Caps @ Panthers 3-16-2010 Post-Mortem

Imagine if we had Captain A.O....  Onto the Battle Damage Assessment...

THE GOOD:

• 13 of 18 skaters registered a point tonight.  Brendan Morrrissonn and Brooks "and Dunn" Laich lead the way with 3 points each.  And we should note that neither of those guys were under serious consideration to play in the Vancouver Olympics.
• The nominal third line was anything but a checking trio tonight as Morrrissonn, Eric B. Fehr, and Jason Chimera were the best line for the Caps tonight.  Bruce Boudreau better not break them up or scratch Eric B. Fehr again.
• 7 goals scored, a goaltender chased and only one of the seven goals came from as far away as the hash marks tonight.  Once again, these are the types of goals the Caps are going to have to score to succeed in the playoffs.  Laich took an absolute pounding to get the PAT tonight.
• And with the rout, only Mike "BEAM ME UP" Green and Joe Scorvo played over 20 minutes tonight.  Good job by Boudreau to roll the lines and play everybody.  There's only two more games left on the road trip and in the every other night run so any additional rest is a bonus.
• The Power Play was officially 2 for 4.  One of the missed Power Plays was a 3 second Power Play.  The Penalty Killers were 3 for 3 with a 3 second Penalty Kill.  But with our road Penalty Killing numbers, we'll take it.

THE BAD:

• While Florida doesn't have the firepower to run and gun with the Caps, the Caps were still too loose and left Jose "Alvin, Simon," Theodore out to dry.  He gave up three goals tonight but none were really his fault because the Caps really weren't clearing the crease and tightening things up as much as they should have.  The 37 shots on goal against is testament to this fact.
• Tyler Sloan is just a younger, somewhat cheaper version of John "Coach's Pet" Erskine Bowles and he certainly played like it tonight, getting blown by on a number of occasions.

THE UGLY:

• Greg Campbell  (looks too much like his father...)

Photo from NHL.com
• With his kneeing penalty in the second period, we're setting the over/under on Green's suspension at 5 games. He is after all, a repeat offender...
  

Ok folks, we soundly beat a team we should soundly beat even without our best player available to us. Hades, this is the fourth time this year we've done it.  What concerns us about games like this is that bad habits start to creep in as we saw during the 14 game winning streak earlier this year.  The Caps kept going for the stretch passes up the ice even when they were covered and as previously mentioned, abandoned Theodore way too much and didn't protect the crease with a large lead.  But we are pleased with the overall effort.  If the Panthers aren't going to the play with the desperation they need to make the playoffs, the Caps had to bury them and that's exactly what they did tonight.  This should be a confidence boost for some of the players who were struggling a little bit recently as well.  The Caps are going to need all hands on deck to win it all this year and it is nice to see the Caps not struggling the way they did at this point last year too.

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