Caps @ Maple Thug Leafs 12-12-2009 Post-Mortem

Well, that stunk...  Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• A.O. with a three point effort, one goal and two assists.  He now has 37 points on the season and is now 17 points away from tying St. Calle Johansson for 7th on the Caps All-Time Scoring List with 474.
• Normally known for his passing ability, Nicklas Backstrom with two goals tonight.
• Alexander "Slappy" Semin may have registered only a single assist tonight, but he was the only Cap to finish with a plus rating tonight.

THE BAD:

• Blowing a 2-0 lead on the road.
• While the Power Play went 1 for 3, it once again gave up a shorthanded goal.
• The Penalty Killers were 2 for 4 tonight and a big fat Thank You to Craig Laughlin for mentioning that the Caps had not given up a 5 on 3 goal this season, until tonight.

THE UGLY:

• While Slappy misfired on a number of chances himself, Brendan Morrrissonn missed a wide open net that could have really put this game away early.  This is the third prime chance he's blown in the past three games.
• Many Caps fans love to beat up on Jose "Alvin, Simon," Theodore for not playing well, but tonight they got a good look at a goaltender not playing well as Michal "Bebe" Neuvirth laid a total egg tonight.  Absolutely no big saves and a few goals he just should not have given up while allowing six on 36 shots.

Well folks, we kind of saw this coming.  We knew that the Caps wouldn't have enough energy to get through a 60 minute game and as the night wore on, you could see the Caps energy level dropping.  Had they scored the third goal of the game to take a 3-0 lead, maybe tonight would have turned out differently but probably not considering the goaltending we got after getting a 2-0 lead.  And lets give Vesa Toskala credit, after getting burned early, he got into a serious groove and kept his team from falling further behind by coming up with glove save after glove save.  We were wondering when the Caps would stop shooting at that glove.  The good news for the Caps is that while they are out on the road all of next week the schedule eases up as they have just five games in the next 15 days.  They should get plenty of rest to get their legs back under them.