Caps vs. Maple Leafs 3-1-2008 Post-Mortem

And you wonder why I'm so negative on this team... Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE BAD:

• I know I swore off talking about "our problem" but it is very troubling to see Bruce Boudreau following the Glen Hanlon tradition of using our timeout before a 5-on-3 Power Play starts. It hasn't worked all season and quite frankly the guys we keep sending out to do the job on the 5-on-3 shouldn't continue to be given the chance anymore at this point in the season because the other players can't do any worse.
• The Matt Kent Cooke experiment on the second line lasted about a period and was about as productive as the Matt "Princess" Pettinger experiment was. Compounding the problem was Tomas Fleischmann taking over for Cooke and reverting to form.
• Our offense has become way too predictable as everything is run through either Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green or A.O. when they are on the ice. When both are on the ice, it goes through A.O. more often than Geen. Matt "Omar" Bradley and Steve Eminger were the only "non offensive" players to record more than 1 shot on goal. Shaone Morrrissonnn and Nicklas Backstrom who skate with Green and A.O. had one and two shots respectively tonight.
• And before we move on let me say that tonight Matt Stajan was hooking more than the women featured on Late Night HBO "Documentaries."

THE UGLY:

• I know some of you want to blame this game on Olie Kolzig and to an extent Boudreau for playing Kolzig instead of Cristobal "We Must Protect This House" Huet especially after UA pitched a shutout last night. But this loss was not Kolzig's fault. He didn't have his best game tonight but the team in front of him played with no sense of urgency and with very little passion tonight. This is another team loss.
• In what was a big indicator of just how little passion and urgency we played with was how we were getting beaten to pucks and just simply outworked all night long. Toronto was wrapping up a four game road trip playing their third game in four nights. There's no way they got to D.C. before the Caps did last night and the Caps were sleeping in their own beds. There's no excuse for the Caps to be outworked the way they were tonight and they were outworked for a good period and half before trying to bail it out late.
• The John "Coach's Pet" Erskine Bowles Bonehead Play of the Game gets shared tonight by Kolzig and Green for their Keystone Kops routine in the third period that lead to the game winning goal. I could understand a miscommunication between two guys who are playing together for the first time but how long have Green and Kolzig been playing together?
• And the really bad news folks is Carolina's 5-1 win over the Ning. So much for that three point deficit with two games in hand because it is now five points with two games in hand.

You almost have to wonder if this team can handle success. About a month ago they climbed into first place and promptly surrendered it. They had two points sitting on a silver platter for them tonight and they weren't willing to pay the price to get them. There was some talk of the respect that Sergei Fedorov commands from the younger players and as a result the leadership he provides but you didn't see much of it in action tonight. Toronto is not a playoff team and we are nowhere nearly good enough to be able to play somewhat hard for half a game and consistently come away with a win especially at this time of year.