Caps @ Penguin Scum 2-18-2007 Post-Mortem

If it weren't for bad luck, there'd be no luck at all right now. Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• Certainly not one of the best Caps efforts this season, but light years away from their worst. It was a solid performance and considering how well we haven't played under the spotlight of national TV, we played well.
• After giving up the first goal of the game again, the Caps for once instead of sulking or running around like chickens with their heads cut off actually came out and played hard and got the game tied back up. All too often this season the Caps have fallen into disarray when faced with adversity, they didn't do that today.

THE BAD:

• John Erskine Bowles was his typical brutal self today. Yeah, he threw a couple of highlight reel hits but was looking for those way too often today and found himself out of position on many occasions. He and Jamie "Home Run" Heward were on the ice for both Penguin Scum even strength goals and Erskine Bowles' lack of footspeed was exploited all afternoon. What makes this worse is that this was his second game back and he should still be full of adrenaline. This is why I said leave him on the IR.
• While the Power Play for the most part did a better job of establishing themselves in the zone, the new umbrella configuration still can't get any consistent pressure. One point of emphasis this off season has to be better passing.
• Once again one simple mistake by the goaltender, this time Brent Johnson, costs the Caps the game. Johnny can't give up a goal from that severe of an angle. But again, it just goes to show how bad our luck is right now.

THE UGLY:

• After going off to a thumb injury, Alexander Semin storms back and draws a penalty shot. In yet another example of bad luck, he badly beats Jocelyn Thibault and hits the freakin' crossbar. What more can you do folks?
• While it was nice to finally be on NBC, the announcing today was utterly predictable except for the fact that they were pretty fair to the Caps for half a period before beginning their fluffing of Secondary Assist Cindy Crosby and the city of Pittsburgh. But in the interest of time and levity, here's the two "lowlights" for the NBC crew today. First, if you listened to Pierre McGuire, you would have thought that the Caps held around a 60-40 edge in faceoffs today. However, you would be wrong. It was 51-49 (29-28). Secondly, I loved listening to Ed Olczk talking about the Penguin Scum's second Power Play opportunity. As we watched a replay of Secondary Assist Cindy Crosby, all we heard was how Cindy was totally dominating. Cindy was dominating even when the puck was no where near him and nobody on the Caps was even in the frame with Cindy. But Cindy was just totally dominating and it was only by Devine Intervention that the Penguin Scum didn't score on their second Power Play because Cindy was simply dominating. I meanwhile was nauseated.

After scoring their third goal, you could see that the Penguin Scum were flying high again with confidence, but a team like the Caps were not only able to stem the tide, they were able to get themselves back into the game. Unfortunately, for the Caps (and opponents of the Penguin Scum recently) it was too little late. While it would be great fun to speculate just what would have happened had Semin buried his Penalty Shot instead of hitting the crossbar, fact is, once again we come up short.