Ottawa 2 - Washington 1

OK, we'll leave the "what went wrongs" by the side of the road. Fact is, not much did, except the final score. True, the Caps fell tonight to a Alfredsson-Heatly-Spezza-Volchenkov-Fisher-Emery-less Senators club, but the Caps did everything but win the game. If there was a time-of-possession clock, the Caps probably held a 40-20 minute edge. And, given that Alex Ovechkin hit two posts (one in the waning moments) and Tomas Fleischmann another, the offense did enough win most games. They outshot the visitors 35-15 and won 38 of 53 draws (that's not a misprint, although one hesitates to trust the NHL stat sheet at the moment). Boyd Gordon, David Steckel, and Michael Nylander were a combined 29 wins and seven losses on draws.

The defense was not bad, although it wasn't much tested. Olaf Kolzig had a gruesome half dozen minutes in the first period, giving up two very iffy goals, but otherwise had a solid effort.

The Caps took only one penalty (perhaps as much a product of hanging on to the puck for such long stretches....they never had much chance to take the usual NHL-brand of obstruction penalties).

Even the crowd wasn't bad (by Caps preseason standards). But this was the first chance for The Peerless to see the new mother ship...


...oops, scoreboard...



These aren't artist's renditions...I took these pics (hence, the blurry images in the latter couple). Shoot, in that first one I can see the nose hairs in the Senator logo.

It's nice...really. And, for that matter, so was the Caps' play, except for that pesky final result.