Caps 3, Senators 2
Nice win for the Caps on Saturday night at Verizon Center, snapping a four-game losing streak and shaking off a late Ottawa game-tying goal. Read the details on Brooks Laich’s overtime tally that sent Washington home a winner. It was his 500th career game and came against his original team. Laich made his NHL debut with the Senators and then never played for them again, traded to the Caps for Peter Bondra.
Washington had the better of the scoring chances in this one – a good sign after a couple of dismal offensive efforts in losses to St. Louis and Pittsburgh. The good news? Dale Hunter needed to fix his team’s play in its own end. Can’t argue with the results so far – six goals total. The goaltending has been steadier between Michal Neuvirth (32 saves) and Tomas Vokoun. And an aggressive penalty kill – something we saw a lot of last season – is 8-for-8 under Hunter and has killed off 18 of the last 19 opposition power plays. That’s a start anyway.
“It’s little different. We try to have four guys back a little more,” Laich said. “People might say it’s a little more passive. But once they enter a certain spot on the ice we want to be real aggressive and make them turn pucks over and then when we do that they usually have two or three guys heading the wrong way and we want to use their speed to count-attack. We’re learning, we’re still getting better at it. By no means are we perfect at it yet, but I think we’re making strides.”
Unfortunately, the power play is beyond dismal. Washington is 2-for-45 dating to Nov. 11 (12 games). Have to find a way to get that unit going. Hunter went with Jason Chimera and Mike Knuble on the No. 1 power play. Nicklas Backstrom was in the middle with Alex Ovechkin and Dennis Wideman on the points. The second unit was Marcus Johansson, Laich and Troy Brouwer up front with Dmitry Orlov and John Carlson on the points. Later, Mathieu Perreault took Johansson’s place on the left side for two power plays. We’ll see if that gets better on the upcoming road trip to Florida and Ottawa. Those teams ranks in the bottom half of the NHL in penalty kill.
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