Thirty Stories Up

Managed to catch the last period of the radio broadcast after watching the Flyers trounce the Rangers 5-0 on MSG-HD.

The Caps spent the entire third clinging tenaciously to a 2-1 lead over the Lightning.  From a Capitals perspective, there seem to be two big stories to this one: the penalties, and the shots on goal.

Through two periods, the Caps held the Lightning to 9 shots on goal, which, when you compare it to last season, has to feel good.  The Caps defense seems to be starting to solidify after last season’s shaky start; though I have yet to see a game, I’m hoping this means that our young defensive corps, now with another year of experience under their belts, are starting to step up and solidify their games.

However, the other big story of the night threatened to undo all the good our defense did; the Caps, once again, got extraordinarily penalty-happy in the 3rd.  I’m hoping that they can cut this out, since this is the 3rd consecutive preseason game with 3 or more penalties in the final tilt; this time it was 5, all while they were struggling to hold that 2-1 lead.  Especially with one and two goal leads, the Caps can’t afford to let this become habit; giving up goals because you took the unnecessary penalty is a morale killer for sure, and the Caps are still too young a team to hold together if they start losing games because of mental errors like this.

It’s a lot harder to draw conclusions from a close matchup like this in the preseason than it is to take something away from the Rangers-Flyers contest; here we simply had a lot of young, hungry guys battling, with the ones from out of town taking this one.  It’s a nice momentum-booster, it certainly is always positive to get a preseason road win against a Southeast opponent, but I’m not sure it has much long-term meaning past that.

As ever, I’d appreciate any perspective from anyone who caught more of the game than me, or thinks they caught something interesting that I missed.

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