Caps @ Rangers 10-12-2007 Post-Mortem

All good things... Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• Congrats to A.O. who scored his 100th goal tonight and was one a few Caps to actually play a solid game tonight at both ends of the ice. Of the 25 shots on goal the Caps were credited with tonight, he had 7 of them, by far the most on the team.
• Excellent job by Olie Kolzig keeping what looked to be a rather disinterested Caps team in the game with 38 saves.

THE BAD:

• The Rangers hadn't scored a Power Play goal all season and the Caps hadn't allowed one before tonight. Should have seen the Rangers Power Play goal just 1:33 into the game coming from a mile away.
• The Caps gave up 41 shots tonight, 20 in the first period alone.
• Well the revamped Power Play went 1 for 4 tonight. But the one goal was more a result of a great individual effort by Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green and another great individual effort to finish the play off by A.O. Once again, the Caps are outshot on the Power Play 4-2.
• 25 shots on goal for the night for the Caps and 11 of them came in the third period. The offense never really got on track and the much vaunted puck possession just wasn't there tonight. Neither were the breaks and bounces.

THE UGLY:

• While everybody has been carping on the two goals allowed in a three game stretch for the first time since 2004, what they didn't tell you was that in the next two games, the Caps gave up 8 goals. By all rights, the Caps should have given up that much tonight with the non-existent defensive effort they put out tonight.
• The aforementioned previously perfect Penalty Killers were 3 for 6 in the first period tonight and finished up 5 for 8 on the night. You might be tempted to blame the sheer number of penalties but the three scores came on the first five Power Plays. The best you can say about the unit tonight is that the Caps finished up strong on the Power Play.
• Regardless of how well the Penalty Killers were not playing tonight, the Caps still took too many stupid and lazy penalties. That was something they had been avoiding until tonight.
• You know the offense is bad when John Erskine Bowles is tied for second place on the team with 3 shots on goal.

For the second game in row, the Caps came out with little intensity and jump in their skates. They weren't just on their heels in the first period, they were just standing around and spectating for the most part, especially around the crease. While the Caps got away with a bad first period on Monday, they couldn't tonight and odds are very good that they won't tomorrow night either. The only silver lining in tonight's loss is that the Caps have to get back out there tomorrow night and can erase the damage of tonight.