Pizza! Pizza!

There was a time when a string of games like the Caps have had would mean my family would be eating nothing but Jerry's Pizza for a week. TANGENT ALERT: I remember once, back at the Capital Centre, we rented a skybox (remember before they were called "luxury suites"?) for my father's birthday. If I remember correctly it was a game against Calgary that proved to be the last game Jim Carey played for the Caps. The Caps scored six goals and all twenty or so people at the party got free pizza coupons and they all gave them to my dad. That was kind of nuts. (EDITOR'S NOTE: It is entirely possible I imagined that story. Carey did, in fact, play his last game as a Cap in a win over Calgary, but it was a 3-2 win.)

Sorry, that was surreal. Moving on...

Fun game to watch, to say the least. Sure, the Senators played last night and they were without two of their star players, but you know what? A good hockey team takes advantage of a chance like that and blows away a team that is in that sort of whole. Which is exactly what the Capitals did. Nineteen shots and two goals in a span of fourty seconds made for an impressive first period, but what really impressed me was the way the Capitals slammed the door. The other night, when I turned the game on during the second intermission and saw the Caps with a 5-3 lead, I didn't feel remotely comfortable about it, given the way the Tampa and Dallas games had gone down. There were no such issues tonight with the Caps uickly answering both Sens goals and nailing down the win with two quick goals from Pettinger and Laich.

On TV, they awarded the "Player of the Game" to the entire Capitals offense, which couldn't have been more appropriate. Clark gets most of the love for his two goals, but I thought that the offensive output was largely due to the fact that Alex Ovechkin was all over the ice. I thought he could have easily ended up with a six or seven point night were it not for Ray Emery's relatively brilliant play. However, Emery himself said that he tends to shade a little bit Ovechkin's way, and it opened up plenty of ice for the rest of the team. (I also thought Alex Semin had one of his best games of the year, though you probably wouldn't be able to tell looking at the scoresheet.)

Special props go out to Matt Bradley. When I saw that Jakub Klepis was a healthy scratch, I was especially disappointed, as Klepis has become one of my favorites. Bradley did a good job of making me forget al about my sorrows pretty quickly. I enjoy watching laser beam top-corner wrist shots like that almost as much as, if not more than, a pretty deke. Good job, Matt.

So, here we are. Four straight. In case you've forgotten, I called it! Okay, maybe not. But at the very least I reverse jinxed the Caps and I am, therefore, solely responsible for their current success. Possibly not. Either way, the team has now won four straight, which, to say the least, is exciting. Surely, there will be fans out there who will claim that the Caps streak is diminished by the fact that three of their wins came at the expense of teams playing for the second of back to back nights. Those people are crazy and should be ignored. The Capitals beat four of the best teams the NHL has to offer to bounce back from a six game losing streak, which means that they are clearly headed for a Stanley Cup Championship this year. (EDITOR'S NOTE: I am crazy and should be ignored.)

(As yet another aside, I'd like to point out to the folks at Comcast SportsNet that the only thing more frustrating than having my cable go out right after Matt Bradley's goal is having to listen to a marginal Redskins wide reciever being interviewed by Al Koken WHILE THE GAME IS IN PROGRESS!)

Recaps From People That Matter:
-A View From the Cheap Seats
-Bleatings From a Caps Nut
-Capital Punishment
-Japers' Rink
-Off Wing Opinion (taken care of by J.P.)
-On Frozen Blog
-The Peerless Prognosticator
-Puckhead's Thoughts
-All-Star Voting (Not a recap, obviously, but things are beginning to get dire.)