Man that Washington game was wild, wasn't it?Washington reminds me a lot of the "good old days" where the Senators were a run-and-gun team. Sure, the defense was porous and the goaltending inconsistent most of the time, but it didn't matter because the Senators were rolling lines that could put pucks in the opposition's net faster than they could put pucks in the Senators'. A team like that only has two modes: full-on attack, and tired-out-from-full-on attack. And both modes showed last night. The problem is that while this works in the regular season, over a playoff series your opposition is going to figure out how to shut down your main producers enough so that you can't keep it up. The Senators showed that how many times?
About the game itself, a few comments:
- The officiating was pretty bad at times, with a missed call in the second leading directly to a Washington goal. But I guess that's the way the league wants it.
- Good on Alfredsson, Fisher and Kelly to keep Ovechkin blanked on the night. This is a really good shut-down line, one I hope we see rolled again in future. The only problem is that our three guys might see lower production numbers because they are playing this kind of role.
- Spezza's opening goal: nice to see poor defensive coverage working for us instead of against us for a change.
- Hat tip to Semin for his hat-trick in a losing cause. He has a seeing-eye shot through crowds, and I don't think Elliot was to blame on any of them.
- Beautifully ugly goal for Neil in the second to pull the Senators back square. And calling for the review? Never should have happened -- it was in, baby. No doubt.
- The Senators did well in the dying moments to keep the win in their pocket. Washington never really looked like they had it together.
