February 13, 2012, notes column for HockeyPrimeTime.com

Florida surprises, Washington disappoints

Columns

Written by Denis Gorman

Monday, February 13, 2012 15:51

The Florida Panthers had little expectations while the Washington Capitals had all sorts of hype. Neither has gone according to plan as the teams duke it out for Southeast Division surpremacy. Nothing was expected of one while the other had expectations heaped upon them. The afterthought has been a pleasant surprise. The presumed golden child has been a disappointment on a grand scale. Neither the Florida Panthers’ nor the Washington Capitals’ 2011-12 seasons has followed script. And that is what has made both such compelling stories. Florida leads Washington by four points in the Southeast Division race after winning road games in Newark and Uniondale while the Caps lost 3-2 to the Rangers Sunday afternoon at Madison Square Garden. There are similarities between the two franchises more than being rivals in the NHL’s worst division. Both GMs, Dale Tallon and George McPhee, spent the off-season augmenting and restructuring their respective rosters. Tallon brought in 10 new players and hired defensive-minded Kevin Dineen to coach. “[A] very satisfying win built on team effort. We got a lot of quality minutes out of players,” Dineen said after Saturday’s 3-1 win over the Devils. “ Despite the additions of Troy Brouwer, Joel Ward, Jeff Halpern, Roman Hamrlik and Tomas Vokoun to a team that had the best record in the Eastern Conference last year, the Capitals have a 28-22-5 mark this season, which is one point behind eighth-place Toronto. Washington clearly misses Mike Green on the back end. The Caps’ offensively gifted blueliner totaled three goals and three assists for six points and is plus-one in the 10 games he has played this season. The Caps’ record with him? 9-1-0. In the 44 games he has not played due to a sprained right ankle, a strained right groin and most recently, abdominal surgery, Washington is 19-21-5. There are other issues. Arguably the most dominant player in the world just two years ago, Alex Ovechkin’s once-prodigious offensive outbursts have slowed considerably despite his leading Washington with 23 goals and 43 points. Ovechkin’s countryman and sometime linemate, Alexander Semin, has been mostly invisible despite blocking a shot and scoring a goal in the Caps’ loss. Top line center Nicklas Backstrom is out while recuperating from post-concussion symptoms. Then there is Vokoun. Signed to a one-year, $1.5 million unrestricted free agent pact last summer, the presumed missing piece has simply been average. Vokoun is 22-13-2 with .920 goals against and 2.45 save percentage and four shutouts, all numbers that hover around his career averages. But there have been moments where Vokoun has simply been missing in action, the most recent being the unfathomable game-tying goal he allowed from center ice to Dustin Byfuglien with 2:03 remaining in regulation Thursday night in a 3-2 shootout loss to Winnipeg. Byfuglien’s shoot-in ricocheted off of Karl Alzner’s stick and bounced off the ice and over Vokoun’s stick. “I’d like to hear the best explanation you can find on that one. It looked like everyone was positionally sound. It just took a bad deflection. That guy shoots the puck extremely hard and it’s tough to react to that,” Matt Hendricks told the Washington Post’s Capitals beat writer Katie Carrera after the loss. “It was a ‘what the heck just happened?’ type of thing. We wanted to bear down and win the hockey game. You chalk that one up to one bad bounce.” Hendricks’ words could very well describe the 2011-12 Caps’ season. Where's the effort against the Rangers? Kimmo Timonen would like to know. Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Kimmo Timonen publicly criticized his teammates’ efforts in consecutive losses to the New York Rangers last week. The Flyers dropped 5-2 decisions to the Rangers on Feb. 5 at Madison Square Garden and Feb. 11 at the Wells Fargo Center. Philadelphia has lost all head-to-head matchups against the Rangers this season and the last seven games dating back to the end of last season. Philadelphia has been outscored 19-8 in the five games. “I’m a little disappointed at the effort, the emotional level, a top team in the conference and league and, to be honest, we got half the guys going and half not,” Timonen said after Saturday’s afternoon’s dispiriting home loss according to CSNPhiladelphia.com. “That was my opinion. You might see differently, but that is what I saw. It’s a big game for us and I was expecting more. It was tight game, they got three power-play goals, we didn’t score any. “You have to bring it every night. I don’t care who you are … Every game matters. You have to bring it." Seven days earlier he bluntly said the difference between the two Atlantic Division franchises was “the goalie.” The Flyers have had myriad issues in the five games against the Rangers — goaltending, a lack of timely goal scoring, discipline — but Timonen has not been amongst Philadelphia’s concerns as he is plus-one in just over 114 minutes in the five losses to the Rangers. Can You Do That? Message by league seems to indicate some cheap shots are OK. What a strong message of no tolerance sent by the NHL when Dominic Moore was fined $2,500 Friday for an interference infraction in response to his cheap shot on Ruslan Fedotenko in the third period of the Tampa Bay Lightning’s 4-3 overtime loss to the Rangers at Madison Square Garden Thursday night. You can follow us on Twitter @HockeyPrimeTime and @DenisGorman Photos by Getty Images

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