The 2011 Winter Classic

It seems kind of strange writing this post up on January 2nd, but here we are. A later than anticipated start on Saturday night means a little bit of beer during the game, which usually means no writing from me the night of.  Hopefully that doesn't take away from the blog post, which will highlight the good points about the game at Heinz Field and maybe some information about how it all impacts the draft.

With some rainy spells and closer to +10 degree Celsius weather at the time of puck drop, this Winter Classic was going to be one like we had never seen before... a little wetter than normal.  No matter what kind of water puddles we could see on the ice from up above or how the puck looked to be bouncing out there on the ice, the players and their enthusiasm for playing didn't seem to drop at all.  That was definitely the most important part of the day.

The game started to played out like a battle between two top teams in the East, with a tightly contested first period that finished off with no score.  The only players that really seemed to be having the most difficulty out on the ice early on were the goaltenders, who were having a hard time tracking the pucks that were coming in from the points, which made me wonder why we didn't see more high shots from the point.

As the game wore on, you could really see the rivalry really start to take it's reserved place in this game, especially after Evgeni Malkin opened up the scoring on a great breakaway feed from Kristopher Letang early on in the second period.  The Penguins had the bulk of the 68,000 fans behind them after the goal, but the Capitals were seeing red and they wanted to make sure Marc-Andre Fleury had a lot of red in his view.

Sure enough, crashing the net was the way to go, because just four minutes after Malkin had scored to open the scoring, the Capitals took the offense down to the Pittsburgh crease and earned a minor penalty from Max Talbot, to which they applied the same formula and poked and prodded Fleury until Mike Knuble finally got a touch on the puck and put it across the line.

At 1-1, the game really did seem to tighten up a bit more, as both teams were looking to capitalize on more mistakes then they were looking to create open opportunities, as both goalies had to make some challenging saves, if not a great deal of saves as a whole.  Of course, it was a mistake by Fleury that started the seperation between teams, as he mishandled the puck behind his own net, which was capitalized by Marcus Johansson by the steal of the puck and finding Eric Fehr in front, who had nothing but an open cage to shoot at and made no mistake.  It was 2-1 Capitals at the second intermission, but it was hard to say that the Penguins were out of it then.

The third period was all about the Capitals learning how to play defense again in front of their goaltender, Semyon Varlamov, as they knew the Penguins were going to be coming.  I think the numbers really give you a good impression of how well the Capitals did, restricted the Penguins to only nine shots in the third period, some of which were really good stops by the Russian backstop.  The only goal of the third period came from a good transition play, starting from picking up the puck in the Capitals zone by John Erskine, getting it up along the boards to Jason Chimera, which led to a great passing sequence between he and Eric Fehr, which sprung Fehr for a semi-break, which he made no mistake.

A 3-1 final for the Winter Classic made for a pretty good game to watch from our vantage point on television, but you've got to be sure that there were a lot of disappointed Penguins fans in the stands.

In the draft, Leon was the big winner, if there was actually a competition for the game, he came away with 4 points in the game, thanks to getting three out of the four goals that were scored in the game, plus an assist.  Stacey managed to snap up the win from Varlamov, so that was a quick 2 points for him on Saturday night, but the low-scoring nature of the game really didn't put up many points on the board.

Leon: Fehr (2), Malkin (1), Letang (1), Stacey: Varlamov (2), John P.: Fleury (1), Peter: Backstrom (1), Larry: Green (1), Benson: Knuble (1).

I think we'll have the same sort of breakdown for the Heritage Classic in a month's time, so if you have players going in that one, maybe you'll get some sort of recognition then.