I thought 71 and 53 played well. Vatanen has been on the road trip this entire time, so you'd think he'll play Tuesday against Minnesota. It'll be interesting to see how things pan out lineup wise. Although, the way I see it, Anaheim has 7 NHL caliber defensemen. Sometimes you get 5 guys and a fringe dude, as I've never seen this much depth on the blue line. It's pretty obvious and easy to speculate. The question is how much will Bob Murray leverage for a playoff run, while remaining conscientious of the expansion draft?
As for some more thoughts on last night, the problem was that there was an open guy 3 times right in front of the net in the first. How did that happen? One time Bieksa was beat off the boards. Besides that, the catalyst was the Capitals were doing a good job of these "high in the zone cycles," where they'd manipulate positioning on a defending winger. Thus forcing the defender to honor the offensive player, whom now has inside position, and then it was tic-tac-toe. Too easy. It's a risky offense, as Hayward discussed all the odd man rushes Anaheim was going to have, but when you have as many finishers as Washington does, who can blame them? What I'm going at, is as easy as it is to blame the defenders, it started with the wingers.
Can that offense be sustained? Yes. However, once a real playoff team understands what's going on; that'll be an interesting saga to watch play out.
This road trip is turning into a low point of the season. Minnesota is a tough place to play. I've shared my thoughts on Minnesota in the past. I'm not a fan to say the least. All you had to do in years prior was shut down Yeo's breakout game and it could pretty much be a tally in the win column. Now they're a team with confidence. Who would have thought?
