Caps vs. Senators 1-15-2008 Post-Mortem

SWEEP!!! SWEEP!!! SWEEP!!! SWEEP!!! Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• The Power Play got the job done tonight going 2-5 on a well set up play and a scramble that had been missing for a long time. That scramble goal, which was the game winner, was generated by the second unit. See what happens when you use more than one unit?
• Tomas Fleischmann must not have liked being a healthy scratch as he had a strong game tonight. He'll have to continue this level play with Michael Nylander ending his season tomorrow with shoulder surgery that will have him out 3-6 months.
• Viktor Kozlov had a strong game tonight too. He made a wonderful backdoor pass to Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green to open the scoring in the second period.
• Alexander Semin seemed to want to be a good hockey player tonight as he scored a goal that will be on highlight reels for years and another goal where he got his nose dirty by crashing the net. Hopefully we can get a more consistent effort out of him.
• Senators' Head Coach John Paddock was complaining yesterday about the imbalance of penalties called against his team, it happened again tonight as the Senators had 5 penalties called against them and the Caps had only two. Though those two did lead to a :17 5-on-3 which the Caps killed off.

THE BAD:

• Is it me or do we seem to play better once we fall behind? Aren't you a little disturbed by this trend?
• Ottawa got 28 shots on goal and on some of them Brent Johnson looked a little shaky. Though to Johnson's credit, he came up with some saves that we had not be getting recently.
• Sorry folks, no more games against Ottawa this season.

It was interesting to watch in the final minutes as Ray Emery creeped out of the crease that the Ottawa bench never even looked over at him to call him to the bench for the sixth attacker down by two goals. That speaks volumes about the coaching staff's confidence that the team could comeback in the final minutes. In the end Daniel Alfredsson took a penalty and made things moot but with this being the fourth time the Caps have beaten the Senators this season, it will be very tough for the coaching staff to blame the players. There's no reason why they should not have been ready to play this game tonight and once again folded when things did not go their way.

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