Comeback Kids, or Come On Kids?

Haven’t We Seen This Movie Before?  And Didn’t It Suck?

First, far be it from us to…ah, hell with that.  Our Tweeples may have noticed this from us right before last night’s puck drop:

So OK, Nicky 19 didn’t get a goal (0 for what, 20 games now?), but he did get an assist which means he did get his 300th point.  Skol, pojkvän! And hats off to papa Knubs as well, working with Mojo and Ovie to get his 11th on season AND his 3rd goal in 29 games against the Flytards.  No Country for Old Men – ha!

Psychic tweets aside, you could be forgiven for a sense of deja vu last night, watching us fall behind early, struggle back, only to lose it in overtime.  Sure we had some challenges – Neuvy out once again and, according to Coach B, day-to-day at this point.  And for all the whining about Ovie being less than Gr8 lately, what about that immaculate goal? 

Alex stepped it up in the third last night and he was rewarded, but that goal, at least from the replay we saw in our booth, didn’t look good.   The boys in Toronto gave Alex a gift last night, and in fact the whole team. It would’ve been a straight up loss, no point, without that score, which appeared to trickle in by inertia and gravity alone, and not by a Flyer stick.

How many times will we turn to Alex to pull us even in the clutch?  (Answer: as many times as it takes.)

But seriously, men: this is getting old.  It’s got to be troubling for the boys - Coach B said as much last night: “It’s frustrating for everybody.  Unless you’re out there, you don’t know how tough it is sometimes.”

We have no doubt it’s tough, and that our Caps are trying – that’s obvious.  But there’s trying and there’s doing.  No one may turn to us for sports advice, but that won’t stop us from dispensing some:  While it’s no fun to play yourself out of a hole, with the weight of a recent high-flying legacy and the city on your shoulders, maybe the answers are simple.  It almost always comes down to execution.  OK – and sometimes luck too, e.g., lucky puck bounces.  But those lucky breaks have to be created and must be taken advantage of each and every time.

And any talk of comeback kids, whether in a win or a close loss should probably be shelved.  What are these rallys due to?  Coach Boudreau’s second intermission Scream-A-Thons or something else? 

Or does it come down to just conditioning alone – we just happen to outplay and outskate tiring teams in the late going?  That, in and of itself isn’t so bad, but some nights the sparks won’t materialize and the clock will wind down and we’ll take another loss because the first 40 minutes of the game happened to us instead of us making things happen.  

So a slap on the back to our boys – and two slaps to returning DJ King, one of our favs.  Apart from having a totally gold name, he did a great job getting in Jody Shelley’s grill.

Jody Shelley?  Why not Daffodil O’Lollipop?  No wonder he threw in the towel.  We wonder when that common criminal’s next suspension will be.