Skidding

I really don't have a whole lot to say about last night's rather debacular game against the Rangers.  The Caps just did not play a good game.  They had a few good power play opportunities, and they had one other strong shift in the offensive zone, but there was very little sustained pressure.

They did keep the game scoreless through the first, and the first was reasonably even.  But the wheels fell off in the second.  The only thing that kept the score from being worse than it was was that Holtby played a very good game (well, that and the two posts the Rangers hit).  Unfortunately, Lundqvist had an even better one.  I knew he'd come back, but was hoping it wouldn't be quite so soon.

And the third period was not much of an improvement.  They didn't get pounded by quite as many shots, but only putting up eight shots when down two is really terrible.

The only good news is that the breakout was much better in this game.  It didn't stall out nearly as much.  Oh, and Schmidt looked quite good.  If he keeps playing as well as he did last night (I know, that's not likely), he can take over for Erskine today.

I'm really having trouble putting my finger on why they looked so bad, though.  It wasn't really one thing, consistently.  At least, not that I noticed.  But very little was working.

And wow, just looked at the fenwick/corsi totals from the game.  It was butt-ugly (not terribly surprising, I guess).  Even in the twenty-six minutes played down two goals, there was little to no catchup.

I don't really know what happened; they didn't come ready to play, or something.

Let's hope Saturday's game against the Blue Jackets goes a bit better.