NHL Playoff Recap - Eastern Conference Quarterfinals, Game 7(8) Montreal 2, (1) Washington 1 - Canadiens win series 4-3 After losing Games 5 and 6 despite thoroughly outplaying the Montreal Canadiens, the Washington Capitals were once again dominant in Game 7. The Presidents’ Trophy-winning juggernaut put on a show in front of its roaring, fire engine-red home crowd at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C. In the first round series’ decisive contest, the team that produced 121 points during the regular season - 33 more than the men from Montreal - proceeded to outshoot the visiting Canadiens by an amazing 42-16 tally, enjoying clear territorial dominance and playing well enough – for the third straight game – to end the series quite comfortably. Their performance, however, was counterfeited by the man in the Montreal net. A Canadiens team that was utterly overmatched everywhere else on the ice was rendered unbeatable by its goaltender. Jaroslav Halak, yanked from Game 3 but reinserted for Game 5 after his team fell behind in the series three games to one, proceeded to stop 131 of 134 Washington shots over the final three contests to pull off what just five days ago had seemed absolutely impossible. Halak looks like this season’s Jean-Sebastien Giguere, a hotter-than-hot goalie who tells his mates to climb aboard his broad shoulders and winds up backstopping his overmatched, lower-seeded squad to ridiculous upset victories over the odds-on Cup favorite. In 2003, Giguere carried the Anaheim Mighty Ducks (before they just became the Ducks) all the way to the Stanley Cup Final, starting with a first-round series victory over then-defending champ Detroit.
It’s a phenomenon that occasionally plays out in the postseason, where a goaltender steals games and series, carrying his squad past superior opponents who are playing superior hockey, and leaving some of the greatest players in the world grasping for answers. As stunned Caps superstar Alex Ovechkin told the media in the postgame press conference, “I think we have everything and we just lose the game.” But the Capitals lost more than just a game, and they couldn't just point to Halak in the net. Mike Green - who enjoyed a tremendous regular season in the nation's capital city - played a horrible series along with Ovechkin and teammate Alexander Semin. Green's cross-checking penalty set up Montreal's first goal in the final minute of the opening period. Late in the third period, with the Caps down only 1-0 and still within striking distance, Green chose to check an onrushing Montreal skater in his own zone instead of taking the puck. Dominic Moore swooped in and put the frozen black biscuit into the net behind a stunned Washington goaltender, Semyon Varlamov. Montreal owned a 2-0 lead at 16:24 of the period.
The Caps got a goal back on a score by Brooks Laich at 17:44 and then had a power play in the final two minutes of regulation, but the second goal wound up making the difference for Les Habitants. Washington used its late power-play opportunity to mount a 6-on-4 challenge by pulling Varlamov from the net, but a team that went 1 for 32 on the power play up to that point in the series could not make good on its 33rd power play. The Habs stuffed the Caps in the closing seconds and became the first-ever No. 8 seed to beat a top seed after trailing three games to one. The Capitals franchise - a consistently snake-bitten outfit that watches playoff series slip away instead of snatching them - will once again be watching the later rounds of the Stanley Cup derby from a golf course clubhouse or some other off-the-path locale. The Habs - with only 88 points during the regular season - will take on the Pittsburgh Penguins in the second round, a development Sidney Crosby must love.
Stupefying, isn’t it? That's the Washington Capitals for you.
James Lambert |
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