Plus Minus: Seeing Red

So this week we played the Hurricanes, the Capitals, and the Red Wings. That's enough red jerseys to seriously freak out Senator McCarthy. (You know, if he was alive and it was still the 1950s and stuff.) What went our way? What went wrong?

PLUS

Why, yes, Ryan, winning DOES feel really good

+ 2 It feels pretty good to beat the Caps on their home turf. I mean ice. An extra plus for the guys on the ice in the last two minutes of that game for killing a 6-on-4 power play.

+ 4 Maxim Lapierre, Andrei Kostitsyn, and Max Pacioretty for breaking out of their funk (not the George Clinton kind) and playing what might have been their best week of the season (Lapierre's penalty in Washington notwithstanding). The fourth plus goes to Kirk Muller for knowing that Lapierre could win that shootout for us.

+ Is it getting repetitive that Tomas Plekanec and Mike Cammalleri are regular fixtures in the Plus column? Lately they've been the best we've got, and I guess I'll just have to keep mentioning them until someone surpasses their current level of awesomeness.


MINUS

I happen to like David Steckel, so I sort of felt bad for him here... but not that bad

- It sucks enough that we lost Brian Gionta. Then we found out he's out indefinitely because of a broken bone in his foot. Then we saw footage from his press conference and the man we call GG was walking around with the help of forearm crutches and looking just a little bit more helpless than we can handle.

- We lost Gomez, too? Get out your 100th anniversary umbrellas, because when it rains on les Canadiens, it pours.

- I tend to be picky about which sportscasters I like, and this week Joel Bouchard did himself no favours by interviewing Tom Kostopoulos exclusively in English. Come on, dude. When he wore the bleu-blanc-rouge, TK always tried his best to speak at least a little bit of French when being interviewed by French media. Sure, it's clearly not his first language, but he speaks French at least as well as some reporters speak English, so he gets an A for effort.

- Oh, Georges Laraque. I want to be happy that you're back, honestly, I really do, but it's hard when you don't put your brute force to good use and instead give the other team a six-minute power play, and then find yourself being called to a disciplinary hearing. It's your job to hurt other guys, but maybe not that badly. If Niklas Kronwall was a puppy would you still say that you hit him by accident?


Okay, so we've got another encounter with Ovechkin and the Caps next Saturday (dammit I think I'm going to miss part of it) but not before we play Ovie's best friend Sidney Crosby. Maybe if we can get our revenge on Cros for that hat trick, the Caps will give us another win.
What? That's not how it works?
I guess we'll just have to wait and see if I get my wish.