The Caps are back at Wachovia Center going through the morning skate. Counting the Flyers practice before the series started, that is three trips up I-95 to this city in less than two weeks. I'm starting to memorize all of the exits (I think the fine people at the Sheetz at Exit 74 in Maryland know by by name now).
No lineup changes to report. Everyone was on the ice except for Sergei Fedorov and Brent Johnson to start the skate. Jeff Schultz is out there. So is Chris Clark.
One of the notes passed along by the Caps PR staff is teams that score first are 33-11 in these playoffs, with the team in this series a tidy 5-0. Guess that means the Caps should try to get on the board first tonight.
More later.
UPDATED: The Caps were pretty loose and confident after the skate. Maybe it is because they are young and naive, or maybe the momentum has really turned in this series.
"I think we do [have the momentum]. I think we've finally found our game and how we're going to have to play against these guys," Mike Green said. "The first three games they kind of took it to us even though we got one game out of it."
Green also addressed the crowd, which should be in a frenzy by the time the puck drops tonight.
"We have to create our own energy, becuase we're not going to get it from our fans," Green said. "We know how hard they come out in this building and how much they feed off their fans. We need to push back and make sure they don't have all the momentum and we'll be fine."
Line of the morning comes from Bruce Boudreau, who was asked about when he will start getting nervous for tonight's game.
"Ten minutes after the last game," Boudreau said. "I've been walking around. It is an exciting time being a Canadian boy in this situation. So you're nervous, because you dream about this stuff."
Comments (1)
I'm not a big fan of this "whoever scores first wins" stuff. Granted, at times the first goal has a deciding influence on the game, but almost just as often it doesn't. Think back to the first game of the series: the Caps scored first and won but in between they were trailing by two goals. In no way had the fact that the Caps scored first anything to do with them winning that game, still it goes into this statistic. In game four the Flyers scored first and won but before that the game was tied three different times with the Flyers trailing ten minutes before the end of regulation.
Guess one could find similiar significance in the second, third or the last score of a game. Goals matter, that's it.
Posted by Scai | April 21, 2008 4:38 PM