Caps Briefing: Splitting Hairs
In a contest of teams built from the ground up by the two best general managers in Washington Capitals history, the Caps beat the Nashville Predators 3-2 last night at the Verizon Center. The two men -- former GM David Poile and current GM George McPhee -- have worked together in the past, when Poile made the best offer for his disgruntled former employee, Brendan Witt. Right now, the Capitals enjoy a 4-0 winning streak over their former boss' squad, the last three of those wins coming in overtime.
Last night's win featured two goals and a successful shootout attempt from Alex Ovechkin. Capital Outsider pointed out astutely that this does not make a hat trick. We're not saying that he couldn't pull a rabbit out of his hat. We're just saying that he didn't score three goals, because the last one, being part of the shootout, doesn't count as a goal for hockey purposes. One could say that he pulled out half of a hat-trick, but that would be splitting hairs.
Equally hair-splitting are some interesting variations in play brought about by the NHL's new rules. Starting this year, for instance, every face-off has to take place at one of nine face-off spots painted on the ice. It used to be that most face-offs happened wherever the preceding play stopped. Now they are automatically moved to central points in whatever zone the play ended. If the puck happens to leave play by accident from the very outside edge of your team's offensive zone, just inside the blue line, now you get a faceoff right down by the goal.
Of course, you're not allowed to shoot the puck out of the rink on purpose, so you will end up with players acting like they're just trying to casually flip it across to the opposite boards, and they're surprised it went over. This moves them from just inside the blue line, fifty or sixty feet away from the goal (or more, when one is out at the boards), to the offensive zone faceoff spot, about twenty feet from the goal. If you can convince the ref you didn't mean to knock the puck out of play, and if you've got someone who can probably win the faceoff, it's like gaining ten to twenty free yards, and getting a free line change.
Alexander Semin made precisely this creative and dramatically challenging play in the second period, rather than attempt to skate through four defenders with no one there to support him. From a player known for flashy stickhandling, it was a mature and team-focused play. It may also have been the first time an NHL player took advantage of the new faceoff rules. We expect to see it imitated throughout the league as other teams adapt.
On a side-note, Semin spent the evening on a line with Brooks Laich and Nicklas Backstrom. Backstrom said after the game that playing with Semin is different from playing with Ovechkin because "Ovechkin is more of a shooter, while Semin is more of a passer." We have definitely observed a transition in Semin's game towards a more all-around approach to offense; it's great to hear his teammates noticing, too.
Another recent change to the rulebook is that penalties are now enforced for clobbering players, even if they are standing near your goal. This has, in the last three years, fundamentally changed the way hockey players play defense. It used to be that defensemen just had to knock opposing players off balance any time they skated near the net, meaning that goalies didn't have to actually catch the puck. They could just knock it down to the ice very close to them, and they knew their defensemen had enough control of that territory to get the puck right back.
Early in last night's game, Caps goalie Simeon Varlamov let several rebounds bounce a little further out than traditionalists would like to see, but most of the pucks bounced harmlessly away. The few times that they did bounce to opposing players, Varlamov was already in perfect position to stop their follow-up shots. If he has fundamentally changed the way goaltenders need to think about rebound control, though, the Caps rookie isn't saying.
In a postgame interview, translated by Dimitry Chesnokov, Varlamov simply reaffirmed all the old saws, telling us that it's best to let the puck bounce to an open corner, or if it has to land in front, it's better to let it land right in front than farther out. Either the young man is very modest, or he doesn't know his own brilliance.