My offseason fear

When the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins the seventh game of the two teams’ second round series, the Washington Capitals’ fan in me was delighted.

But could it also have been a bad thing in the long run for the Capitals — hear me out.

Suppose that the Penguins continued to pound the Canadiens like they did in the first game of their series, in which the Penguins scored four power play goals. Let’s say the Penguins defeated the Canadiens in five games after the Capitals blew a 3-1 series lead to that same Montreal team.

At that point, the Capitals wouldn’t look too great. They would look like a team that didn’t have the kind of grit needed in the playoffs in order to succeed and a team that didn’t have nearly the type of Stanley Cup pedigree necessary to make a deep playoff run. After all, the defending champs would have just easily disposed of the same team that the Capitals struggled so mightily against.

But of course, that’s not what happened. The Canadiens, after falling behind to the Penguins in the series, 3-2, won the next two games and were the benefactor of a Pittsburgh team that didn’t show up for the seventh game of the series.

And then everyone in Capsland starts with massive exhales of relief.

“See? We just ran into a buzzsaw. They just beat the defending champs. We were just unlucky that the Canadiens, in large part due to injuries and a poor finish to the regular season, fell all the way down to the eighth seed. Halak stole both of the series.” Or something like that.

Ah yes, the excuses began.

Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post, in his chat on May 13, summed everything up wonderful summary of typical excuses we’ll all here:

“The Pens go down to the Canadiens. When are people, especially hockey experts, going to give Montreal credit for mastering the style of hockey they play and actually beating the Caps and Pens, not “upsetting” them in some sort of fluke. And when are their foes, especially the Caps, going to face the fact that there is an enormous difference — as I’ve written — between regular-season hockey and the playoffs. The Caps seem to be in complete denial about this. “We took 100 shots in Game 100 [sic].” And 90 of them were lousy chances.

…

Bruce Boudreau’s wonderful chat here yesterday, always so honest, seems to show that the Caps have curled up for the summer with the Hot Goalie, We’re Better, We Didn’t Really choke, Don’t Need To Change Much line of easiest possible excuses. There’s truth in all of those points. But you don’t get better by focusing on them. You need to look at one goal in each of the last three games and say, “That isn’t ALL the goalie. If you let those guys get even one goal ahead, they’ve mastered a style that’ll drive you crazy if you can’t score in close and ugly.””

Excellent stuff here from Boswell. This Canadiens’ team is certainly a good team that played a wonderfully effective defensive scheme that thwarted the Capitals’ from scoring at will from the perimeter like they did in the regular season. Their penalty kill confused the Capitals to no end by cutting off all passing lanes to Alex Ovechkin, which meant that the centerpiece of the Capitals’ power play – Ovechkin’s one-time howitzer from the left wing point position — was cut off. Jaroslav Halak, pinned as the reason that the Capitals lost the series, had nothing to do with these incredibly effective defensive schemes. These schemes were effective throughout the seven-game series because the Capitals were too stubborn to adjust from the their regular season type of game to a playoff type of mentality for more than two games (Games 3 and 4).

The Capitals could win in the regular season on talent and skill. They could grip it and rip it from the perimeter during even strength situations and on the power play. In the playoffs, skill alone doesn’t do the job. Playing just like you did in the regular season — especially when you played the last month of the season bored — doesn’t work. Playoff hockey means a commitment to the dirty areas around the crease a la Mike Knuble. Playoff hockey means a commitment to stop trying to skate into the offensive zone every single rush up ice, but rather, dumping and chasing. And it means that trying to stickhandle and shoot through defenders on rushes up ice are simply ineffective (you all know who I’m talking about).

The Capitals bombed away from the perimeter in the Montreal series without much traffic in front of Halak, and seemed as if they had never played a team before that would attempt to block their shots — not unlike the New York Rangers’ series last postseason. The shots that made it to Halak were usually easy pickings.

Saying you ran into a hot goalie — and make no mistake about it, Halak did play very well in Games 5 through 7 – is just plain lazy. It’s the playoffs. There’s good goalies in the playoffs that rise to the occasion. Imagine that.

This excuse is getting old. Very old. First, Martin Biron was the hot goalie. Then it was Henrik Lundqvist last year. And now it’s Halak.

Halak was pretty good in Game 1, was horrible in Game 2, got pulled in Game 3, didn’t play in Game 4. He was great in Games 5 through 7 — but like I mentioned before, Halak, for the most part, was handling shots from the perimeter with little traffic in front.

Sure sounds like Halak stole this series!

The Capitals blew a 3-1 lead because they didn’t play Games 5 through 7 like they did Games 3 and 4. In Games 3 and 4, they dumped and chased and cycled like madmen, which wore down the Canadiens. Once the Capitals had out-worked the Canadiens, then, at that point, the Capitals’ talent advantage became apparent. In Games 5 through 7, the Capitals reverted back to regular season form.

In Game 5, the Capitals didn’t look like they were really all there — this, in my opinion, was the turning point of the series. Once a 3-1 series lead is seized, a killer instinct must be shown to close out the opposition. Instead, the Capitals went on a Friday night public skate at the local rink. Once the lead is now just 3-2, it’s really up for grabs at that point, especially since Game 6 is in raucous Montreal and Game 7 is a crapshoot.

Some tweaks have to be made to this Capitals’ team. I fear that the Capitals will hide behind all the convenient excuses for their early playoff exit and not make the entirely necessary tweaks.

The tweaks are obvious. A legitimate second line center to maximize Alexander Semin’s abilities in the playoffs. A big minute defenseman to take some of the reliance away on Mike Green (Green should not be killing penalties). And a slight shift in offensive philosophy — one that works in the playoffs.