We just need to overcome all the noise and focus on the signal. Win on Saturday and take it to them in Philly on Monday. Make it a series.
My bet, the refs that called our game last night won’t be working in the second round. The noise in Philly affected them more than it affected us. It is what it is but who cares. We just need to move forward.
Bettman should be ashamed about the performance of the referees last night. Absolutely unconscionable. When we make a mistake, fine, penalize us. We deserved the too many men on the ice, Semin deserved the roughing penalty, but there’s been no consistency from crew to crew. Look back to Game 1 – Cooke gets nailed for interference when the puck is at his (and the Flyers player’s) feet, which puts us on the power play and gives them a goal. The last two games in Philly, we’ve got guys being high sticked, interfered with away from the puck, and not one call for interference or high sticking. Not one Philadelphia penalty after the end of the second period? I don’t believe that.
It would be nice if the officials took pride in their performance, but judging by the one-sidedness of the officiating, it suggests something else may be going on here.
The high stick misses were ridiculous. I agree..how do four officials miss both high sticks? These were blatant high sticking penalties, and either one if called could have changed the game.
The awful goaltender interference call on us late was purely garbage. They run Huet the whole series and nothing is called and our guy is pushed into Biere and is called? Pure BS. Why are the NHL officials so bad?
Suuure blame it on the refs.
“It is what it is…” I’ve heard this phrase spill out of too many mouths in sports, reality TV and discussions with friends who are claiming they had been wronged. Most times people can’t or won’t fight back to correct something like this. The Capitals have three chances to right this wrong. Play game 5 like game 4 and I see a regulation win!
Most everyone one was calling for a six or seven game series anyways.
That meant the Caps were going to lose two or three games anyways. Just means they can’t lose again, if they do, they just didn’t want it badly enough.
This is what’s so disheartening about being a Caps fan……it’s that feeling of no matter what happens, in the end we’ll get screwed by the officials/league or whatever.
Some people say the bad calls even out over time, but that’s simply not true both anectdotally and statistically (if you don’t believe me, run the numbers yourself over the course of Caps’ playoffs through history. I checked and last time I checked I only found one playoff series out of all the ones we were in where we had more PP’s than PK’s. ONE!!
I sure hope so.
You are exactly right. It’s as if the refs were scared/intimidated by the Philly crowd. That should never affect their decision making process but the games in philly it seemed like it did. The Kozlov call was a complete joke.
I’m pumped for tomorrow. I love this team. I love the attitude that Boudreau, Ovechkin and the rest of the team still displays. We fight till the end with everything we have.
Flyers have a good team but our road to get into the playoffs in my opinion was tougher than the mountain we have to climb now. We have been through this before and we can get this done. We still believe! Let’s go Caps!!
Seriously though two high sticks that draw blood from Bradley and Semin an no call? Either time? Wow!
From what I saw on the replay from TSN, the high stick on Semin from Dowd was no accident. It was away from the play and was a deliberate attempt to injure. How can 4 refs miss that? I seldom use the ref excuse, if ever; but last night disgusted me.