Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Rock The Red To The Cup

ROCK THE RED: Going to the Cup!

Wednesday 23 May 2018 a night of Washington Hockey History. The Washington Capitals defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-0 winning GAME 7. They go on to the Stanley Cup Finals to face the new kids on the block the Las Vegas Golden Knights for the right to raise THE CUP.

Well the excitement has begun. Monday 28 May 2018 Memorial Day The Caps faced off against the Golden Knights for only the third time in the one season short history of team Vegas. During the regular season the Caps lost both games. Unfortunately they have also lost 4-6 in Vegas Game 1 of the Cup Final Series. The game did make it's own NHL history by being the first Final Game to have 4 Leader changes during the game. The game was tied through out most of the game whenever one team would score the other would score a few minutes later. In that way it was frustrating because the Caps were only in the lead for a little over 3 minutes 2-1 in the first period. Then in the 3rd they were briefly up 4-3 for about 2.5 minutes til the Golden Knights tied it up 4-4 and then took the lead 7 minutes later. They scored the final coffin nail with only 2 seconds left in the game to an empty net. One of the reasons I dislike the open net strategy. The concept is fairly solid with about 2 minutes left to play you pull your goalkeeper out and put in an extra man so you have six players capable of scoring a goal. Unfortunately, like it did in this game, it often backfires and the leading team manages to breakaway from the action at their side of the rink and toss in an unobstructed unmanned net goal.

Another sad factor is that most times the team that scores first in game 1, as did the Golden Knights, ends up winning the game, as the Knights did. Also the team that wins game 1 that would be Vegas ends up winning the series. So far no indication which team will win it all. Anyway no matter which team wins the series it will be that team's first Cup

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