Do Caps love grind game?

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Wilfredo Lee / the associated press archives Since taking charge 22 games into the regular season, head coach Dale Hunter has turned the Capitals into a defence-first team that relies heavily on its goaltending. (CP)

NEW YORK -- "Do you miss it?" asked the reporter, and Nicklas Backstrom smiled a little Swedish smile, faint and ambiguous. "No," he said.

"Really?" asked the reporter.

"Yes," said Backstrom, the smile still an imprint on his face.

This was before the Washington Capitals lost Game 5 of their second-round series to the New York Rangers in stomach-hollowing fashion, allowing a goal with 6.6 seconds left to tie, and another 95 seconds into overtime.

But in the morning, with everything in front of him, Washington's skilled centre was a believer, smile and all, in the system. The old Washington Capitals, sure, they used to play in the fast lane, whooping and spinning through the air, always pushing forward. They scored 57 more goals than anybody else in 2009-10, a staggering margin, and won a Presidents' Trophy.

And they lost to Montreal, a group of self-sacrificing grinders with a white-hot goalie, in the first round.

Now they are the grinding team, the shot-blocking team, the team that leans on its goalie and sometimes gets to breathe free air. Now they are, in so many ways, like anybody else. And Backstrom insists he doesn't miss the old days, or feeling of the wind in his hair.

"Well, our team is playing better (than in 2009-10)," he said. "Our team is playing the right way. We're blocking shots, too. We make it hard for the other team to get scoring chances. If we keep doing that, I think it's a good thing."

Left unsaid was that the Capitals reached Game 7 of the second round in 2009 against the eventual Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins, and lost because their rookie goaltender disintegrated in that moment. That team seemed to be at least as close as this team. And for a player as skilled as Backstrom, it must have been fun.

"If you win hockey games, like you do now, that's the most fun," he said. "Like, it doesn't matter if you had fun for a couple of shifts or whatever, but at the end, this is how the playoffs, how playoff hockey is. So we've got to trust this, and keep playing the same system.

"Because I think we're not risking. Back then there was a lot of back-and-forth, and 3-on-2s, 2-on-1s, all the time. I mean, the play was a little riskier than it is right now. Now we're chipping pucks, we're dumping the puck deep, and I don't think we did that at that time."

This partially explains how Alexander Ovechkin has gone from 109 points in 2009-10 to 65 this season; how defenceman Mike Green, beset by injuries, has gone from a point-per-game defenceman to a 0.22 points per game; how Backstrom, also beset by injuries, has fallen off from a 101-point season two years ago; how Alex Semin has gone from 40 goals to 21. And yet here they are, still alive, in the second round.

But is it better? Are the Capitals better? Hockey writer Jonathan Willis ran the numbers for Grantland.com and found that, since coach Dale Hunter replaced Bruce Boudreau 22 games into the season, the Capitals have allowed opponents to possess the puck more, their stars have possessed the puck less, and the team has spent more time in its own zone, trying to get in the way of other people's shots. It works as long as your goaltending is great and you are opportunistic offensively, but it is a dangerous game to play.

After Game 5, Rangers coach John Tortorella, who fetishizes player sacrifice, said, "If you look at the blocked shots, we haven't blocked many shots because we've got the puck."

But in the Capitals' room, there appears to be belief, fuelled in part by a lack of belief in the past.

"You can be a phenomenal team -- even that (2009-10) team, we had 121 points, but I was not at peace with our team going into the playoffs," centre Brooks Laich said. "We didn't practise hard -- some guys did, but it's easy after you win a game to come to the rink and (screw around)."

"Well, every team that we beat is going home and getting better, because they practise harder, because they lost. And that year we won everything, and some of our players didn't practise hard... we were a very young team, and for some guys -- they'd say 'I had a goal and an assist last night, didn't you see me? I don't care, I'll just sauce pucks around on the ice.'"

Still, isn't that the danger of success, or of personality, or of youth, over the danger of relying on skill and style? Isn't this the ancient NHL cycle of the battle over style, and another triumph of negating skill over skill itself?

"See, I like to think -- people say this guy's so skilled, that guy's so skilled, but to me, skill is the ability to win," Laich said. "Who's the most skilled guy in the league, the guy that you don't want to play against? The most frustrating thing is going off the ice, looking over at the other team, and they're saying, 'We kicked your ass. You can't beat me. You can't beat me.' And I could give a s-- over who can toe-drag or sauce-pass, skill is the ability to win. That's what I think.

"Is Alex Kovalev skilled? Where did that get him? You know? You can play against skill. You can defend against skill."

When Tortorella won a Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning, he used to say "safe is death." But ask veteran Rangers forward Ruslan Fedotenko, and he says, "In a seven-game series, yeah, skill could prevail, but I feel over a period of time, the physical play, the grinding, the chip it in when you need to, the little things, blocking the shots, everything, gets frustrating with skill."

And Rangers forward Mike Rupp says, "It's much easier to resort to that than it is to try to make pretty plays all night."

It is an old story, and this is another chapter. At its highest levels hockey is less about painting pictures than it is about wrestling with clay.

The Washington Capitals are relying on different arts now, less lofty, less beautiful. At least, to anyone else but them.

-- Postmedia News

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 9, 2012 C2