The emotional roller coaster that is the Washington Capitals delivered another Ovechkin overtime winner last night.  They should give out blood pressure medication with programs.

As I said after the Islanders games, we’ll take the point(s).  But the 60 minutes of sloppy, uneven play and constant turnovers it took to get there are infuriating.  When the Caps win, it’s luck – lucky that the other team didn’t beat you to it (like Carolina) because you certainly gave them enough chances.

Washington had three shots in the 2nd period.  Three!  On a goalie making his NHL debut!  The 3rd period was stronger – the Caps held the Bolts to just three shots and John Carlson played some of the best shifts I’ve ever seen from him.  The effort was buoyed by the same combination of the Loud Goat pleading and Unleashing the Fury  at exactly the right time.  Fired up?  HELL YES.  But why does it always take 52 minutes for the Caps to get that way?

Aucoin - 2 goals in 12 games. Knuble - 3 goals in 53 games.

Speaking of 52… from our seats in the Verizon Center, we saw Mike Green double-up on this hit to Brent Connolly.  We could not see his elbow and there was no replay or penalty, so we had no idea Mike was misbehaving.  What did people do before Twitter?

This is really what the Caps need with back-to-back games this weekend.  Do you want to see Hamrlik and Schultz as a defense pairing?  Are the Caps worried that we’ll be bored if they win before overtime?

While I’m at it, Semin is a disaster – and on this team right now it’s tough to stand out for that.  The six year old kid who played in the intermission Mites on Ice game looked a lot like Sasha Fierce, except that he had a goal.  Maybe we could throw a 28 on him and no one would notice… until he scores.

The Caps play Boston (Sat), Toronto (Sun), NYI (Tues) and Winnpeg (Fri) this week.  People have been saying “must win” for weeks now – Washington is running out of time to prove them wrong.