Caps @ Devils 2-29-2008 Post-Mortem

Ok, raise your hand if you saw that one coming... Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• Once again we get a win and score four goals without A.O. scoring any of them. His goalless drought is now a career high seven games but we've won our last two games. If he gets going and the secondary scoring continues, we could be onto something.
• Sergei Fedorov had a nice debut with an assist on the game winning goal, but the thing that helps is his 10-3 record tonight on faceoffs. I'm not one to put a high premium on faceoffs but he gives us a go-to guy for offensive zone faceoffs late in games we're trailing who won't hurt us offensively after winning the draw.
• Nicklas Backstrom with two more assists getting back into the groove with A.O. and Viktor Kozlov playing with Backstrom again. The top line tonight had only one goal but had 4 points between the three players.
• Even Mr. Donald Brashear got into the goal scoring act tonight.
• 18 shots on goal allowed and 11 blocked shots shows how much the defense stepped up tonight.
• And speaking of blocked shots, we had only 6 of ours blocked tonight.

THE BAD:

• Alexander Semin may have had a goal and an assist tonight, but he's going to need to come up with another move to create shots for himself. I think the entire league and maybe even a few casual NBA fans know that he'll go for the curl and drag into the slot when he's coming in the zone on the rush.
• Sunday we got 15 shots on goal in the first period against the Devils. Today we got just 4 and so it shouldn't be a surprised that we got the same number of goals (which would be none). We can out with passion on Tuesday after the trades and now that two of the three players were in the lineup, that passion was largely gone. Luckily the Devils aren't offensive stalwarts.

THE UGLY:

• Patrick Elias:

NHL.com

Ok, so you're wondering why I haven't mentioned why I haven't mentioned Cristobal Huet's 18 save shutout in his Capitals debut. Well, I have to admit that I thought Olie Kolzig would have pitched the shutout as well. Bruce Boudreau seems to agree only because he announced after the game that Kolzig will get the start tomorrow night at home against the Maple Leafs. Huet only had to make 18 saves and while there were a couple of instances where I thought Huet did something that I didn't think Kolzig would do or does, Huet didn't have to come up with many big saves. His stop on Zack Parise's breakaway was the most impressive. Maybe the Devils were awestruck too by the Caps moves which is why they looked flat all night long but whatever the reason is, we got a solid win tonight.

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