Caps vs. Canucks 10-26-2007 Post-Mortem

Make up your own pithy comment tonight... Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• After a goal and an assist, A.O. is now tied with Dino Ciccarelli with 209 points for 29th All-Time on the Caps scoring list. Up next for A.O. at 28 is Jeff Halpern at 214 points in 438 games.

THE BAD:

• You might be tempted to say that least the Caps made it interesting at the end but after 55 minutes of uninspired hockey, the last five minutes just really made me angry that they didn't give that kind of effort the whole game.
• The Penalty Killers were 3 for 5 tonight and couldn't come up with a kill early in the game despite Boyd Gordon being in the lineup.
• Please get well soon Tom Poti as your replacement John Erskine Bowles was in a death struggle tonight with Jeff "Sergeant" Schultz for worst defenseman on the ice. Erskine Bowles looked s l o w (even for himself) all night long while Schultz was constantly turning the puck over.

THE UGLY:

• And speaking of turnovers, Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green's ugly turnover lead directly to the second Vancouver goal. Though looking at the replay, I can't figure out what Erskine Bowles was doing on that play but he certainly wasn't offering any support to Green or picking up a Canuck.
• Despite the Power Play being 2 for 4 tonight I'm still picking on them because of Glen Hanlon putting all the eggs in one basket and placing A.O. alongside Alexander Semin at the point. While it paid off tonight, mark words, we will eventually be burned and burned badly if this continues. I'm hoping this was only because Poti was hurt and not playing.
• Captain Chris Clark's injury was not only grizzly itself, but the Caps couldn't regroup after seeing their Captain go down. He could be out for awhile with that one.
• While some might enjoy all the hitting that the Caps did tonight, it is pretty clear that isn't this team's game. I'm not saying we shouldn't hit people but A.O. missed more than a couple of pucks tonight because he chose the body and Semin shouldn't be the guy looking to stir the pot. I also thought Green was trying to hard to land the big hit. The Caps need to play within themselves in order to be successful.

In an 82 game season, teams are going to come out flat once in awhile. For most of the night you would have thought that the Caps were wrapping up a four game road trip, about to fly back across the country, and the Canucks were wrapping up a four game homestand about to head out on the road for three games. With the Caps having to play again tomorrow night on the road, they'll have to bounce back quickly and will need to be much sharper against the Blues than they were against the Canucks.