The Caps did not look good tonight against the Stars, at all. I'm really not sure there's anything positive to say about it. There were way too many odd-man rushes and blown defensive assignments. And way too much trouble moving the puck against the Stars physical forecheck.
They were outworked and outhustled, pretty much from the beginning. I count it as more luck than anything that they were tied through two periods. But the wheels sure fell off in the third, when they allowed three goals in the first eight minutes.
Really, the only positive I can think of was that Backstrom's assist on Semin's first period, power play goal was very pretty.
But there wasn't really any sustained offensive pressure in the whole game (well, I guess there might have been in the second half of the third period; I turned the game off immediately after the fifth goal was allowed).
I can't really even say anything about the officiating, either. I thought Semin's penalty in the first was kind of weird, when he was called for tripping for tying up the guy's stick, and having the guy trip over his own stick. But he wasn't whistled for at least three stick penalties later in the game that I thought should have been called, so the Caps definitely came out ahead on those.
MarJo, I suppose, looked pretty good, and Knuble looked good in very limited time (Tarik El-Bashir had a really good profile of Knuble in today's paper, I should mention). But that's pretty much the limit of what I can point to, and those two weren't even great, just better than the rest.
I guess we'll just have to look forward to the weekend, when the Caps have a home-and-home series against the Devils. Hopefully, they can put their heads back together, work harder, and take both games. And maybe Green will be able to play again; that would go a long way towards helping moving play in the right direction.
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