2015 NHL Playoffs Thread

Nice goal by Brassard, Ovechkin looked out of gas trying to backcheck there. No idea why Niskanen was pinching so far up leaving Alzner behind.

And Burakovsky introduces himself to the playoffs. Could have had a 2nd right after too but Lundqvist just got a piece with the shoulder.

Hold on to your butts, going to be a crazy 3rd.

Burakovsky finally breaks through with a monster game. Reminds me of Kuznetsov in Game 5 against the Isles. That 3rd line has been nails now for 2 games. Killer B's indeed.

Elurin_sl said:

This prevent bullshit by the Caps pisses me off. It's been like a 10 min penalty kill. Bad for my blood pressure.

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I mean, we out shot them 30-29 in the game. 3rd period was 9-8 Rags, although I believe it was 8-5 Caps at one point. I really wish they'd throw Ovechkin out there with Backstrom and Beagle (for faceoffs) late so we can finally get an empty net goal and not have a heart attack at the end of every game.

StoiCynic_sl said:

Yeah, outshot 30-29 but Caps also blocked 25 shots to NY's 7. If you don't think the Rangers dominated puck possession, i'm not sure which game you watched. That's what is so frustrating, I don't feel like the Rangers are playing bad at all (face-offs aside). They are facing a hot goaltender and a surging team rallying hard behind him throwing themselves in front of everything. At this point Holby has to be in their heads.

I guess we just need to start body slamming players around the net to open up space, because that's clearly in line with how the officials wanna call this series.

Whatever, I can't even hate.

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Puck possession sure, but what kind of possession is that? When you're shooting a lot from the walls below the circles or way out on the perimeter, Holtby's going to have an easy time of it and there's going to be a lot of blocked shots. As good as Holtby has been, Lundqvist has been just as good, and frankly to my eyes has had to make the more difficult saves in the series on the whole. Corsi is valuable for who is blocking more shots, but the reason they came up with Fenwick (doesn't count blocked shots) is because blocking shots is a skill that is repeatable. The Fenwick count for last night (shots on goal and attempted shots that miss the net) was 37-36 I believe in Rangers favor. Shots actually on goal 30-29 for the Caps.

I don't think the Rangers are playing badly at all either, I think it's been a great series and could easily be 2-2 or 3-1 the other way. I just reject this idea that the Rangers have clearly been the better team by a mile in every game, when it's pretty obvious we have a game plan to try to limit the Rags' rush/transition game, and keep a lot of the possession/shots to the outside to block a lot and give Holtby easy flies to shag all day. We've also had slow starts in all 4 games, which doesn't help the optics, but have pushed back quite well in period 2 in most of them. Most of the 3rd periods in the 3 games we've won we've been defending a lead too.

Officials are letting a ton go in this series, again. Seems like they'll hand out a PP here or there in 1st/2nd period, but in 3rd period you can pretty much forget about anything getting called, although that's pretty consistent with how our first series was called too.

Sorry to come off harsh Stoic, just dislike comparisons between this series and our series against the Habs in 2010. We're not getting out shot like 45-20 in these games like the Habs were then, and the idea that Holtby just suddenly got hot when after coming back from illness against the Isles in Games 3-7 he only allowed 7 goals over those 5 games (to go along with the 5 goals in 4 games in this series) doesn't make sense to me either.

Holtby is pretty goodhttp://www.hockey-reference.com/play...er_by=save_pct