Caps vs. Maple Leafs 12-28-2008 Post-Mortem

So nice of them to remember Tim Bergland... Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• Move over Bobby Carpenter, A.O. has tied the other half of the "Goal Dust Twins" for 6th on the Caps All Time Goal Scoring list with 188. Up next, Miracle on Icer Dave Christian who scored 193 goals in 504 games as a Cap. This was A.O.'s 280th.
• Another solid outing for Jose "Alvin, Simon," Theodore who had some nice saves among his 23 tonight. Of course the return of Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green and Jeff "Sergeant" Schultz helped immensely, but as we said at the start of the season, this team needs only average goaltending to be competitive and that's what they got tonight.
• Brooks "and Dunn" Laich scoring twice from a combined distance of ten feet in front of the net, if that far. Missing for far too long as been the "dirty" goal scored from right in front of the net. Admittedly, the Caps do try to score those, but have not been as successful as they were tonight.

THE BAD:

• How did the officiating crew of Kevin Pollack and Ian Walsh miss the high stick on David "Bolt Cutter" Steckel?
• How do the Caps narrowly miss a goal and then give up a goal after a TV timeout? That near miss fired up Toronto more than it fired up the Caps.

THE UGLY:

• Was there a memo sent out about calling more dives? Three two minute four-on-fours, two of which were created by diving penalties being handed out along with another infraction which has always confounded us, if a guy was tripped badly enough for a penalty, how could he have dove?
• For the fourth game in a row, the Caps do not score a goal in the first period. For a team that benefits greatly from fast starts, this drought needs to end.

Well the domination of home ice continues and the Caps easily beat a team that they should have beaten. We don't like to look at or talk very much about the standings until after the New Year but the you have to like the position that the Caps are putting themselves in during the grind portion of the season. However, as much as it pains us to say it, we're really missing Tomas Fleischmann especially since Alexander Semin and Sergei (#3) Fedorov won't be back anytime soon. The Caps need the secondary scoring badly and with two goals from Laich tonight, they were able to get the win.

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