Caps @ Canadiens 2-10-2010 Post-Mortem

All good things must come to an end...  Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• It took the NHL's highest scoring team 59 games to register a hat trick.  Now the Caps have hat tricks in back-to-back games as Brooks "and Dunn" Laich turned the trick tonight for his first career hat trick.
• The selfish, cherry-picking, defensive zone slouch, Captain A.O. with two more assists tonight to run his season total to 46, good for 5th overall in the NHL.  He now has 88 points on the season, 10 better than his next closest competitor, Henrik Sedin.
• By virtue of the Bettman Point and San Jose's 3-0 loss in Columbus, the Caps now have a two point lead on San Jose for the best overall record in the NHL.  Should they end up tied, the Caps currently own the first tiebreaker with the Sharks (overall wins).

THE BAD:

• Our top ranked Power Play went 1 for 7 tonight.  Too many chances left on the table.
• The Caps have been living dangerously with the shots on goal allowed and tonight were once again outshot, 39-38.  But the back-breaker was giving up 17 shots in the second period.

THE UGLY:

• The second line of Tomas Fleischmann, Alexander "Slappy" Semin, and Laich along with Tom Poti and John "Coach's Pet" Erskine Bowles were on the ice for goals allowed in the first minute of both the first and second periods.  Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on Bruce Boudreau for putting them back out there.  Laich was an even player for tonight, Slappy a -1, and the rest were all -2.
• While the Penalty Killers were a respectable 4 for 5, it is still too many penalties to be taking against the second best Power Play.  Especially two calls in the third period when you're trying to mount a comeback from three goals down.

What Caps fan could forget Game 7 in 2008 when Shaone Morrrissonnn got checked into Cristobal Huet  knocking Huet down and leaving a wide open net for Sami Kapanen to shoot into and stake the Flyers to a 2-1 lead?  The NHL insisted up and down the street that the proper call was made in that game because Morrrissonnn had been the puck carrier when he was checked into his own goaltender.  Well, when Captain A.O. checked Hal Gill and the puck he was trying to play into Carey Price and the puck gets past Price into the goal, it wasn't allowed tonight because of incidental contact goaltender interference.  And you people wonder why we call it the NHL Suggestion Book.  And for those of you who like to laugh at the KoOkY KoNsPiRaCy ThEoRiSt, could you please explain how these calls keep going against us?  To bust out another saying, "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action" and this is the third time we've seen this call go against us.  Yeah, the Caps luck finally ran out.  The poor play in their own zone cost them because there's no excuse for allowing 17 shots in a period or goals twice within the first minutes of a period.  But one has to wonder, especially after the phantom slash on Sunday, was the officiating tonight the extra nudge needed to bring the streak to an end?  We have to admit, there aren't very many ways the streak could end that would leave us happy but there's a rather bitter taste in our mouths right now because it certainly could have continued in spite of the poor play tonight.