A Quiet Caps Weekend

The Caps are enjoying a quiet weekend after beating Tampa, 5-3, Friday night. Since the team does not play again until Wednesday, the red, white and blue sent Keith Aucoin, Oskar Osala and Simeon Varlamov to the Hershey Bears. Presumably a goalie will be recalled in time for the Islanders tilt unless Brent Johnson is somehow ready (which I doubt).

The Bears (47-19-1-6, 101 points) have won seven of eight and host the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins tonight at Giant Center. The Caps' AHL affiliate already has clinched a playoff spot and boast a five-point lead (with one game in hand) on the second-place Bridgeport Sound Tigers in the East Division.

Other than the well-publicized Brian Pothier goal (which was one of the best moments of the year), the Caps stuck to their system and played 40-plus minutes of good hockey against Tampa. Unfortunately, they also languished around too much in the second stanza.

"I think we just stopped playing our game. We play very cute. We have chance to shoot, we didn't shoot," Alex Ovechkin said. "We give them recovery time to come back and they're great players and they come back and [Brian] Pothier scored a goal and wins game."

"Yeah, the passion was off," Coach Bruce Boudreau added. "We got six games left. I think they see the light at the end of the tunnel. But that team [Lightning] played very hard tonight. They wanted to win so bad. Their forwards are really good. They got some top notch forwards and we had to play very hard just to beat them."

While the Caps (99 points) are off, a few interesting things are happening around the league. The New Jersey Devils (98 points) lost both games this weekend and trail the Caps by one point with one game in hand. That contest occurs tomorrow night when the Devils visit the New York Rangers. The Caps and Devils most likely will battle for second and third right down to the wire. It doesn't appear either will catch the Boston Bruins (104 points), but you never know.

Whoever finishes with the second seed most likely will face either the Rangers or Montreal Canadiens, both of whom have been cool lately, while the third-seeded squad would square off against either the Philadelphia Flyers, Carolina Hurricanes or Pittsburgh Penguins. Clearly it's better to finish second.