Caps vs. Stars 3-8-2010 Wrap Up

Caps "Magic Numbers" (Caps Points Earned+Lost by team named) to clinch:
Playoff Spot: 4 Tampa Bay (3 of 7 eliminated)
Southeast Division Championship: 5 Atlanta (1 of 4 eliminated)
Eastern Conference #1 Seed: 19 Pittsburgh (3 of 14 eliminated)
President's Trophy: 30 San Jose (5 of 29 eliminated)

The Local Yokels:

(Com)Post.  Examiner.  Caps.com.

The Neutral Observers:

NHL.com.  AP Wire.

The Other Side:

Dallas Morning News: Turco's night, building something.

Final Thoughts:

The frustrating thing about games decided by a gimmick is that they often give you a skewed result.  The Caps certainly didn't deserve to lose that game last night but didn't deserve to win it either.  For most of the game the Caps were once again playing just well enough to get the win.  After a poor start, when Dallas stepped up their game in the second period, the Caps responded.  The Caps responded again when Dallas took the lead in the third period.  But what troubled us after watching the Caps grind out three wins last week was that last night all three goals the Caps scored came from distance.  Very little digging around the net and scoring dirty goals.  Even when the Caps were mounting their comeback and trying to win the game in regulation, the shots came from distance and there wasn't much traffic in front of Marty Turco.  Turco played a great game for the Stars but the Caps didn't make him work as hard as they could have.  As for Semyon "The Saviour" Varlamov, now you're seeing why we haven't been totally sold on the kid.  Mostly because he's still a kid.  This is his third straight sub-par performance since returning from his injuries and time is running out for him to regain his form.  We noticed that Dallas started going upstairs on him because he was going down early which is correctable but agin time is running out here.  Finally, with a big game coming up on Sunday, it is good see the top line start to roll again.

66 down, 16 to go.