Game 37: Tampa Bay at Washington

The Tampa Bay Lightning lost to the Washington Capitals 7-4.

Sorry that I'm a little late with posting this. I just got back from the game. Yes, I attended this one.

I'm thinking that I need to stop going to see the Lightning play in DC. The last game I went to there, Lecavalier got his should dislocated for him. This time, Heward was carted off the ice on a stretcher. Just to save the players some grief, maybe it'd be better if I avoided that whole scene.

This was a strange game. But that's not very out of the ordinary for me - it seems like most games I go to are strange. I can't decide if that's just timing, luck, or if I'm some kind of catalyst or something. (I was at the game where McSorley essentially ended his NHL career by two-handing Brashear upside the head, for instance.) Odd things happen at games that I attend; sometimes they're little things, and sometimes they're big things, but they're all strange in one way or another.

There were very few penalties in this game, which was odd since the Lightning have been racking them up lately. Mike Smith just had an awful game, which was also strange but not unexpected since that had to happen sometime. Normally, I don't think twice about him handling the puck. Tonight, I was hoping someone would tell him to stop doing that - for this game at least. I was also thinking that Ramo should've replaced him during the second period, too, but what do I know?

(You know, if I wrote down what I really thought about these games instead of trying to keep it professional, it'd probably be unprintable. More than likely a very entertaining read for some adults, but almost certainly not fit for public consumption. This is a family show, after all. Besides, I hate making grown men cry.)

Lecavalier had a good game. Two goals are pretty darned good. Although, for someone who scores quite a bit like he has over his career so far, he rarely gets hat tricks. I find that to be strange.

(Yes, there is a theme to this blog. If you haven't noticed. The theme is that I'm tired and rambling. Or something.)

I thought that St. Louis, Prospal, and Malone all put in great efforts. Halpern was just fantastic tonight. It's too bad that didn't translate into a goal for him. It seemed like he was playing an awful lot, too. I've always thought he was a very good hockey player, tho, so I like to see that, anyways.

It's always interesting to me how the home team crowd reacts to a visiting team player's serious injury. When Heward went down tonight, everyone around me was extremely concerned. He did play a couple of seasons with Washington, but it seemed like their concern was more than just that. I had to look up to confirm that he did, in fact, play there after hearing someone mention something in passing about him earlier in the evening. One guy behind me was horrified that, from where we were sitting, it looked like Heward hadn't moved at all from the time he went down to the time he was taken off the ice. He's been diagnosed with a concussion, and hopefully, he makes a full recovery - so think good thoughts for him.

The first period, the Lightning looked like a bunch of squirrels in the middle of a Chinese fire drill - nobody looked entirely sure what they were doing or where they were going. The defense looked particularly scattered and weren't communicating with each other at all. Luckily, they got better as they went along. And without Lecavalier scoring that first goal in the second to start them off, it could've been a lot worse.

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