They just might. As odd as it sounds considering the Capitals had back-to-back President Trophy winning teams in 2016 and 2017, I actually think this is the best Capitals team the Penguins have faced yet. This is the first time I've ever really seen them not give up or meltdown when things go bad. I think the last thing this team wants to do is lose three years in a row to the Penguins and they are staying focused on working hard to beat them no matter how bad things may get in a game. The mindset of this group strikes me as different from any other year they've played where they just seem to doubt themselves and seem unable to respond when things go bad.
It's a shame the Penguins have had to play both Flyers and the Capitals in the first two rounds since both those teams seem to be resorting to some questionable hits in order to try and beat the Penguins or play against them. When I'm watching other series and I'm just not seeing the level of dangerous hits in them as seems to be occurring in some of the Penguins games. Boston / Toronto was probably most comparable but even that kind of went tame as the series went on.
The weird thing is that the Penguins are kind of a one line team right now. There's Crosby and Guentzel doing most of the heavy lifting but just not seeing much happening from the other lines and the past couple years the Penguins were getting great contributions from all four lines to win. Malkin and Hagelin both got injured in the Flyers series and that seems to have affected the danger of that second line a bit which is a shame. With the way Malkin was playing in January and February, I thought he could have a huge playoff run this year but Crosby / Guentzel are the ones who have been having the biggest impact. Kessel must be playing through an injury. He'd had an incident near the end of the regular season and people thought he might miss some of the last few games but he stayed in the line-up but maybe he should have been resting up. Tonight was the first game where he looked to be a lot more effective and his past playoff self. My guess is that whatever he has may be a hand/wrist injury and that fixing it would require surgery and ending the season so he's playing through. Considering some of his stick work and handling of the puck, it suggests a problem in the arm wrist area since his skating seems to be mostly fine.
That said, the expected third line center of Brassard has now dropped to the fourth line center and Sheahan has take up that role. I'm ok with it because I think Sheahan has become very effective for the Penguins and was a big part of their turnaround in January but he seems offensively limited and if Kessel is hurt, that might be an prevent that third line from contributing much. If Sheary can find his 2016 game, that would really help improve the fortunes of that line and the Penguins right now. He can move well and does pretty good in creating a chance but it either gets shut down from lack of support or he's unable to convert the opportunity into a goal.
As for Brassard, I was never enthusiastic about the trade. Pundits made a big deal about it because of his puck possession and other statistics but he's not a guy that ever impressed me and I'm not a big fan of someone who played on both Columbus and Ottawa. If players look good on those teams it is only because the rest are even worse. The only real successful player to come out of Ottawa that I can think of is Hossa. Anyone else who ever had success on that team and left it has never made much of an impact anywhere else. You might point to Mike Fischer but, again, with the depth on that team, there are probably eight to ten players that were a bigger factor than him.
I will say, though, that I have noticed Brassard is able to often get the puck over to the opposing zone but nothing much happens when it gets there. A Brassard shift often seems to be more back and forth as both teams try to set something up but nothing materializes and then it goes the other way only for that to fail and return. The only player I have hopes in that can score on the fourth line is Rust who was playing with Malkin on the second line in the past couple playoffs so it might be smarter to put him back there to try and get that second line going since I don't think Brassard or Kuhnhackl are going to give Rust the offensive support he needs at this point.
Of course, the big second guessing for some is whether Pittsburgh should have kept Fleury over Murray. The Vegas expansion is pretty frustrating because without it, Pittsburgh may not have had to make that choice yet and who knows how this year's playoffs go if Murray is struggling like he seems to be at times. A lot of teams could be different. Expansion draft really seems to have messed up the Anaheim Ducks and what they were building as well which is kind of frustrating. I really hoped the team would have kept Fleury because I've always liked and believed in him even when his reputation got cratered a bit during 2012 - 2014 and the media and fans put a lot of the blame on him for the playoff failures they suffered. I felt bad for him in 2016 when the Pens went on that playoff run and Murray had the net because Fleury had been injured shortly before the post-season and, finally when the Pens had a really good team again, he wasn't able to be the one in net to prove the critics wrong. Loved the 2017 run more because he was a big part of that run but was sad he didn't get the chance to go all the way and finish it. I can't deny that Murray was excellent when taking over but I felt Fleury could have won it also. It's kind of funny that he ended up almost getting his own team in the end and a brand new big fanbase in Vegas so I'm happy for the guy to be getting that love from the fans in Vegas. I just wish more of that could have happened in Pittsburgh. The truth is Murray is still a young player and developing but Fleury is kind of in the prime of his career right now so it's hard to compare the two at this point so I'm not writing Murray off and he may still prove to be the smarter choice. It's just hard because Fleury has a more charismatic personality than Murray so it's easier to like him a bit more because of it.
Topic: Hockey Discussion: The Leafs Would Like To Borrow Taylor Hall's Horseshoe (Read 185660 times)
