Caps @ Senators 11-23-2009 Post-Mortem

Quick hits tonight because we need to get to bed here...

• We had a bad feeling about the game after the second period ended.  The Caps dominated that period about as well as they have dominated a period this season but only had a 3-1 lead to show for it.  The Caps missed too many chances to put the game away then.
• Giving up 18 shots in any period is never good, it is especially bad when you do it in the third period of a game where you have a 3-1 lead entering it.  Taking 3 shots on goal in the same period tells you why the Caps ended up losing this game because it wasn't even back-and-forth hockey.
• Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green was beyond horrible tonight.  This one game tonight probably earned him a two week vacation in February.
• We should note that the Caps did just about everything right for the first 40 minutes.

We don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing but the Caps are once again back to playing only 40 minutes a night and showing a decided lack of killer instinct, especially in the third period.  Once again the Caps take bad penalties late in the game in their offensive zone.  We've been through a stretch like this before already this season and things got worked out.  So there's hope that this is only a temporary hiccup.  But this is becoming a disturbing pattern here.  We're now almost two months into the season and have yet to get this out of our system.  We could understand if the glaring errors were coming from the Hershey crew but instead they were coming from veterans like Green and Captain Chris Clark so simply getting healthy won't solve these problems.