Caps 2 - Canes 0

On Saturday night, the Hurricanes failed to show even 1/5 the intensity they had on Friday night. Coupled with some solid play by the home team Capitals, it resulted in a 2-0 loss.
This is just "one of those games". Crackers did everything he could, but the fellas in front of him weren't helping out. In fact, in the first period, the Hurricanes only managed to register two shots on goal.
Alexander Ovechkin got the Caps on the board at 14:24 of the first with a wrister from the slot. Viktor Kozlov and John Erskine assisted. As Kozlov came in on the right wing, it was pretty clear what was going to happen next, and AO made no mistake beating Grahame high on the blocker side. Sadly, it would turn out to be the game winner.

At 5:00 of the second, Milan Jurcina scored a power play goal which was assisted by Alexander Semin and Nicklas Backstrom.

The Hurricanes got nine shots in the second, but few of them were worth noting. Actually, only one. Trevor Letowski had a fantastic shorthanded breakaway chance, but he softly shot a wrist shot into Kolzig's chest. It doesn't count as a shot on goal, but Chad LaRose had a shot bang off the right post.

In the third, there was no scoring. Carolina got 12 shots to finish with an unimpressive 23. Meanwhile, Washington was limited to 4 shots in the final frame, totaling 33 for the game.

Crackers made some very nice saves, especially a couple of robberies against Ovechkin. Without his good play, the Caps might have won 12-0. Unfortunately, he was left to dry. As a goaltender, you can't win any games when your team doesn't give you any run support. As a team you can't win games if you don't take any shots on goal.

This is one of those games that you hope they just put behind them immediately. Forget about it and move on to the next game Tuesday in Toronto.

The Canes just started their annual two-and-a-half week road swing while the North Carolina State Fair is in town. The fairgrounds are adjacent to the RBC Center, and they learned the hard way not to schedule home games during the fair.

Next home game is Monday October 22, when Roberto Luongo, Markus Naslund, the Sedinbots and the rest of the Canucks come to town for the first time since 2003-04.

Tonight's "official" three stars went to Viktor Kozlov (third), Alexander Ovechkin (second) and Olaf Kolzig (first). I don't really agree with this. I don't think Grahame's hard work should go unnoticed, I don't think Kolzig had to work that hard to earn the shutout, and I don't think Ovechkin's overall effort was given enough credit. I see it a little differently. The RBH three stars:

THIRD STAR: John Grahame, CAR --- 31 saves
SECOND STAR: Olaf Kolzig, WAS --- 23 saves, win, shutout
FIRST STAR: Alexander Ovechkin, WAS --- GWG, 6 SOG, 4 hits, 3 takeaways, 3 blocked shots