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A brutal game tonight. Really really hard to watch. In my opinion, tonight was a must win night for the Caps. After Tarik and Corey's articles yesterday, it seemed like the Caps had turned a corner and were on the edge of breaking through tonight. And for the first period, it seemed that way. Then, the Capitals slowly started ceding the game to the Thrashers, until it looked like the Atlanta Thrasher vs....some team from the Q.

What made it hardest to watch of all was the fact that the Caps played like the team that they could be, before dissolving before the eyes of the crowd. There were a lot of boos, some fire Hanlon chants, and some legitimately bad calls from the ref. But at the end of the day, only the team and coaches can account for how a team can look so inconsistent period to period.

I've said my piece, and Tarik adds his:

"It's tough," Coach Glen Hanlon said. "Sports is really tough when these situations happen. That's why we've played so well in first periods, because we've had time to regroup for a couple of days, get away. You come in with renewed enthusiasm and you believe this is the night where it's going to happen."

"When something goes wrong," he added, "you revert back and think back on negative things.

Corey captures it pretty astutely:

Another night and another second-period meltdown meant another loss for the floundering Washington Capitals.

He also adds this quote from Bobby Holik:

“They played like they wanted to get their coach fired,” Holik told members of the visiting media. “But that"s another story.”

Dan Sernoffsky from the Lebanon Daily News seems to think that after tonight's loss, Dale Hunter might soon be in Glen Hanlon's slot.