Capitals 4 Senators 5

Last night, Washington held the lead 3-1 halfway through the game. Then allowed Ottawa to score 4 straight goals and ended up with a 4-5 loss. For the second game in a row a 5 on 3 power play was a key factor. With Michal Nylander and Matt Pettinger both in the penalty box Ottawa's Danny Heatley scored to put the Senators up 4-3. Just 5 seconds after Pettinger was released from the box Chris Kelly scored giving Ottawa a 5-3 advantage. Alex Ovechkin scored with 4:20 left to bring the Caps within one but that was as close as they would get.

Of Note:

• Tom Poti (1G-1A), Tomas Fleischmann (1G-1A), and Mike Green (2A) each had two point games.
• The goal scorers were Chris Clark, Fleishmann, Poti, and Ovechkin.
• The Caps power play unit of Poti, Ovechkin, Viktor Kozlov, Clark, and Green scored on two power plays. The power play was 2 of 9 for the night.
• The penalty kill was 6 for 7 but gave up a critical 5 on 3 goal in the 3rd period.
• Poti led the team in ice time with 23:52.
• Milan Jurcina, Shaone Morrisonn, and Jakub Klepis each had a team high 3 hits.
• The Cap have committed 5 and 7 giveaways in the first two preseason games. They averaged nearly 12 a game last season.
• The Caps face off men were absolutely terrible, winning only 25 of 61 face offs (41%). They performed extremely poorly in the defensive zone winning 2 of 14 draws (14%). Boyd Gordon won 8 of 20 (40%), Kozlov won 8 of 19 (42%), Nylander won 2 of 8 (25%), and Brooks Laich won 1 of 3 (33%). On the other hand, Nicklas Backstrom won both of his draws and Brian Sutherby split his 8, winning 4 and losing 4.
• Sutherby was involved in the only fisticuffs of the night taking on former Capital Lawrence Nycholat with Nycholat also being assessed an elbowing call on the play.
• The Caps out shot the senators 32 to 30. Klepis led the Caps with 5 shots on goal. Ovechkin recorded only 1 official shot, his goal none the less, but 2 missed the net with 2 others and was blocked 6 times.

Here are the links for the: recap, scoresheet, and super stats

The Caps next game is Saturday, September 22, 2007 at Tampa. Game time: 7:30 pm