Capitals-Rangers: Washington Has Playoff Issues

The Rangers are better "live" than on paper. The Capitals may be the other way around.

For all we know, the Caps may win this series. I don't have a crystal ball, but I did not like what I saw on Wednesday night. For the second year in a row, the guys did not look ready for playoff hockey.

For all the on-ice crying about uncalled penalties, there were times when they got caught up-ice. The ref's are not going to call everything. You have to be committed to playing defense.

Here is today's list of what was most troubling:

1. Jose Theodore, while a nice guy, has to give the team better goaltending. Two softies (bad goals) are two too many in a playoff game. OK, he sucks.

2. For all the praise that management has received for building a winner, this is not a great team. Great teams play defense. They are short anything resembling a great defense. Great teams start with top-flight netminding, see No. 1 above.

3. When the going gets tough, we try to score. What's wrong with that? We don't try to create scoring opportunities, each guy tries to score on his own. In playoff hockey, you get the puck to the net and go from there. 

The Capitals are being too fine—overly precise with the puck. The team has great speed and skill. When it works, it is a thing of beauty. When the timing gets thrown off, which happens in playoff hockey, the Caps can not grind out goals. 

The best "playoff" goal was the scrum goal when Ovechkin threw the puck at the net and both Laich and Semin had a chance to crash the net. Semin scored to tie the game at three.

4. If you are looking for a shopping list, defensemen and power forwards should be on the top of it. Everyone can not be a Russian sniper. I wonder if the team has thought of using Mike Green at power forward on the power play? We need someone of that size to work down-low in front of the goalie.   

Goalie is not on the shopping list because we have three better goalies than Theodore.  One is hurt (Brent Johnson) and two are rookies. Varlamov is currently the backup, and is the planned starter next year. As it is going, he could be the starter next week.