Caps vs. Panthers 12-3-2009 Post-Mortem

Eh, who needs A.O.???  Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• Welcome back Alexander "Slappy" Semin.  The old Chuck Woolery (that's 2 and 2 for those of you who don't remember) for Slappy tonight and best of all, no 2 minute minors either.  Not bad for his return to action.
  
• Brendan Morrrissonn with a goal and two assists of his own.  We think it is safe to say that he has done well as a replacement for Sergei (#3) Fedorov.
• The Penalty Killing which has not been very good this season pitched a 5 for 5 shutout tonight.  Matt "Omar" Bradley got the team's first shorthanded goal of the year as on a couple of occasions, it looked as if the Caps were on the Power Play, not Florida.  As a matter of fact, the Caps had 5 shots on goal shorthanded and Florida had only 8 shots on goal on the Power Play tonight.
  
• And when the Caps were on the Power Play themselves, they did rather well tonight.  3 for 12 with the man advantage and 13 shots on goal.  Both 5 on 3's were converted too in only 26 seconds.
• Scott Clemmensen probably doesn't want to return to D.C. anytime soon.  He was chased from the net after just 12 minutes in the first period and has now given up 7 goals in his last 32 minutes at the Phone Booth.

THE BAD:

• We understand why it happens from time to time but the force feeding of David "Bolt Cutter" Steckel was really unnecessary.  We play Tampa on Monday night.

THE UGLY:

• Well folks we happen to think that the NHL will be informing Mike Duco that he will be having a seat in the press box for the next 10 games and fined $10,000.  It looked to us as if Duco came off the bench to start a fight with Alexandre Giroux and the penalties assessed to Duco lead us to believe that Kerry Fraser and Wes McCauley felt the same way.  Before you get any ideas about us being snarky again, the suspension and fine is automatic under Suggestion 70.10.  Furthermore under Suggestion 70.10, Panthers Head Coach Peter DeBoer will be brought before Gary Bettman for a review and possible suspension and fine as well.
• Some people just can't keep their big traps shut and the Caps had trouble closing out another game as Semyon "The Saviour" Varlamov was denied his second consecutive shutout on home ice.  If you don't already know, you never say shutout until the shutout is complete.
  
• Dmitry Kulikov:
  
  
  
  
  Photo from Panthers.com
  
  
  
  

Well folks, lets face it, the Caps played a tired team tonight and did what they had to do in order to win.  But the key part to us was that after taking a 2-0 lead on 18 shots in the first period tonight, the Caps were able to weather Florida's storm to the start the second period and Bradley's shorthanded goal staked the Caps to a 3-0 lead.  Had Florida cut into the 2-0 deficit, the game would have been a lot closer.  We like that the Caps didn't let up for the most part, they did after all ring up 6 goals on 44 shots, without totally running up the score but the big finish still isn't there yet as this should have been another shutout.  While this game was never in doubt after the Bradley goal, the Caps have to take advantage of teams that want to make things very comfortable for them.

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