Where are we now?

I previously mentioned that I spent two weeks in Hong Kong. I wasn't able to watch any games while I was there (heck, I even missed the Super Bowl. Forgot about it, actually, despite being reminded a day or two before); heck, their play before leaving didn't exactly inspire me to try GameCenter Live or look for illicit streams.

But I did still check on the stats of the games... well, at least the scores; I only looked at the full box score once or twice. Man, was it depressing.

We did get back just in time (technically, a few minutes late, but the DVR was still running) for the Caps/Cats matchup on Saturday. Despite not sleeping on the plane (16 hrs of flight. ugh), I still managed to stay awake to watch it.

The fact that the Caps were kicking butt (and getting a bit of puck luck) certainly helped with the staying awake part. I don't really remember a whole lot, beyond Perreault having a good game and the team generally getting all the breaks. No complaints (to be clear, without the luck, it probably would have been a 3-1 game, rather than 5-0; the team was still doing a lot of things right and Florida wasn't).

I had to watch Tuesday's game against Florida as well, of course, though I might remember even less of it. It certainly amazed me that they came back from being two goals down; nice to get that kind of surprise, for once. My hazy recollection has them playing well for most of the game, with some terrible puck luck (what are the odds Erskine would deflect TWO shots into his own goal?). I do remember thinking that Holtby had actually had a pretty decent game, despite all those goals. There was some fluky stuff in there (although at least one fluke, Florida managing to not get a shot on goal on a 4-on-1 (those exist?!?) did go the Caps' way).

Thursday's game was excellent, though. They came at Tampa hard, took it to them, and dominated the game solidly (well, except for a five minute stretch of the third, where they had some breakdowns). Perreault again looked excellent, with some very nice assists (although what that left defenseman thought he was doing on the last goal is an interesting question). Fehr, finishing two of those assists also looked very good. OV looked good, mostly avoiding trying to do too much. And I loved the shot differential for the team as a whole.

You'll notice I haven't talked about Brouwer or Ribeiro, who have both been excellent for the whole season. Brouwer tried to get his third consecutive game-winning goal, but had to settle for just having the first. Ribeiro continued his trend of getting whacked in the face with a stick, and the other guy not getting a penalty.  It's really irritating (more so for him, I'm sure).

Anyway, that's about enough for now.  Now that I'm caught up, hopefully I can write a little more constructively when I'm only writing about one game.  And hopefully I can get started writing about the trip, which was great.