Flyers 5, Caps 1
Put this one on the shelf with such “classics” as the Toronto debacle (7-1 loss), the Buffalo embarrassment (5-1) and the New York Rangers drubbing (6-3). You can probably come up with a handful of other stinkers from the Capitals this season, too, but to a man they said this 5-1 loss to Philadelphia on Tuesday night at Verizon Center belongs up there with the worst of them.
Two ugly power plays in the first period that resulted in, well, nothing. Two Charmin soft goals allowed by Tomas Vokoun. Defensive zone coverage so poor it looked like the Flyers were running a practice drill cycling the puck in their offensive end. This one had it all. Not too good when words like “terrible”, “unfortunate”, “ugly”, “unacceptable” “disappointing” and a “half-step back” are all used in the post-game chatter. Check out the details in our game story here. And let’s let the players speak for themselves. They can say it better than I can.
“You can’t give them three chances in your own end. As soon as a team has the puck on the cycle you’re going to spend some time in your own end, momentum’s going to shift, you’re going to spend more energy playing defense,” Caps forward Jeff Halpern said. “We did a terrible job making an attempt to make plays to get the puck out. Whatever it was. Not sprinting back to spots. Not getting open for our partners. Not getting into positions and not making plays when we did. Again, we turned it into a practice for our d-zone coverage and their cycles. They wore the game down and they embarrassed us because of it.”
The player quotes don’t get much better from there. Here’s a Whitman’s Sampler. Enjoy. Or don’t.
“Started with our effort. It’s unacceptable,” forward Troy Brouwer said. “We dug ourselves a hole and we couldn’t get out of it. They’re a good hockey team. That’s why they’re first in the conference right now. They worked hard and we got outworked all over tonight.”
“The first one I saw was a bad goal. Second one actually Mathieu Perreault tipped it right in front of me,” goalie Vokoun said. “Third one I think their guy tipped it. It was their guy and [Marcus Johansson] just went in front of me when the puck was coming. The fourth one I didn’t see it and it just went through our defenseman. But still – you got to make the saves. There’s no excuses. It was a bad game. I didn’t help the team at all and that’s my job. There’s not really much else you can say about that.”
“It’s incredibly disappointing. No one wants to do that, especially at home,” defenseman Karl Alzner said. “You’d like to play a little bit better than this. It’s a tough one for us. We’ve got to go back to the drawing board a little bit and watch some video of the mistakes we made, because they’re pretty obvious to us. We’ve just got to go over them and remember them and be more aware next game.”
“We still have a little bit of ways to go,” forward Mike Knuble said. “We want to be a top team in the league, which I think we can…we’ve just got to be better and rise to the challenge when we do play better teams.”
“We got to get better in our own end. We’re spending too much time there,” Caps coach Dale Hunter said. “It’s hurting our offense. We got to separate the guy from the puck and get the puck moving. They were pinching a lot on our wingers and our wingers got to be better getting it out.”
“In the second period we [had] four shots on net,” winger Alex Ovechkin said. “I think we lost the game in the second period. We didn’t have any opportunity to turn around the game. Only a couple of shifts at the end of the period were looking good.”
Hard to add much more to that, to be honest. There’s little value in a game like this. Hunter can have his players watch all the video they want. But they know even before seeing it what went wrong. Washington is now 3-4 since the coaching change. It also fell another point behind the Florida Panthers in the Southeast Division and somehow a team with this much talent is in 12th in the Eastern Conference – granted with a game or two in hand over every team in front of them. One win vs. Winnipeg on Thursday could vault them right into sixth. Another loss? Probably best not to think about that.
Follow me on Twitter @bmcnally14
