Fancy Plays, Losing Ways

There's little doubt which team had the momentum going into tonight's tilt in Madison Square Garden. The Washington Capitals, clearly the more skilled team, finally played postseason hockey Monday night. Their performance against the Rangers was so dominant that the common refrain was that the Caps had "woken up" and were, despite being down a game, back on track to take the series. Perhaps this team is still too green (no pun intended) to be comfortable in the role of the favorite. The Caps painfully reverted to the high-skill fancy play that wins in the regular season but rarely succeeds in the second season. The lessons learned in Game 3 about "greasy" goals, screening the Rangers' netminder, playing hard-nosed hockey -- it's as if that game never happened. The Caps may have more talent, but the Rangers outworked them. Much like the past two games, Simeon Varlamov (rhymes with Na-BA-kov, as Joe B & Locker emphasized after Varly explained th...