re: NHL Post Season Ultimate Anything Can Happen Thread

Steen and Tarasenko hurt? Or just scratched?

Game was painful to watch but they stole an important one

Blues and Canucks tied after 2. Let's see if we have one more OT in us.

OT here we come.

That has been the best series so far for sure. Vancouver and the Blues are very evenly matched.

As a general rule, I don't think anyone should read too much into these playoffs, as they really are a uniques situation played in the weirdest of situations.

That said, Reirden should be shot into the sun. It's hard for a coach to bungle a playoff roster quite as much as he has and it shows just a total inability to get performance from his team. The Caps have lost in the playoffs before, and they will lose again, and you shouldn't overreact to a short series. But the Caps have never been so thoroughly outplayed and been so completely disinterested. In three games, they are yet to score more than 2 goals and in no game have they managed a second goal-scorer.

And look, the Isles aren't a great team. They are the oldest team in the playoffs and they lack the top tier talent of a true contender. And the Isles are f'n destroying the Caps. It's not even close. We're not talking bad bounces, we're talking a total domination at 5v5:

Shot attempts: 55.6%
xGF%: 65.5%
Scoring chances: 58.5%
High Danger chances: 68.6%
Shots on goal: 74-51
Goals: 8-2

I mean, that's the kind of numbers you see when the Ottawa Senators play a team with a pulse. I mean, it took him forever to realzie Kempny was skating around with a fork sticking out of his back, and he still keeps feeding Carlson huge minutes despite being -6 and have a 36.8% CF% at 5v5 which is almost impossibly awful. The Caps have 4 beluliners with a CF% below 50% (3 below 40%) and 4 with a CF% above 50. Combined, the top three players in CF% have elss 5v5 minutes than Carlosn or Dillon, the two most underwater defensemen. I mean, WTF are you doing? React. See who is playing like shite and maybe bench them (ok, he did bench Vrana, who has been awful and whose miss in OT is going to be the defining play of the series if not for his giveaway in G2 leading directly to a goal).

The roster isn't great anymore, but its better than... this. Trotz is simply eating the lunch of an inferior coach. It's one thing to get dominated, but to get dominated by a mediocre team.. .that's the coach. The Caps need to fire Reirden. This is the worst postseason coaching job in Caps history. At least the teams that blew 3-1 leads were competitive. This team is just roadkill.

Trotz told management he wasn’t coming back after the CBJ series. I think it was similar to the Phil Jackson-Bulls scenario.

Also, yes...Reirden has to go. I was a big fan of his hiring at the time and thought we wouldn’t miss a beat but man was I wrong. I’ve never seen the Caps this disjointed and uninspired. They’re playing lifeless hockey out there.

Rough start for us here. Hopefully we wake up in the locker room.

Wtf I leave for two seconds and we score

scratched.