Caps vs. Ning 11-10-2007 Post-Mortem

And you thought Thursday was the start of something... Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• With his second period goal, A.O. breaks his tie with Dainius Zubrus.

THE BAD:

• For a long stretch of the second period, the Power Play unit's two shots on goal was the only offense the Caps could muster.
• Blocked shots are still a problem as the Ning blocked 12 shots and the Caps missed everything on 13 others. That equals the 25 they did get on goal.
• Penalty Killers were 2 for 4 tonight.
• We gave up 34 shots on goal, way too many to a team like Tampa if you want to win.

THE UGLY:

• I'm thinking it's time for Donald Brashear to sit in the press box for a bit. Not only did he take a stupid penalty tonight, I can't think of one positive thing he did with his 4:51 of ice time. Brashear threw a nice hit but if turned into a textbook example of why you play the puck and not the man as no turnover was created by the check. At least Brian Sutherby isn't slow as molasses out there.
• What to know why we only got 25 shots on goal? About mid-way through the first period the game degenerated into us dumping the puck deep into the Ning zone and then trying to get the puck back from the Ning as they brought it back up ice. Of course, as the game wore on, the Ning were much better at keeping the puck away from us and we couldn't get anything going unless certain players tried to beat everybody by themselves.

I'm sure some of you were snickering at me after Thursday's win but if there's a reason to fire Glen Hanlon tonight is exactly why. After coming off a huge win Thursday night, the Caps just didn't have any jump and no real adjustments were made other than the well deserved benching of Brashear after he got out of the penalty box in the third period. And truth be told, the Caps were lucky this game didn't get out of hand sooner than it did during that absolute turd of a second period. Very often you make your own luck with hard work and smart play and there just was not very much of that tonight as the Caps kept playing around with the puck and not moving it along fast enough. We can sit here and wish for the return of certain players but in the meantime, there are games that have to be played and points that need to be earned. That isn't being done right now and something needs to be done. If the Caps don't at least compete for a playoff spot this year (and at this rate, they won't) things are going to get very ugly very quickly.