Canes still can't beat Caps

On Wednesday night, the Caps again embarrassed the Canes. They walked away with a 5-1 victory. On Saturday, Carolina didn't put forth any effort, but on Wednesday the story was a little different.

Carolina put 50 shots on net against the second best goaltender on the second worst team in the East. FIFTY! Not 1-5. 5-0. Still, they couldn't score more than one goal.

The game wasn't televised, so I didn't see any of it, but all accounts are that the boys worked hard, but have absolutely nothing to show for it. For like the zillionth game in a row, they were skating shorthanded. Ray Whitney returned to action, but Andrew Ladd went down with his own "upper body injury". That meant that the Canes were still skating with only 17 healthy guys. Doug Weight and Nic Wallin and Bret Hedican should be back any day now. Josef Vacisek will be back on Monday.

I guess the bright side of this injury bug is that we're getting it out of the way now rather than in the first round of the playoffs. At least this current bout. All told, I think the total of man-games lost by the Canes this season is 233. Compare that to Tampa, who has lost something like 42 man-games.

Speaking of Tampa, I will be rooting for Atlanta tonight. We will need them to do the dirty work of defeating Tampa in regulation tonight. That will clinch the division for the Canes.

FIFTY!

The thing about this Caps fiasco is that we still have to play them three more times. Thankfully, our post-season reservations are already set, or they might play the role of spoiler. Actually, I have a really easy solution to our Caps woes. I'll wager against the Canes next time they play. No, I'm not a betting man, but since you mention it, today is the first day of the North Carolina lottery. At least the scratch-off tickets. The real lotto (and the powerball) will start in a couple of months.