Lightning win 3-1 *dies a horrible death*

To sum it up in one word: Abysmal. I'm sure there were moments that weren't awful. I just missed most of them.

Carbo's got quite the list of embarassing games going on now. Funny enough - or maybe not - these games all involve the Habs playing loser teams. There's something going on with the Habbies and their inability to string a few really good performances together. I don't know exactly what's going on with that but I have a suspicion that it may involve letting the opposing team's ranking or reputation affect them. Take for example that little debacle in Toronto. The last time the Habs beat them 6-1. Easy. Then whoops, they come out and play like crap and they get beaten 6-3. They follow that up with a shutout against Ottawa which was then followed up with a horrendous display of hockey against Boston who they had routinely beat last year. Bi-polar tendancies? I was just getting started. After beating the defending Stanley Cup champions 3-1, the Habs then lose 3-0 to an AHL filled Capitals team. It goes on and on and on...The Habs need to stop letting the rank and reputation of the other team affect them and they need to just get out there and play their game. I think it was Josh Gorges who said before the game that they needed to just stick to their game plan. Well, I'll bet you anything that losing like that was not part of the game plan.

First period. I sincerely hope that this is not a sign of how the rest of the game is going to go. After Brisebois scored about five or so minutes in - on a power play I may add, just to make things sound better than they are - it was all Lightning for the rest of the period. Martin St Louis and Vincent Lacavalier scored on Halak while the Habs snoozed. St. Louis's goal in particular was unbeliveably stupid because he was pratically going at Halak alone while everyone else was in another city. It was back to playing stupid with Halak in nets while the Lightning clearly were trying a heck of a lot harder. The Habs did exactly what I thought they would do tonight and that was to take the Lightning lightly and the result is now a 2-1 lead for the stupid bottom ranked team. I hope they wake up soon and get scoring. The good news at least is the Lightning held a 2-0 lead on the Sabres then other night and they ended up losing 4-2. As we're in theory supposed to be better than the Lightning..... we should be able to pull out of this and win. If we
wake the heck up.

Second period. Well, that sucked big time. Not only can the Habs not score on the powerplay they give up goals on their powerplays. A huge mistake by the defense allowed St. Louis to grab the puck and get a breakaway and promptly scored. I'm beginning to despair at how badly the Habbies are being tonight. As they say, it's not over 'till it's over or some grammatically incorrect form of that...

Third. Now it's over. 3-1 for the Lightning. Oh boy, I really don't want to read the papers tomorrow... I missed the last six minutes because my dogs insisted that I remove myself from the TV but from the 14 mins that I did see, it was terrible. The Lightning completely shut down the Habs who just couldn't keep it together and out of their own zone. The Habs made a lot of stupid errors that gave the puck to the Lightning.

The whole game from start to finish was terrible except for that one goal on the powerplay which was beautiful. The rest was ugly. Everything from the gazillion penalties to the dozens of fights that kept breaking out to the stupid officials who were completely blind tonight to the idiots who can't properly report on what time the game starts (luckily I was feeling really lazy last night and turned on the TV at 7 instead of 7:30 like the game was supposedly going to start at). Again, I can't help but feel totally bad for Halak right now. He's a good goalie. He deserves a much better effort in front of him than what he got. Okay, so maybe he wasn't as good tonight as he was against the Flames but honestly, what are you supposed to do when a guy gets a breakaway like that?

The Habs went into this thinking that they could come away with an easy win and instead they got handed a 3-1 loss that was completely preventable. Ick. I think the Habs were hurting too with the losses of Komisarek, Dandenault and Higgins tonight. The defense was pretty icky tonight. The offense was not very good either though they did create a few good chances (unfortunately, a few chances wasn't good enough). And apparently Koivu will possibly be out now too with some injury. I would say we're borderlined doomed at this point but then again... what do I know about this game? I do know that with three people named Alex (didn't you know that they pulled up a guy called Alexandre Giroux and he scored against Boston?) scoring goals for the Capitals like crazy, I'm seriously concerned about how things are going to go Saturday. Forget Saturday, the Habs could be in serious trouble right now with possibly four of their good players out.

In complete contrast, the Penguins beat the Islanders 9-2. See? That's how you beat losers. I love you Pittsburgh.... kinda... though I still wish that the Habs could have borrowed a couple of those....