Caps Play Better But Lose To Canucks 4-2
By Rodger M. Wood
The Caps played with zest in the first and third periods, but outplayed much of the game lost 4-2 to the high flying Vancouver Canucks at the Verizon Center last night.Typical of his hard play, Matt Hendricks crashed the nets and scored the first goal to give the Caps a 1-0 lead at 5:50 mark of the first period and encouraged home town fans to believe this game was going to be different than the past five games, in which the Caps failed to score a goal in the first period.Less than three minutes later, Canucks defenseman Alexander Edler tied the game 1-1 with a shot from the blue line, which found its way through traffic past Caps goalie Semyon Varlamov, who stopped 31 of 34 shots and had been playing super goal the past five games with a 1.25 goal against average.The Canucks went ahead in the second period on defensemen, Christian Ehrhoff’s goal from the point and a breakaway goal by forward Daniel Sedin, who with his twin brother Henrik, gives the Canucks lots of offensive fire power.
Late in the second period, the Caps started putting pressure on the Canucks, but had to wait midway through the third period before Marcus Johansson put the second goal past NHL all star goalie Roberto Luongo. Johansson was assisted by Brooks Laich and Nickolas Backstrom.Canucks Daniel Sedin scored his second goal of the night, an empty netter, to end the game 4-2.Injured in a collision with line mate David Steckel, Eric Fehr left the game in the 3rd period. Alexander Semin, DJ Bradley, and Matt Bradley were still on the side line with injuries, taking lots of tough offense out of the lineup.The Caps resume play against Ottawa Senators in a 3 PM game Sunday.
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