This should be interesting...........or not....

Tonight's game between the Washington Capitals and the Habs should prove interesting. Not because both are particularly wonderful right now - if the Habs come out and win three good games in a row then I will say that they are doing well - but because I want to see who can cope the best with having a pile of their players out with injuries. Apparently the Capitals have around nine players out while the Habs could have up to three out. Tanguay is most likely out after getting flattened by Brad Stuart in Detroit, and Kovalev and Josh Gorges could be out as well. No idea what happened to Kovalev but Gorges' knee took a beating trying to stop a shot by Lidstrom.

The one huge problem I see with tonight for the Habs is Ovechkin. The guy has finally woken up and decided that he would like to go back to scoring a pile of goals again. While this is great news if you're a Caps fan, this is of course really bad news for the Habs who need to show that they can play more than one period of good offense. The Habs need to get scoring, and get scoring early, and defintely keep Ovechkin from getting anywhere near the net - although even that isn't a guarantee that he won't score. While I understand the need to put Halak in goals sometimes, I can't help but feel that perhaps this isn't the game to put him in. Why couldn't he have played against the Islanders? And then again against Buffalo? We really could use someone who is really good in nets and I"m not saying that Halak isn't good but there is a reason why Halak is the backup goalie...... Oh well. Let's hope everyone but Ovechkin turns in a great performance.

In other random useless news: I got bored last night so I watched Ottawa play Toronto. Yes, I did. I only caught the last period (like I'm really going to sit through a full 60 mins of that?!) but it was really boring. There is a good reason why both teams are near the bottom. At the time they were 25 and 27 I believe and they played like it. On the NHL website they were saying that the lack of scoring (after both scored in the first 5 mins of the game no one scored again until the shootouts) was due to the good goaltending. I saw a few good saves - especially from Toskala - but I mostly saw two teams that forgot how to hit the puck into the net. There was quite a bit of shots but most of them completely missed the net. I would expect that from Toronto but not from Ottawa's top (only?) offensive line. Oh well. Ottawa won in shootouts which was sad. Heh.

Later... Another first for the season: Habs get blanked 3-0. Is is seriously too much to ask for the Habs to put two consistant games together?!!!! Apparently it is because the offense was no good again tonight. The game looked oddly like the one against Detroit only in reverse. The Caps did a good job of defending and left the Habs' offense not that much room to manoever. That being said, there was some room. There was actually quite a few really good chances in the second period, but the offense could not get it together to put the puck into the back of the net. After the Caps opened up the scoring in the first period after a botched up pass by Boullion near the Habs's net, there was more scoring until the third period when Ovechkin and.... someone else scored - I was attempting to read something in Russian and kind of missed the goal. I was fully expecting the Caps to score at least that many goals but I was not exactly expecting the Habs to not score....

The good - Ovechkin was actually terrible tonight. I honestly thought he would be better tonight but he was limited to one goal in the third period. He missed so many chances it wasn't even funny. Well, actually, it was amusing for me, but yeah.... Considering it's Ovechkin, it was sad.

The bad - The score makes Halak look bad which is completely unfair for him. For some reason everytime he is in nets, the Habs go off and die, making Halak look bad. Halak was the team tonight. Again. I was surprised at how well he did tonight - yeah, okay, so I underestimate him all the time. I'm working on it. He did very well. No beating up on Halak. Oh and speaking of goalies, I don't believe for one second that Theodore should have been given the first star tonight either. He can thank the defense of his team and the stupid Habs for the shutout.

The downright ugly - The Habs' offense. They are obviously very capable of doing well so what's the problem here? I have no idea but something has to be done to get these overpaid guys to work consistantly. Right now I see a team that only comes out and plays well after they've lost a few in a row and the fans and the media starts getting tough on them. So either we have to diss the Habs continually or someone needs to take charge of the team and get them motivated to come out and win because *they* want to do well, not because the fans want them to do well.

The sad part - In essence, the Habs were playing a team that was made of a lot of AHL players with the Caps having to call up a pile of players last night.

The annoying - It's AW-vech-kin!!!!!! AW!!!