Godzilla gets 2 points from Lightning

After blowing it against the Florida Panthers the night before (what is it about Florida ...Lehtonen's stellar net minding, of course, but Florida nettles the Caps all the time), Olie Kolzig pretty much won the game for the Caps against the Tampa Bay Lightning with his 39 saves, most of those in a 2nd period onslaught. Olie is benefiting from resting more now that Brent Johnson is back. Olie got 2nd star while Alexander Semin got 1st star for his game winning goal on a rebound from Viktor Kozlov with 3 minutes left in the game. Tampa Bay made it interesting by scoring 2 goals in 33 seconds right before Semin's goal. Semin stuffed his in the net less than a minute after the two Lightning goals. Dave Stekel and Tomas Fleischmann also scored for the Caps.

Defenseman Sami Lepisto made his NHL debut since Tom Pothi got injured playing Florida (he's not supposed to be out long, thankfully), but Lepisto played well. The stat that cracked me up in the Caps post game write up is the one that says Pothi & Pothier combined have played 935 games while the six starting defensemen (Green, Morrison, Lepisto, Erskine, Eminger & Schultz) have played 908 games. That tells you why Olie was busy!

Watching these games is nerve wracking to me. Every game counts so much and the Caps are struggling a bit right now to generate offense if Ovie's not scoring. They get a few more days off before the Islanders visit. The Islanders just helped the Caps by beating Atlanta. I hope they thank them by beating them.

Let's go Caps!