A tale of two teams for sure in the desert as the Coyotes took out the Capitals 3-2 in a tough, defensive affair. For Phoenix, the win is their fifth straight and it moves them into sole possession first place in the Pacific Division. With the Dallas Stars reeling and everyone else in the division catching up with them, it was only a matter of time that someone took the lead and Phoenix took advantage of things.
The Coyotes got goals from Martin Hanzal, Ray Whitney, and the game-winner from Vernon Fiddler in the third all while Ilya Bryzgalov held strong in goal stopping 29 shots. While the Caps outshot the Coyotes by a wide margin (30-18), Phoenix was able to take better advantage of their opportunities.
Washington dealing with another frustrating loss, their third in a row, is getting to be a tired topic of discussion in the nation’s capital. Yet again, we saw a lot of Alex Ovechkin, often taking extremely long shifts in order to try and spark the offense that just can’t wake up. This time around we saw odd match-up choices, including on the game’s final play.
With the Caps down by a goal and trying to kill a late penalty, they had a faceoff in the Phoenix end with 1.9 seconds to play. With most of the Caps attackers fanned out wide of the circle ready to jump on a rebound from the point, the player the Caps were trying to win the faceoff back to to score wasn’t Alex Semin or Ovechkin but rather Jason Chimera. Chimera fanned on the shot and time ticked away on their defeat.
Once again, the Caps biggest offensive stars were no-shows. Nicklas Backstrom, Alex Semin, and Alex Ovechkin combined for one assist on the game (Semin assisted on Marcus Johansson’s goal in the second period). Getting goals from Johansson and Matt Bradley are nice production to get from your depth players, but when they’re your only consistent contributors you’ve got some big problems to take care of.
The fans aren’t happy and the team is playing without any intensity. Being able to get up for games against the likes of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh is easy for the Caps, for anyone else it seems to be an issue. Something’s got to give in D.C. and soon because if the team continues to go on like this, their stay in the playoffs will be a very short one.