Caps @ Maple Leafs 10-29-2007 Post-Mortem

I see Murphy was on the Leafs side tonight... Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• Congratulations to Jeff "Sergeant" Schultz on his first NHL goal and four other players got their first goal of the season.
• 11 different Caps with 19 total points tonight. Michael Nylander (3 assists) and Matt "Omar" Bradley leading the way (1 goal, 2 assists) with 3 points each. That's rather balanced if you ask me especially with six different goal scorers tonight.
• Since having his seven game point streak snapped against the Penguin Scum, A.O. now has multiple points in the 4 games since with 2 more goals tonight. He's now only one point behind Jeff Halpern for 27th on the Caps All-Time scoring list.
• The special teams tonight were special in a good kind of way as the Penalty Killers were 5 for 5 getting a shorthanded goal for good measure and the Power Play was 2 for 5 and nabbed the Game Winning Goal.
• Olie Kolzig made the saves he needed to in order for the team to blow the game wide open. Bit of a shame that his 31 saves didn't get him one of the stars in the game.
• Despite the five goal lead, the Caps didn't let up in the third period, scoring once again and taking 11 shots on goal in the period.

THE BAD:

• After jumping out to a 1-0 lead, the Caps gave up the tying goal just 31 seconds later. At least the Caps only did that once and didn't surrender the lead again all night.
• Giving up 33 shots on goal and allowing the Leafs to take 16 and 11 shots in the second and third period respectively is a recipe for disaster and not a blowout win. Too many defensive breakdowns for the Caps as Olie had to make some big saves.

THE UGLY:

• Pavel Kubina:

Stolen from NHL.com.

This is one of those games where even if you win, you just have to move on from it because while everything worked out well tonight, you won't win very many games in this fashion. Still, it is much better to be on the good side of a 7-1 game than on the bad side. The Caps were able to get seven goals tonight because they got pucks to the front of the net and banged in some rebounds and got some nice goals off the rush as well. Taking 30 shots on goal didn't hurt either. The Caps were not able to get a win like this until late last season but need to remember that they were facing a very bad defensive hockey team with suspect goaltending and can't let any of the confidence earned tonight turn into cockiness.

It has been... A TWO POINT NIGHT!!!