Match Review - Devils Vs Capitals 27th December

Our man on the spot Chris Stone (suspect Panther fan that he is) took the long trip up to Edingburgh for Tuesday's game and gave us his view of the action.

The first period was pretty quiet really, neither team seemed to be going all out to win and no one was throwing any hits, period was a bit slow rely, but as I said to OJ for MNL I’m not sure the shots on goal weren't totally biased, it felt like Craze had all the work to do whilst Lyle didn't have much to do at all.

The second period which ended 1-1 was a little bit more exciting, Dobben’s goal saw Craze save the initial shot from another of our players only for Dobben to get to the puck first which had somehow made its way behind Craze's left leg before the caps defenders could react, it was a very tight angle, so pretty well played! The caps equalising goal was very similar really, Lyle made a save on the initial shot, but the puck bounced vertically up from his right leg and in a mad scramble McKenzie somehow batted it out of the air and it bobbled over the line.

The third started very much the same, better than the first period until Franks stupid 2+2 penalty, at the risk of upsetting the twitter massive who say he can't do any wrong, the slashing and boarding penalties were totally unnecessary and some if our players were left shaking their heads as Frank headed to the bin, at times he can be unbeatable but the silly penalties can be a real let-down. The Capitals scored their first power play goal after K Smith was also penalised and it was a 5on3 in their favour, their second goal came after Kenton had returned, I don't remember the details but the Capitals power play wasn't bad at all.

At 3-1 down I certainly didn’t think we'd be coming back into the game, I didn't really see the incident with Dobben, but there didn’t seem to be any intent there and it was only Frank who reacted to it. With 4 minutes of power play, we were terrible for about three and a half minutes, struggling to setup and even get into the Capitals zone, then all of a sudden Richardson turned up, scored our second goal and the game was back on. After the goal, MacRae had a talk with everyone on the bench and we seemed to come back out with a completely different mentality, true captain material there I’d say.

The next goal came from Voth who'd been getting random nonsense from the Capitals fans every time he dared to touch one of their precious little babies. He proceeded to celebrate in exactly the same way Jarolin had on the Capitals 3rd goal, this seemed to wind their fans up even more, but went down well with us Devils fans.

I don't really remember the details of MacRae’s goal, but he once again came back to the bench and got the team going which was good to see. Our last goal was a thing of beauty and I think just about every player gave Davies a slap on the back afterwards, it was shot from just after the blue line but Craze didn't have time to do anything with it. A shame the Caps don't do highlights anymore!

All in all a good game considering we were missing Matzka for the whole thing and Dobben who was double shifting before the injury. We didn’t look too tired afterwards so a decent showing in Belfast hopefully!

Also of note was that Scott Dobben left the ice with a deep cut to the cheek but has received stitches and will be fit to face the Giants in the Devils next match.

For a full discussion of the game you can check out the game thread and what looks like Scott Dobbens new Scar here http://www.the-inferno.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5393&start=20 

Period Scores: 0-0, 1-1, 2-4
Penalty Mins: Capitals 4 – Devils 14
Powerplay: Edi 2/7 – Car 1/1
Shots On: Nathan Craze 41 – Stevie Lyle 25
Referee: Neil Wilson