Caps Finish Emotional Week with Win over Coyotes

By: Justin Creech
Washington, DC—Eric Fehr has spent the last several seasons as one of the Capitals most overlooked players. Though some of that is because of injury problems, Fehr had yet to establish himself as a reliable NHL player.

The wait is over.

Fehr scored on the power play late in the second period and assisted on the Capitals first goal of the game, also on the power play, to go along with Alexander Semin’s four point night, as the Capitals capped off an emotional week with a 4-2 win over the upstart Phoenix Coyotes at Verizon Center.

“I’m definitely feeling the best I’ve felt out there,” said Fehr. “I feel healthy for a change, I feel strong and I’ve been getting a lot of good bounces. I can’t really complain right now and hopefully it will continue.”

Fehr, who set his career high for goals in a season in Thursday’s win over the Pittsburgh Penguins, set a career high for points in a season with his effort against Phoenix. Fehr now has 26 points on the season (14g, 12a) in 40 games which is one point better than his previous career high of 25 points (12g, 13a) set last season in 61 games. Last night was also Fehr’s fourth multiple-point game this season.

With the Capitals on the power play Fehr sent a cross-ice pass to Alexander Semin, who was waiting in the left circle. Semin sent a pass to Brooks Laich who deflected the puck in to put the Caps ahead 1-0. The goal was Laich’s 14th of the season and his seventh on the power play.
In the second period with the game tied at 1, Fehr took a pass from Semin near the goal line; had his first shot deflect back to him and fired his second shot over Coyotes’ goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov’s right shoulder for a 2-1 lead.

The Capitals, who finished 2 for 7 with the man-advantage last night, have now scored on 12 of their last 27 power play opportunites.

Fehr scored a similar goal on Thursday against the Penguins early in the second period when his shot deflected off of Pittsburgh goaltender Brent Johnson and into the net.

“I’ll take those breaks right now,” said a jovial Fehr after the game. “They feel great, so hopefully they can keep coming.”

Semin added a goal late in the second period, his 21st of the year, on a pretty behind the back pass from Tomas Fleischmann to put the Caps ahead 3-1 and assisted on Alex Ovechkin’s empty-net goal with six seconds remaining.

The three assists matched a career high in a single game for Semin and his four point outing set a season high. Semin has 16 points in the 10 games since Ovechkin was named Captain.

“I haven’t changed anything really,” said Semin of his recent play. “I just go out and play. I try not to think about it.”

Added Boudreau. “I don’t know maybe he’s listening to him. I thought it was the lines being able to stick together and we’ve got our pp working pretty well at this stage, but if it’s because Ovechkin is the Captain then that’s great.”

Laich’s goal came on the Capitals third shot, but was followed by 15 straight saves by Bryzgalov until Fehr’s tally. Boudreau said he was proud of the way his team responded last night coming off such an emotional week of games.

“We kept saying stay the course, today was going to be a game about patience,” said Boudreau. “They are very good defensively and they just keep doing the same thing and we didn’t want to sit there and say ‘hey this game is boring let’s make it exciting’ and I thought we did a good job of just staying that course of what we had to do.”

The Capitals were also bailed out by rookie netminder Michael Neuvirth.

Neuvirth, who made his first appearance of any kind since January 13, made 28 saves including two pivotal breakaways. Neuvirth stopped Phonex’s Vernon Fiddler on a short-handed breakaway in the first period, then stopped Lauri Korpikoski, who scored both of the Coyotes’ goals, late in the third period to preserve a 3-2 Capitals lead.

“He’s a pressure goaltender,” said Boudreau. “You don’t win the Calder Cup and play every game and I don’t care what league it is. You’ve got to be good and sometimes he wants to be in this league so bad that he lets things get to him. He just needed a break and Arty [Irbe] practiced him pretty hard and he had a great game.”

Notes: The Capitals are 11-1-0 in their last 12 home games and are 18-3-3 on the year at Verizon Center.