ReCap 3/9 vs NY Islanders

I swear by all that is holy....and all that is UNholy as well....I have run out of words to express my frustration with this hockey team that is masquerading like a group of professionals.

I think this will bring it home quite handily.

What's even more frustrating is that it is so freaking obvious to EVERYBODY what the problem is.  And that's a complete lack of focus.  No focus equals no consistency.  Which is why the Washington Capitals cannot put together more than 2-3 good games in a group without completely regressing like a mental patient devoid of their medication.

I don't even have to bother going over what happened in the game.  All it took was one careless (actually two if you think about it) penalty by Mike Ribiero, who got whistled for a double minor (four minutes) for high-sticking.  And the Caps had about a minute to go to kill it off, but then allowed the Islanders to score.  They never looked back after that.  I will give the future Brooklanders credit--they are a team to be reckoned with this season as they do have a very real chance of making the playoffs for once.

No discipline.  No focus.  No chance.

Add to this the fact that the defense corps was even further reduced for Lord knows how long after John Erskine's injury forced him from the game.  They're already environmentally unfriendly (no Green), now they're down to John Carlson, Karl Alzner, Tom Poti, two rookies, and Jeff Schultz.  We are at the halfway point in the season and they're nowhere near consistent enough to make a run at the playoffs. Doesn't take an expert to know the odds of the Caps surviving this are pretty slim.

I have something else about all this that frustrates me, only it wasn't the team's fault.  Or it wasn't the players at least.  Just before the time of the aforementioned losing goal, I found myself on the road as I often do. Naturally I was expecting to hear John Walton's dulcet tones calling the game on 1500 AM AKA Federal News Radio.  But no.  They thought it was more important to cover a (YUCK!) college basketball game.  All right well it's called the Capitals Radio Network for a reason--there are other stations I can turn to.  So I flip over to 1300 AM.  Same thing...college frickin' basketball.  It's March and it's madness all right.

Given my limited options as I live closer to Baltimore, I only had one option left--106.7 FM.  The signal lasted just long enough for me to enjoy hearing about the four-minute penalty and subsequent goal given up.  At that point MIX 106.5 had completely bled onto the broadcast.  All I could hear after that was Justin Timberlake...or was it Justin Bieber?  In any case I found it just incredible that it was so freaking hard to find a decent signal station to hear the Caps game.  But then, the radio audience has always been crapped on by this organization.

In any case it was cause for more screaming.

And unfortunately I think we Caps fans are in for a lot more of that. Unless they can find their focus.  But with 24 games to go and the playoff window closing faster it's not looking good.