Blech

I don't really have much to say about this loss (I know...shocking!) - not a great effort from either team, both of whom showed why they're slumping right now. At the end of the night, someone had to win this one and snap out of the funk, if only temporarily, and tonight the Rags got the 2 points for showing up. The Caps do have a knack for helping teams out of losing streaks, so it wasn't even completely unexpected.

Only a few things stood out as positives tonight - Brash again showed why he is the most feared enforcer in the game, but he also played very well and had some good forechecking moments. Major kudos to Morrisonn for trying to stand up for a teammate as the game drew to a close; feeling like he has been, it showed a lot of character to even try and fight. Ovechkin was flying all over the place, as was Semin - it almost makes you forget the myriad of turnovers they both had. Then again, who didn't turn over the puck?

Other than that, this was just a rough game. No offensive threats to make Lundqvist look even a little bit scared for most of the night, save for a few scoring chances by Ovechkin/Semin and the one pretty goal by Clymer after some sloppy Rangers defense. Bad officiating through and through, with some blatant calls being missed on both teams including the vicious cross-check to the face of Ovechkin. Overall not even a very exciting game, with lots of offsides, dumping and chasing, neutral zone traps...zzzzzz.

It's just a horrible way to end the year, limping out on a four game losing streak with half the team either injured or attached to a toilet in some form or another.

(There's an image for you, right? Special thanks to Tarik for the description of what specifically was ailing the boys...)

At least the crazy portion of the Caps schedule is now complete. It didn't go quite the way any of us would have wanted it to, but they hung in there in most of the games and at least made a good show of it. There's no way to be entirely optimistic, of course - with each loss the Caps fall further in the standings and are now exactly at .500 for the season.

But being the silver-lining gal that I am, look at it this way - we're still not yet halfway through the season and we've seen how quickly things can flip in this conference. You string a couple of wins together and you're sitting in 5th place, you drop a few and you're in 13th. The bottom line is that the teams in the conference, top to bottom with few exceptions, are so evenly matched that this is going to go right down to the wire.