2011 NHL playoffs: Fortune doesn’t favor Capitals in Game 1 vs. Lightning

We remember the incredibly skilled goals, like the Ducks’ Bobby Ryan turning David Legwand of Nashville into a helpless spinning top on his swerving solo score. But, in direct proportion as our emotions are invested in the outcome, we tend to ignore the degree to which so many postseason goals come unexpectedly out of pure chaos.

Yes, it’s men on skates trying to hit a bouncing flying puck with a stick, so what do you expect, constant precision? But even by the standards of regular-season hockey, the goals of the postseason, which decide series and rip hearts, tend to be doorstep deflections or crazy bounces off a teammate’s skate or heaven knows what nerve-shredding torment.

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The Washington Capitals discuss their 4-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first game of their second round playoff series.

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Track every shot and goal of every Capitals playoff game.

This game illustrated the point repeatedly and not just in the Lightning’s favor. The Caps started so sluggishly that they perhaps “should” have fallen behind 2-0 just four minutes into the game when Tampa Bay’s Ryan Malone couldn’t get his stick on a bouncing puck in front of a half-open Caps net.

Just seconds later, and the full length of the ice away, the Caps suddenly scored on a careless turnover, a quick Alexander Semin slap shot and a bit of a soft-goal moment by 41-year-old goalie Dwayne Roloson. “He’d [probably] say, ‘Could have got that one,’ ” said Boucher. In a blink, the score was 1-1, not 2-0 Tampa Bay, and Roloson was no longer as hot as any goalie in the playoffs.

The hair’s breadth margins that define postseason hockey recurred all night. The Caps’ Brooks Laich seemed to have tipped in a goal, but it was ruled that he kicked it into the net. No sooner had the Caps gone ahead, 2-1, on a gorgeously executed play off a faceoff, with Eric Fehr netting a pass from behind the goal by Jason Chimera, than Downie’s instant of good fortune materialized.

Downie, from behind the net in the middle of no particularly intense or contested action, merely flipped the puck in front of the Caps’ net hoping that something — dare we say something flukey — would happen. But why should it? Neuvirth was in a fluid rhythm, stopping difficult shots. Why should an innocent random flick of the stick from behind him cause any misery? Yet it did. And the night was never the same.

Good fortune can beget good play. Just 3 minutes 11 seconds later, on a power play, the 21-year-old Tampa Bay superstar Steven Stamkos cashed a classic rebound on the doorstep off a shot by Eric Brewer that Neuvirth couldn’t contain. One minute, a fluke off a teammate’s skate, then, a goal on a tough quality play by Stamkos, in the right place at the right time.

So, would you rather have rest and the favorite’s role on your side? Or in the NHL playoffs, would you just as soon settle for a little luck?

For one night, the latter helped. For a whole series, the jury — or is it those rolling dice of the ice — is still undecided.