Gimme a Break

I'm ready for the All Star break.

Really. Bring it on.

Because if I have to sit through one more game like the one this afternoon, my head is going to explode. The score might not have been as bad as last weekend's, the shots against might not have been quite as high, but it was still ugly.

I'm not even counting the first period, which was so penalty-filled it was hard to tell how either team looked. You can't even really blame the refs - that was just a pure case of two teams being completely lazy and undisciplined. But the Caps still seemed to be playing fairly well in between trips to the sin bin, and they even capitalized on a two-man advantage to take the 1-0 lead. I doubt I was alone in thinking they would go into the locker room, get a little scolding about discipline, and come back out for a solid forty minutes to pick up two points.

I thought wrong.

They just stopped skating after that. Gone was that storied work ethic, back again were the lazy passes and bad turnovers, odd-man breaks and long stretches in the defensive zone. The second period was horrible; the third period was even worse. There were times when even I was tempted to change the channel.

I didn't, of course, but the thought crossed my mind...

There were only a few bright spots in this game - the play of Olie Kolzig, which was the only reason the game even seemed as close as the scoreboard made it seem, Matt Pettinger's diving poke check during a Florida odd-man rush, and the penalty killing (also known as Olie Kolzig). To everything else, I have only this to say: PPPPBBBBBBBBTTT.

So bring on the All Star festivities. I know everyone says you don't want to go into a break like this on a loss, but I think it's a good way to go. No need to give the Caps the idea that they've actually been playing well lately, to occupy their minds with happy thoughts over the next 5 days - let this game sink in and really fester. Let them take the many, many, many problems from this afternoon and learn from them. And we need something happy to focus on for the next couple of days. Ovechkin and Green will do us proud, and who knows - the games might actually be entertaining. Stranger things could happen, right?

After all, they couldn't be much worse than this one.