Thomas Stands Tall

Caps tonight were totally Jekyll and Hyde. My DVR screwed up recording, somehow, so I missed about half of the first period, but Hyde was playing the first. They were just getting worked. Not a whole lot of shots against, but not too much possession for the team. And they still allowed a third goal in that second half of the first. Yeah, I missed two goals against. *sigh*

The second period went quite a bit better. They had slightly the better of the play, but were only able to put one in the net.

The third marked the return of Jekyll, and was perhaps the best period of hockey I've seen from the Caps. They set the team all-time record for shots in a period with twenty-six, but still only lit the lamp once. But at least we didn't have a second period with two shots allowed and two goals; neither of the two shots found the back of the net.

It was really amazing that the first and third periods were played by the same team. Really. They looked so bad after the first that with them down by three, I almost didn't bother to watch the last two periods.

There really wasn't much to say about special teams; the Caps had the only power play, but were unable to convert it.

Other than that? Once again, the Caps had a sizeable lead in giveaways for the night, but at least takeaways were even. They did have a ten percent advantage in faceoffs, which was a nice change.

They did stop sending MarJo to take faceoffs. I love the kid, but he does need to get better at that. Oddly, Perrault was a scratch, but Beagle was in. Not sure what to make of that, but it certainly doesn't bode well for Matty P.

Knuble was mostly on the second line in the third, with Fehr and A. Gordon taking turns in his spot on the top line. That actually didn't seem to work too badly, although I wouldn't expect it to continue too much.

Neuvy was pretty good for the portion of the game that I saw; in fact, he had at least three great saves in that time. Unfortunately, it appears that he wasn't too good before that.

Congrats to Bradley and Alzner on the goals; Bradley was player of the game for his goal.

You have to think they'll start finding the net soon; the Caps have been really peppering the nets without finding them. We knew there'd be some regression to the mean for their incredible scoring percentage last year, but this is just rude. They're still right around 4% scoring for the streak. Still no wins since the first of the month. Not just out of overall lead, and out of conference lead, but lost the Southeast lead as well, tonight.

Not long to wait to find out, though. Visiting the Senators tomorrow night; hopefully results will improve along with the play.