No penalty call leads to goal

April 15, 2009   ·   Derek Felix   ·   Jump to comments

This is the playoffs and already on Night One, we’ve seen some soft calls in the Rangers-Caps game. The usual interference stuff which always gets called even if it’s not.

So, the Rangers were in control having scored not one but two power play goals. No. Your eyes aren’t deceiving you! The 29th ranked PP got two straight coming off the sticks of Nik Antropov and Markus Naslund against sieve Jose Theodore suddenly giving them three consecutive goals answering Alex Ovechkin’s first.

The Caps began getting frustrated taking cheap runs at our players including a Mike Green dangerous high hit to Freddy Sjostom against the boards knocking him down for a couple of minutes. Why??? Because as the MSG replays showed, Green led with his elbow. It was the kind of cheapshot that this league wants to eliminate. Yet somehow he wasn’t penalized and the Caps wound up scoring seconds later when Viktor Kozlov got behind Marc Staal cutting it to 3-2 before the end of the period.

Make no mistake about it. The Rangers should’ve been on the power play. Whether or not that missed call turns the game around in the Caps’ favor remains to be seen. We’ll see if the experienced Blueshirts show mental fortitude and play a strong final 20 if they want to wrestle the home ice away minus their captain.

Given how shaky Theodore looks, it’s there for the taking.

Updating the two other Game Ones in the East, the Devils have a 2-0 lead on the Hurricanes with goals coming from Mike Mottau unassisted and Zach Parise. They’ve outshot Carolina 23-12 halfway through. Meanwhile, in the Battle of Pennsylvania, it’s home ice also treating the Pens well who lead by that same 2-0 score on goals by Sid The Kid and Tyler Kennedy. That can be seen on Versus, who also will have the first Western Conference game when the Blues visit the Canucks as part of their doubleheader at 10 on the East Coast.

We’ll have a full recap of Game One between the Rangers and Capitals later and be sure to check in for Hasan’s Devils recap as well.