to say to their precocious defenseman, who has done so many good things in his first full NHL. This wasn’t one of them.
“We took some penalties that we shouldn’t take and I think we were getting involved in the scrums after the whistle too much,” forward Matt Bradley said – without naming names. “And in the playoffs you have to just kind of suck those things up and play the game because you can’t afford to go down there.”
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