Caps 2 Habs 1. No scoring by the Alexes.

Why the heck couldn't we have had that effort against Tampa Bay? Surely this type of play would have resulted in a win against the loser team? Considering it's Washington tonight, the effort tonight wans't quite enough for a win. I've got a serious mental block on how Backstrom got his goal and I have no desire to revist it right now. It wasn't lame though and Semin and Ovechkin picked up assists on it. The seconnd goal came on an defense erorr by the Habs that left Nylander in front of a half open net. That was bad. Brisebois scored for the Habbies in the second period when he ripped a shot at newbie goalie Simeon Varlamov which went through his legs. There was a lot to be happy about though.

• The Caps only won 2-1. Their goals came 10 mins into the first and with just 2 left in the third.
• None of the Alexes scored despite a couple of break aways/ half breakaways by Semin and Ovechkin. Semin did try to murder Halak however when he got a breakaway and ended up flying into the net, taking Halak with him. Thankfully he was okay and they didnt need to put in Denis.
• Halak was good tonight. That effort was a lot better than the mess the other net. He came up with a lot of amazing saves against the Alexes and other people who's names escape me. If he keeps this type of play up then we shouldn't have to worry about losing Price for a while.
• Maxwell seemed to do well from what I could see. He was definitely not terrible.

There was stuff to be unhappy about though:

• Powerplay reaches new level of awfulness. If there was anyone who thought that it was horrid before tonight, there will be no doubts tonight. The Caps got a pile of penalties including Ovechkin who got himself a 4 min one! The Habs promptly did not score and on of the the powerplays it looked like one of the Alexes was going to score on Halak. Halak saved it though. Yay for Halak.
• Kovalev........he seriously needs to score. This is getting really bad right now.
• While we're on the topic of goals, the Habs have been limited to 2 goals in two games. Not cool. Full credit to Varmalov for being fantastic tonight but there were way too many times that the Habs should have been able to put the puck into the back of the net and didn't. Both of those goals have been from Brisebois. All of the people on the team who should be scoring goals, Brisebois isn't the guy. Am I happy he scored? Someone had to do it. But the whole point of having forwards is that they are supposed to score.
• No one can say Ovechkin's name right which is driving me up the wall. AW-VECH-KIN. AW!!!!!!!!!

On a whole it could have been a lot worse for the Habs so we shouldn't whine. The Caps definitely played more aggresively and if it wasn't for all the penalties that they took then the score would have been worse. I'm still not sure what the deal is but I have to wonder how much Carbo's to blame in all of this inconsistant playing. You can't continuely blame the players who are obviously talented but can't seem to get it together for more than three games at a time.

Oh and who's idea was it to play Christmas music as RDS cut to commercials???? Yuuuuck...

Prize for the worst singer at these NHL games who sings the national anthem: The guy who just sang right now in Edmonton in the Oiler/Canucks matchup. It was about as good as Barca's home colours....