Caps @ Bruins 3-8-2008 Post-Mortem

I've got places to go, people to see, things to do, and an hour of sleep to lose so this will be quick...

• I'm sure our Ultimate Fighting on Ice friends will point to the start of today's game as proof positive of how fighting helps a team. But it didn't do the Bruins any good until late in the third period. The Caps more than answered the goonage at the start of the game and it wasn't until long after the game had settled in that things changed in their direction. If anything, Boston's early temper tantrum helped the Caps to a 1-0 lead.
• While we'll mention the chicanery that cost us this game later, the real turning point was Matt Kent Cooke's ejection for kneeing in the second period. Yes the Caps killed off the 5 minute Power Play without allowing a goal, yes the Caps got good scoring chances themselves on the 5 minute kill, but that Power Play shifted the momentum in Boston's favor and the Caps were on their heels for the rest of the game. They tried to take it back late in the second, early in the third period, but Boston was finally in sync and the Caps couldn't recover.
• We'll leave you to figure out what the John "Coach's Pet" Erskine Bowles Bonehead Play of the Game was. We'll tell you though that Erskine Bowles won it again and once again proved me right about how one good game leads to a streak of bad play by the slow-footed-dim-witted defenseman.
• I'll be a happy person if I never see Chris Rooney and Rob Martell calling another Caps game this season. After what happened Monday night between these two teams and with Boston's other bombing on Thursday; the NHL assigns these two clowns to call today's game? My mother who was watching the NESN feed in Las Vegas on NHL Center Ice called me to complain in the first period about a mugging Nicklas Backstrom took in the first period that NESN kept replaying. Letting that kind of stuff go really makes you wonder about the stuff they did decide to call in the 6 minutes of the game.