Caps-Oilers Live

It's Tuesday night at Verizon Center, regular crowd shufflin' in... Ooops, wrong number. The Billy Joel concert's another day.

Anyway, as expected, Jose Theodore and Dwayne Roloson are in net.

It's time to play the game!

First Period
The Caps came out with a purpose and it showed by the heavy shots on goal tally. However, it didn't translate into any goals. But they did have plenty of chances. The Oilers didn't get their first shot in the first 3:30 minutes or so.

Ovechkin was stoned point blank about four minutes in, which was followed by a delay due to some repairs to the hinges that support the glass near where Theodore was standing.

Despite the shot disadvantage, the Oilers struck at 12:59. Steve MacIntyre netted his first career goal with a slap shot from just inside the blue line with heavy screening in front of Theo. Just 1:11 later, with Edmonton on the power play, Sheldon Souray uncorked one of his trademark slappers, which Theo couldn't stop and Eric Cole was there to knock in the rebound (his ninth of the year) at 14:10. Dustin Penner was standing there too.

The Caps got a two-man advantage at 19:16 but couldn't score. In fact, despite 19 shots, the red, white and blue just doesn't look right. They were aggressive and shot a lot, but they seemed to be out of sync (if that's possible). We'll see what happens as the game unfolds.

After one: Oilers 2, Caps 0.

Second Period
Bad turned to worse when the Oilers scored at , after the Caps had 1:16 of power play time to start the period. During that extra-man advantage, the Caps looked like they were sleep walking with everybody shooting from the outside without anybody parked in front of the net. There didn't even seem to be the proper personnel on the ice to accomplish that feat.

The Oilers took a 3-0 advantage at 2:15 when Jeff Brodniak passed through a massive seam to Gilbert "Creme" Brulet, who put it past a helpless Theodore. The reason Brulet was so open was because Milan Jurcina was out of position (again) and actually collided with Donald Brasher, who was trying to get back on defense. Another gaffe on Jurcina's resume. Alzner had taken Brodziak properly, but got no help.

Not too much later, Tomas Fleischmann shifted the momentum back to the home team. After getting a feed from Mike Green, Flash did his best Alex Semin impression (half the number, not half the skills) with some nifty stick work to pull the Caps within two. The play yielded Green's 100th point.

That energized the Caps, who deftly killed off a four-minute high sticking penalty on Fleischmann (ironically) but couldn't get closer.

At 19:37, Alzner got a delay of game penalty -- his first two PIMs of his career (in his 22nd game). Not too shabby.

After two: Oilers 3, Caps 1.

Third Period
It was more of the same: sluggish play by the Caps, stupid penalties, bad play by Jurcina and the Oilers playing their hearts out. The Caps better get used to receiving their opponents' best effort every night and step up their game accordingly. If they continue to throw out the duds of their last two home games, it's going to get ugly really, really fast.

To reinforce that point, Brodziak scored his eighth of the season at 3:19 when, you guessed it, Theodore was screened and had no shot at stopping the puck. At that point, Boudreau put Ovechkin with Sergei Fedorov and Viktor Kozlov and moved Brooks Laich to play with Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Semin.

The Caps made it interesting off a goal by Green (his 11th) with a great wrister with Nylander parked in front of the net. Semin got the assist.

The Oilers took a timeout with 2:22 left. Semin was trying to be too cute all night, and had a golden opportunity in the final minutes but fell victim to that urge once again. The Oilers got the empty-netter with just under a minute left to ice it.

The Caps pulled Theo late, but it wasn't enough. The Caps lost their second consecutive home game to a Western Conference opponent.

Final: Oilers 5, Caps 2.