The idea of Washington Capitals to switch goalies and bring in Alex Ovechkin, a complete rookie has totally backfired. Right in their first-round playoff they lost to the New York Rangers 1 – 0. Henrik Lundqvist told that if you are not going to score, you cannot expect to win a match. In his third playoff, he has already saved 35 times for his team. In the mean time Ryan Callahan decided to ruin the debut of Simeon Varlamov. He scored to make sure that his teeam was able to grab an easy victory. The New York Rangers are now bandishing a clear 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series. They have won both the games they have played so far.
According to Chris Drury, the captain of New York Rangers his team is not trying to be pretty. All they want is to win the games and it is the only thing that matters for them. Chris did not play the first game but did weild the stick in the second game.
On the other side, the Capitals were led by Ovechkin. The team also has high-scoring players like Nicklas Backstrom, Alexander Semin and Mike Green. They came in the rink as the favorites, being the second-seeded team. None of the flash and charisma seemed to do any good however as they went down to the seventh-seeded Rangers who have performed brilliantly so far.
Scott Gomez of New York Rangers commented that the opponents were sure to get chances to turn the game in their favor. Lundqvist and the ‘D’ had other plans and they were outstanding in the manner they performed in the game.
Washington Capitals have had an outstanding record as well. It has been only three times that they have been shut out and they have played 82 regular-season games. It was on January 9 that the last such thing occured. The New York Rangers were able to foil as many as 29 shot attempts. The winners were able to ensue 16 more blocks than the Washington Capitals could.
The Rangers defenseman Wade Redden noted that all the players did a great job and tried to get in the way of the puck. He considers that as the players see their teammates go all out to make sure that they are able to score and at the same time save their own goal, the feeling becomes contagious and creates performances that win matches.
In hi own right, Varlamov has performed remarkably well in his sixth career NHL start. In this match, his skills were tested against those of the of No. 1 goalie Jose Theodore. Jose had only allowed four goals on 21 shots when New York got a 4-3 win in Game 1. Varlamov is just the 20-year-old and is a first-round draft pick of 2006. In this season, he was in the minor first. Washington coach Bruce Boudreau had been playing coy about Washington’s goalie. He came up with the idea of putting Varlamov on the job. Despite Varlamov’s talent and a great team, Washington was not able to scrape through.
