Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Game #22 - vs Capitals

Washington Capitals at Pittsburgh Penguins

Washington - 8-12-0 - 16 pts - Tied for Last in Southeast
Pittsburgh - 6-9-6 - 18 pts - Last in Atlantic

This is a game that the Pens should be licking their chops for. The Capitals are a bad team on the road. They are 2-8 on the road, giving up 5 or more goals in FIVE of the eight losses. Their power play has only score more than one goal once since Sept 8th - their overall PP% is 12.5%. Their PK is almost as bad as the Penguins. The Caps are usually outshot. It's a game that should play to the strengths of the Penguins.

Having said that, they just got Olaf Kolzig back from injury. They also won their most recent road game, 5-1 at Montreal. I'm not as worried about the recent win - the Habs were probably didnt' take the Caps too seriously. That'll happen sometimes. The return of Ollie the Goalie is a concern, however. He has a long history of playing against the Pens.

Anyway, work is crazy, so time is short. The Pens should win this game. Hopefully they take a lot of their frustrations out on a pretty bad Capitals team.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In case anyone has not heard, the Pens sent Fata, Koltsov, and Scuderi to the minors...if they clear waviers. They brought up Ouellet and Hussey from the Baby Pens. Those two have been having a great year down there. Also, the third spot was for Gonchar who is supposed to play tonight. Well with Fata and Koltsov having 1 point between the two of them, this is not that big of a surprise. I hate to see them go because last time hockey was going they were the only reason the Pens won games at all, but at some point their performance now was going to take priority.

Now if we can just do something about Thibault we'll be set!

Anonymous said...

I liked Kolstov last season but he's been less than worthless this season. The supposed fastest man in the NHL looked slow. I have viewed him as the season's biggest disappointment because he showed some nice potential last season.

Fata made things happen but his hands are in a different zipcode than his head and he can't score to save his life. Great worker though, blaszing speed, something that's in short commodity on the team.

This is a good move as it's time to get rid of the chaff and let the rest of the team know that there are consequences to their lackluster performance.