TBay 3; Caps 4
Actual Final Score:
TBay 0; Caps 3
This season's playoffs have been the best and most memorable games I've watched in years. For those of you who've left the NFL, you could not find a better time to give the NHL a chance.
>> EDIT: New NFL Anthem Protest policy; confined to locker room; Standing required; Teams face penalties. <<
The TBay - Caps series is 3 - 3 and tonight is the big, final game 7.
Monday night's game 6 was scoreless until 4:48 remaining in the second period when T.J. Oshie nailed the first goal putting the Caps up by one. This was Oshie's first goal in this series.
Period 3 saw TBay playing hard, desperately wanting to get on the scoreboard, but the Caps played almost flawlessly, denying the Lightning any opportunity of getting the puck past Caps' goalie Braden Holtby in what is his first shut-out game since April, 2017.
Standing at 6' 3", TBay's goalie, Andrei Vasilevskiy is a big guy and he has the ability to stretch like Gumby. He made some incredible saves but just couldn't stop the Caps determination in winning this game.
At the 9:58 mark in P3, Caps' Devante Smith-Pelly nailed the second goal. Still enough time for TBay to get two goals and even the score and strive for an OT. But that didn't happen. Instead, enter Oshie scoring again, with less than one and a half minutes remaining in the game, putting the Caps up 3 to 0.
With that final 90 seconds remaining, shot stats taken tallied TBay 21 and Caps 33. This is a big discrepancy - not the only one in determining who wins and who doesn't, one doesn't necessarily dictate the other - but it's a significant difference.
If TBay wants to win tonight, they have to fire out more shots. They need to return to what they can certainly do, but sometimes lose focus of, controlling puck possession, of which they didn't do nearly enough in Monday's game. When they did, they did it well - they just couldn't, or manage to, sustain possession for sufficient amounts of time. If TBay can bring this talent back to the surface tonight, they will win.
If you watched Monday's game, then you witnessed Caps' Alex Ovechkin wrist shots that must clock in at near 100 mph. The guy is amazing. A wrist shot, mind you - SNAP - and the puck momentarily becomes invisible to the naked eye. He makes the puck soar. Another reason to watch tonight's game.
Tonight, Game 7, at 8PM EST and playing on TBay home ice.
The winner tonight plays Vegas for The Stanley Cup.
Odds Sharks predicts a final score of Caps 3.7; TBay 1.7
My pick:
If there's going to be an OT game, I'd think tonight will be the night, but I'm not going to make that part of my prediction.
TBay 3; Caps 2
( Disclaimer )
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