Friday, Bloody Friday

Oh, man.

I had this sense of impending doom going into tonight's game. Really - I knew that if the Caps pulled off a win it would be well-earned but unlikely. Still, even with my finely honed sense of intuition there was no way I could have seen this catastrophe coming.

7-1. That just hurts.

What hurts more is the way it happened - in bunches, on the power play, via odd-man rushes, after the goalie mishandled the puck, when the defense just gave up halfway down the ice...I could go on, but what's the point? They lost, they didn't show up, game over. So much for the Caps picking up any momentum from Wednesday's big finish.

I'm not sure what makes me more bitter - the fact that they lost so badly or that they lost so badly to the Maple Leafs. As a Habs fan, can I just say BLECH!

By the way, can I get some support for a movement to have the second period permanently removed from all future Caps games? They always seem to have a game in hand or to still be hanging in there after the first, and then, especially over the last few games, they've absolutely crumbled. All of a sudden the defensemen forget how to position themselves, the penalty kill sputters, the offense disappears - just like that it's 6-1 and you're out of a game 2/3 of the way through.

There's not enough space to do the bad portion of the good/bad breakdown and there was little or no good...but I can't go to bed angry. Instead, let's take a look at how it could have been worse:
- The Leafs could have scored 8 goals. That would have been worse, right?
- Raycroft wasn't given a shutout...yay, one goal!

Ummm...nope, that's all I got. It was pretty bad.

The Caps have now dropped five straight and have seemed to play progressively worse in each game over that stretch (with the exception of the Boston overtime loss last weekend). It doesn't get any easier for the Caps, either - next up is a suddenly competitive Islanders team, followed by the Lightning, the Stars and Buffalo. Not a good time to hit a rough patch - I hope Hanlon has some magic up his sleeve or this could get really ugly really quickly.