The Washington Capitals concluded their four game homestead with a fourth loss, bringing their current skid to 5 games since they saw the win column. While it was one of the best games the Capitals have played in this down period, they didn’t appear to be play with desperation until late in the third period which was, uh, too late.  Again.

A few things were interesting to note during the game.  For players on both teams, skating away from everyone else seemed to be the same as an express trip to falling to the ice.  While the puck didn’t seem to bouncing any worse than usual at Verizon Center, I don’t recall seeing so many players fall for no reason on a single night.  In some ways, it was a reminder at, on the whole, how much better the ice at Verizon has seemed to be this season compared to the past.  It’s been a Monumental improvement.  Except for the falling tonight.

What was fun to watch was Tomas Fleischmann’s return to DC…skating for the team he was traded to just a couple weeks ago.  His stats line was similar to a normal Caps game when he played for us and was in the box for Matt Hendricks’ third period power play goal.  Nice to have Flash back?  I always kind of liked him (not that I was able to use him on a fantasy team last year when he was really hot or anything), but like everyone else, wished his flashes of scoring were more than just flashes.  But we have Scott Hannan now, so we have that going for us, which is good.

Read more about the depressing loss at Japer’s Rink and Russian Machine, and I’m sure On Frozen Blog will have some good stuff later in the morning, too, because, you know, they always do.  35 photos below and on flickr.

Oh, and my wife is wonderful despite I lost the symbol of my love for her and will probably never find it…but if you see it, please let me know. Looks like this one.