Oooooovvvvvviiiiieeeee

Both of Alex Ovechkin's goals came in the first period against the Nashville Predators at Verizon Center last night.  I enjoyed the goal where Brendan Morrison lobbed it into the air towards Ovie where it landed at his feet.  

The Caps should have then put away a team that is struggling on offense, ranked 25th in the league in points. But, no, they let up and the Predators tied it up late in the third with goals from Shea Weber and one where James Dumont took advantage of a bad clearing attempt by Jeff Schultz.

The game went to overtime and then to the dreaded shootout...not the Cap's forte and not Alex Ovechkin's forte either, but his faking Dan Ellis out and then blowing it past the out of position goalie made me smile.  

Semyon Varlamov, starting in place of the injured Jose Theodore, played a decent game and stopped all 3 of Nashville's shots during the shootout, including a tough shots from Martin Erat, to seal the win. Varly appeared more comfortable after his two shaky starts and that was good to see.

A disturbing statistic I noted....faceoffs. Overall, the Caps won 46% of their faceoffs and that's only because David Steckel won 56% of his and Brendan Morrison won 50% of his, but Nicklas Backstrom and Brooks Laich with 33% and Keith Aucoin with 25% are unacceptable numbers.

I want to see the Caps play like they played against San Jose.  That is the most complete game they played all season.  Great teams show up every night.  That's what I expect the Caps to do.

Caps head to Atlanta on Thursday.

Let's go Caps!