Before last night's game in Washington between the Caps and the Devils, things were looking mighty familiar. There was the sparse crowd. There were three vital cogs -- Chris Clark, Michael Nylander and Boyd Gordon -- sidelined by injury. And with the team sitting dead last in the Eastern Conference about to face a New Jersey team that had won nine of its last ten games, there were the usual diminished expectations.
But from the opening drop of the puck, it was easy to see that one thing was very different: The Caps team that showed up to defend the home ice surface -- one that seemed far less rutted than usual this season -- didn't play anything like a last place team.
The checking was tight, the line changes clean. The penalty kill was perfect. Passes were traveling tape to tape, and with the exception for a few minutes at the start of the third period, the Caps were able to break out of their own zone with relative ease, while displaying the sort of forechecking that kept New Jersey bottled up in deep.
But the most obvious difference came on the power play. At 1-for-3 on the night, it certainly was a success statistically, but what had changed dramatically from the start of the season was the way it looked.
At its most basic, you don't ask much from a power play: Hold the zone; screen the goalie; keep the puck moving along the perimeter of the zone until a scoring chance develops; and when it does, put the puck on net.
Sounds simple, doesn't it? Well, up until a little more than two weeks ago, things weren't anywhere near that simple in Washington. Every power play was an adventure, with success for the most part coming down to whether or not Alex Ovechkin decided to impose his will and considerable skill on the opposition.
But even a superstar like Ovechkin can't score every time, and what resulted was an absolute mess where the Caps could hardly hold the puck in at the enemy blue line, never mind score. But what was on display last night was a squad that seemed to have gone back to the basics and embraced the fundamentals. Mix in some hard work, sacrifice and mental toughness, and you had
a 3-2 Washington win.
The difference ought to be obvious: While former Caps head coach Glen Hanlon admitted that he was out of solutions as he was shuffled out the door, his replacement, Bruce Boudreau, seems to have installed a new sense of accountability among his charges. Unconcerned with hurting anyone's feelings, Boudreau is content to let it fly in front of the press when a player doesn't perform up to snuff, and the message seems to have gotten through to a team that was suddenly out of excuses.
At 5-3-1 since taking over on Thanksgiving Day, it's far too early to see Boudreau's elevation as a replay of the situation in St. Louis last season, where Mike Kitchen was shown the door early in favor of Andy Murray, but the early indicators are good. So good, in fact, that one might wonder why the change wasn't made sooner.
With the team reeling after a 1-3 road trip and with seven regulars out with injuries, the Washington Capitals put a call into their AHL affiliate in Hershey and called up four players to join the big club in time for tonight's game against the Atlanta Thrashers.
