Caps vs. Rangers 2-10-2007 Post-Mortem

When you come out flat, you usually get flattened and that's exactly what happened tonight. Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• No overtime tonight.

THE BAD:

• Letting Jaromir Jagr get his 1500th point tonight. It is somewhat amazing what he can do when he wants to do it. But at least he isn't our problem anymore.
• While the Power Play was officially 2 for 4 tonight, it was due entirely to a spot in the boards that produced a favorable bounce for us tonight. I'll take it, but it would be nice to see us get some real offense generated on the Power Play without having to rely on dead spots on the boards.
• 6-6-7 was our shot line tonight for the first, second, and third period. Simply put, that isn't going to get the job done period. Most of that though was due to the fact that we had no jump in the skates tonight. I kept waiting for the Caps to turn it on and it just never happened.

THE UGLY:

• Horrible officiating once again tonight going against the Caps. Early on it looked like Justin St. Pierre (who also stunk up the join on Thursday night) and Dean Warren were going to call things close to the vest tonight. But that was clearly out the window when Aaron Ward punched Alexander Semin in the face when they were in the corner and no call was made. Once again a visiting team got away with a too many men on the ice call and the Caps drew penalties for things the Rangers weren't being called for. Whether or not the game is called closely, the game must be called evenly and tonight's wasn't.
• The Penalty Killers batted .500 tonight. Simply unacceptable.

The Ultimate Fighting on Ice fans love to tell you how fighting brings passion, emotion, and intensity to the game. They'll tell you that when things are going bad, a good fight can wake a team up and get them playing the way they should be. Well, Brian Sutherby and Mr. Donald Brashear both fought and won tonight and yet there was still NO passion, NO emotion, and NO intensity in this game from the Caps. You could have replaced the Caps water bottles with six-shot double espressos and there STILL wouldn't have been any life from the Caps tonight. Yes folks, it was that bad, you couldn't tell that the Rangers were the team who played a game last night and traveled three hours to get here for tonight's game. In a game between two teams who are on the edge of the playoffs and who need every win they can get going forward, the Rangers simply wanted it more tonight than the Caps did.