Happy Holidays, and welcome back!

Greetings everyone, and happy holidays from us here at the site. Things have been pretty busy around here, what with all of the eating, gift giving and such. We even missed the site's first birthday (Dec. 13) we were all so tied up. We promise we'll improve our upkeep on the site headed into the New Year. And speaking of new, it appears that Coach Boudreau and the Caps are treating tonight's game as the beginning of the second half of the season. Let's hope that they can start the second half the same way they started the first (with a win).

Per Tarik, the Caps will once again be without Captain Clark, whose groin injury has kept him out over a month. Not good. Not good at all. The captain's physical play and his scoring ability are sorely missed on the right side of the ice.

The Tampa Bay Lightning come to town playing the same brand of maddeningly inconsistent play that has marked their entire season. Unlike so many teams, the cause of Tampa's woes is easy to point out: their horrendous goaltending. With both Johan Holmqvist and Marc Denis posting sub .900 save percentages (and looking awful while doing it) it's clear that Tampa will always be in a position where their offense will have to carry them to victory, because they're going to give up goals.

With Alexander Semin returning to form and the Russian Machine being, well, the Russian Machine, look for the Caps to post at least 4 goals tonight. Hopefully that will be enough to down the evil triplets from Tampa and move us within one point of the Lightning in the Southeast.