Panther Gameday: Panthers vs. Capitals

                                                                  VS.

Gotta make this one quick as well. 

The Panthers take their weary bodies into the nations capital tonight for another back to back game, this one against Washington.  The Caps will be without superstar Alexander Ovechkin who is serving a two game suspension for a knee on knee hit to Carolina’s Tim Gleason.  The last time that Florida played in Washington the Capitals were without Ovechkin – suffering from an upper-body strain at the time – Washington outscored the Panthers (11-12-4) 11-5 en route to a home-and-home sweep Nov. 6-7.

The Capitals are 16-5-6 overall and 8-2-3 at home.  Their record is good enough for second overall and first in the Eastern conference and they go for their fourth win in a row tonight.

Semyon Varlamov is hot for Washington as he has a 10-1-2 record with a 2.38 GAA so far this season.

The Caps have a lot of firepower even without Ovechkin and coach Bruce Boudreau has them playing a nice up-tempo game in which the Panthers could have a hard time keeping up with tonight.

Florida ended a 5 game losing streak at home last night in a 6-5 shootout win over Colorado which saw The Little Weasel score three goals in regulation and the winner in the shootout.  Truly a career game for him and I am so glad that I saw it. (Blech!)  The win should not overshadow the fact that Florida had a two goal lead with less than a minute to play and ended up losing that lead forcing overtime, and then going to the shootout after no scoring in the overtime frame.

I am beginning to sound like a broken record though as Florida and head coach Peter DeBoer need to figure out a way to hold onto leads.  This is getting a bit comical and is really a problem that needs fixing.  The other thing that has to be fixed is the inconsistency.  Winning streaks of 4, losing streaks of 5, winning one, then losing again.

The team needs to learn how to finish games.  That’s all.  You can get as excited as you want about last night’s game.  It was entertaining, but frustrating at the same time.  Taking nothing away from Colorado because they earned their point, but the Panthers need to grow up!

We’ll see how they react tonight.

Thanks for reading.

Cheers