Caps vs. Maple Leafs 1-24-2008 Post-Mortem

It's brewing... Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• The second Power Play unit got the job done tonight. Brooks "and Dunn" Laich got a deflection with one second left in the first Power Play for the only shot on goal we got on the Power Play tonight. Overall they were 1 for 2 but could be hardly blamed for having only two chances.
• Yet another win that was gutted out instead of shot out. Viktor Kozlov's rebound goal 36 seconds after Toronto tied it was an appropriate answer.
• The Penalty Killers were up to the task all night again going 5 for 5 including a vital kill late in the game.
• Milan Jurcina took his mean pills tonight. He was hitting everything in sight which is rare for him and lead everybody with 6 hits in the game.
• Brent Johnson had another solid game where the only goal he gave up was on a deflection that he couldn't do anything about. If he keeps this up, he'll get the goaltending controversy going.

THE BAD:

• The inappropriate answer to Kozlov's go-ahead goal was John "Coach's Pet" Erskine Bowles cross-checking penalty 8 seconds later. That was the clear Erskine Bowles Dumb Play of the Night as we had plenty to chose from most notably including his delay of game penalty in the first when he shot the puck about 10 rows behind the bench with nobody around him in his own zone. The cross checking penalty sapped any momentum generated by Kozlov's goal.

THE UGLY:

• Two goals on 20 shots is a decent shooting percentage but allowing 32 shots on goal and getting outshot in every period is not good and, as we've seen before, will lead to trouble more often than not.
• For a second there I thought I was watching the Caps play the Penguin Scum with the disparity of calls between the two teams. The Caps took three more penalties than the Leafs and had no Power Plays after the first period. I'm not so much upset with what was called on the Caps by Kerry Fraser and Dave Jackson as I was upset by what wasn't called on the Leafs. Things that we did that got us in the penalty box were ignored when the Leafs did the exact same thing.

Maybe it's me but I thought we played a better game last night when we lost than we did tonight when we won. The first line seemed to be the only ones interested in generating offense as the rest of the team seemingly took the night off in the offensive zone. All night long the Leafs looked as if they were one step ahead of the Caps except of course when the Caps got the go ahead goal. And even then, it looked as if Kozlov was trying to hit Vesa Toskala in the chest with the shot. Sometimes it goes that way as you get the breaks that you maybe didn't really earn. Earlier in the season those breaks were all going against us no matter how hard we played.

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