by: Randy "Rock" Johnson

JohnWaltonHockey.com

The Washington Capitals rolled into RBC Center for last night’s game with the Carolina Hurricanes hoping for their third victory in a row. The Hurricanes, meanwhile, came into the game locked in a serious dogfight for the remaining handful of spots in the Eastern Conference, and a win for them would inch them closer towards clinching one of those spots. Somebody would be going home disappointed.

Unfortunately for Caps Nation, it wasn’t Carolina.

Led by outstanding goaltending by Cam Ward and Rod Brind’Amour’s thirteenth goal of the season, the Hurricanes prevailed over the Capitals by a 4-1 margin. The win moved Carolina into sixth place in the conference, one point behind the fifth-place Pittsburgh Penguins. To illustrate how tight the playoff race is, just five points separate the Hurricanes and the ninth-place Florida Panthers.

The Capitals still occupy the third spot in the East, one point behind the New Jersey Devils, with the Devils still having three games in hand.

There was no scoring until Brind’Amour’s goal at 3:53 of the second period. Sergei Samsonov beat Caps’ defenseman Mike Green to a puck in the corner to the left of Goalie Jose Theodore. He tipped the puck to Jussi Jokinen, who fed Brind’Amour for the 1-0 lead.

The Caps tied the game at 1-1 in the second period’s final minute, and the goal was a shining example of what happens when teams get pucks to the net. From the left-wing side of ‘Canes zone, Nicklas Backstrom merely dumped the puck towards the net. Cam Ward deflected the puck away from the net and, unfortunately for him, right into the face-off circle to his left. The last guy you want to leave a juicy rebound for, especially when he can step into the shot in stride, is Mike Green, who blasted a shot past Ward to tie the game. The goal was Green’s 28th of the season, and leaves him just two short of the thirty-goal mark. If he gets thirty, he would be the first defenseman to do so since Washington’s Kevin Hatcher scored thirty-four in the 1992-93 season.

Carolina killed of a Brind’Amour hooking penalty early in the third, and took the lead just fourteen seconds after Brind’Amour returned to the ice. Jose Theodore had trouble controlling the rebound of an Erik Staal shot, and Carolina defenseman Joni Pitkanen swooped in, picked up the puck, crossed in front of a prone Theodore, and buried a backhander to make the score 2-1.

Anton Babchuk made the score 3-1 when he buried the rebound of his own deflection past Theodore at 13:43. Defenseman Dennis Seidenberg picked up the puck at the left point and fired the puck towards the net. Caps defenseman Shaone Morrisonn was late in picking up Babchuk at the point of the deflection and, once he arrived, failed to stop, giving Babchuk time to score.

With Brind’Amour in the penalty box for boarding Alex Ovechkin, Carolina defenseman Joe Corvo scored an empty-net shorthanded goal to round out the scoring.

As has happened before, the Caps were done in by mistakes in their own end. Green has to make a stronger play to than what he did in allowing himself to be beaten to the puck by Samsonov on Carolina’s first goal. On the third Carolina goal, Babchuk cannot be allowed to not only have a free deflection attempt on Theodore but also a crack at his own rebound without being knocked on his can by someone in a Caps’ sweater. Mistakes like these can turn around a playoff series. The Caps will need to be smarter in their own end if they hope to make a deep playoff run.

CAP-SERVATIONS---Defenseman Milan Jurcina was the odd-man out in the game of musical chairs being played on the Caps’ blueline as John Erskine returned to the lineup after a one-game absence…The Caps need five wins in their final eight games to hit the fifty win mark for only the second time in franchise history. The Caps won an even fifty games in the 1985-86 season before falling to the New York Rangers in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs…Comcast Sportsnet reported that Caps’ forward Quintin Laing will remain hospitalized in Tampa until Monday following the spleen injury he suffered in Thursday’s game against the Lightning. Fortunately, he will not need surgery.

WHAT’S ON CAP---Tuesday, at Toronto; Friday, VS Tampa Bay. All games televised on CSN-DC.

Until next time…