Buffalo Sabres at Washington Capitals: 28 March 2012

Following three straight weeks of announcements that the next time the Capitals played was "a huge game," my fiancée finally agreed with me. Coming into last night's game, Washington and Buffalo were tied with 84 points, but the Caps had the edge in the first tiebreaker with one more regulation plus overtime win. Both teams had six games left in the season. If either Buffalo or Washington were to win in regulation, it would be a massive blow to the other team's playoff chances. So we did what any good Caps fans would do -- we went to StubHub and bought the cheapest tickets we could find.

After catching up with some friends at Redline, we headed into the Verizon Center, justifiably nervous for the outcome. The Caps were starting, for all intents and purposes, their third string goalie. And although young Braden Holtby has played well in spurts, we got the feeling that it was a huge gamble on Dale Hunter's part. Sure enough, Holtby gave up three goals and was yanked only a few minutes into the 2nd period. The Caps offense could only muster one lousy goal before a terrible turnover at the power play point by Ovechkin led to a Sabres shortie that sealed Washington's fate. Now the 5-1 score is a little misleading. The Caps peppered Ryan Miller with 45 shots, and even though a lot of them were unscreened and from outside the slot, he stood tall when he had to and made some key saves on drives from Ovechkin and Laich, among others. Simply put, Buffalo had a world-class goalie, and the Capitals didn't.

Japers' recap compared it to the last game of the 2008-09 season for the Caps, a 6-2 throttling at the hands of the Pittsburgh Penguins in game seven of the conference semis. I remember watching that game at one of my favorite bars, Chadwicks. It was embarrassing, deflating, and in my estimation created the media firestorm which still lingers today about what is wrong with the Washington Capitals. And while the feeling last night wasn't as grim (there is, by definition, nothing more grim than losing a game seven) the questions surrounding the team are louder than ever. Forget Ovechkin -- he's signed through the 2020-21 season and will remain the captain despite the media's needling over his leadership abilities. But the Caps' current roster was assembled to win this year, and after decidedly not winning, come July 1st it may look very different. There are six relevant unrestricted free agents (Semin, Knuble, Halpern, Aucoin, Wideman, Vokoun) and two massive decisions to make on restricted free agents (Green, Carlson). Throw in two more tweener RFAs (Perreault, Beagle), the likely drama with their Russian imports (Kuznetsov, Galiev), and anyone who George McPhee considers trade bait (*coughSCHULTZcough*) and you could have over half of the active roster in flux.

That is, if McPhee still has a job after the season. Whatever happens between now and October, it should be interesting for everyone in the organization, from Ted Leonsis on down. Just don't ask me what I would do if I were McPhee or Hunter. I would have started Holtby last night, and just like Hunter, I would have been wrong.