- Photo Courtesy of the Bleacher Report
The Capitals gave up 3 different leads in the game last night and the last one proved to be costly when Jason Pominville scored in overtime. Sergei Fedorov made a soft backhand pass across his defensive blueline springing Pominville, who buried the puck through rookie goaltender Simeon Varlamov’s five-hole.
The desperation was evident in the Sabres game as well as their fans screaming for their playoff lives. Two or three of Buffalo’s goals were redirections off of players and the bounces seemed to be going their way most of the game. Bruce Bouderau was happy with the way Varlamov played…
“They were tough goals,” Boudreau told the Post. “They were redirect goals. Only the last one, I thought, was there much he could have done about it.”
The Caps got some production out of some key players last night with Fedorov scoring two goals, Brooks Laich and Viktor Kozlov both got 2 assists each, and Tomas Fleischmann got an assist as well. Flash had gone 14 games without registering a point, but his determination is there.
The powerplay was dominant for the Caps last night going 3-7 moving them into first place in the NHL for powerplay percentage (25.6%). Powerplay goals are going to be an important factor in the playoffs.
A bittersweet loss–if there is such a thing–is the only way to describe last night’s game in a nutshell. The Caps claimed victory in the Southeast but that’s not what Boudreau wants for his team.
Winning the division “is not our goal,” Boudreau told the Post. “Before the season started, we said we were going to win and we have one goal in mind and we aren’t there yet.”
3 Stars:
* Alex Ovechkin *
** Jaroslav Spacek **
*** Sergei Fedorov ***
Caps Crease 