No idea what the future holds for Capitals forward Alex Semin. The once-and-always mercurial winger is an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season. His $6.7 million salary-cap hit will be off the books – if Washington doesn’t decide to trade him before then.
And while it wouldn’t appear Semin could bring back much of a haul for Washington as a streaky goal scorer with a knack for taken a penalty at the exact wrong time, you never know. Nights like this one are why Semin, 27, teases and tantalizes fans, teammates, coaches – pretty much everyone. Because for every stretch of games where he’s invisible, where he plays soft, where he refuses to make the simple play there is always one like this – a two-goal performance that helped lift the Caps to a 4-1 victory over the New York Rangers.
“He seemed really hungry on the puck,” Rangers goalie Martin Biron said.
Semin wasn’t available to speak with reporters afterwards – another in a long line of check marks against him in some quarters – but his teammates had plenty to say after he recorded his first two-goal game of the season and first multi-goal game since a hat trick on Feb. 16, 2011 at Anaheim.
“Confidence is good for anyone. For [the top line] especially you want those guys to be going,” forward Jeff Halpern said. “I think everyone else can chip in and try to support them as much as possible. But you need those horses to be going. They had some jump. You can see once a goal goes in for one of those guys they get a lot of confidence they get a lot of jump in their step.”
Semin has topped 70 points three times in his career. But he’s also had three seasons where he missed at least 17 games. His production dropped to 54 points in 2010-11 (28 goals, 26 assists). With nine goals and eight assists in 32 games so far he’s on pace for about 43 points (23 goals, 20 assists). That’s not enough production for someone in Semin’s tax bracket. Plus, only two players in the league have taken more minor penalties than Semin’s 20.
“It’s easy to point finger on anybody. We all been subject to low confidence for almost two months,” goalie Tomas Vokoun said. “No matter how good you are when things are not going your way and you’re not scoring and things are not going well – [Semin is] an amazing player who when he’s hot is as good as any player in the league. Definitely has the skill as good as any player in the league. Saying that, we’re all interconnected and people sometimes forget that. When you lose everybody feels bad – at least if you care you do.”
An unintentional conjuring of former teammate Matt Bradley’s infamous assessment of Semin from last August, I’m sure. But you can’t deny Semin was a force. He took a game-high four shots on goal, missing the net two other times. He also blocked a shot. But he also now has six points (four goals, two assists) in his last five games. This is a different Washington team when this version of Semin is involved
Added coach Dale Hunter: “[Semin is] a sniper and he can score, but he played the right way, too, where he’s backchecking and he created opportunities because of good defense. And that whole line [Semin-Backstrom-Ovechkin], that’s what we needed from them….If you get back in your own end, you play good in your own end it creates offense. And I think tonight they were very good in their own end.”
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