Bonjour, mes amis! Tonight's knee-jerks come to you from the dynamic blogging duo of DC Sports Chick and Gustafsson. After seeing the vintage Canadiens in Tuesday's screening of "The Rocket," we were looking forward to watching the Bleu, Blanc, et Rouge take on the Red, White, and Blue.

• First, the bad news: Pothier fractured his thumb and is week-to-week.


• Not surprisingly, there were a healthy number of Habs fans, not to mention a sprinkling of Nordiques fans. Quebec was well-represented here tonight.


• We love hearing both anthems at a game, especially when there's an undercurrent of Canadian singers in the crowd. But no offense to Bitsy Watson, we're Bob McDonald/Caleb Green fans.


• Mites on Ice featured an apparent Florida feud: the Tampa Bay Lightning vs. the Florida Panthers. (The youth teams wore uniforms that looked incredibly similar to the pro teams.)


• RDS interviewed Ovechkin during the first intermission. Unfortunately, we don't know what he said. Incidentally, during the TV timeouts, RDS featured shots of typical D.C. landmarks (the White House, the Jefferson Memorial)- with simulated snow.


• The Caps suffered from their typical second-period malaise, despite Backstrom's goal. Giving up three goals on eight shots does not a winning game make. Either Kolzig is off tonight, or Huet is a monster; it's a little of both, but mostly the former.


• Beautiful goal by Semin! Too bad there weren't more of those.


• There was a special guest in Ted's box tonight: Condoleeza Rice. (Don't worry, she was too engrossed in conversation for most of the game to see how the Caps were doing.)


• Great use of movie clips during the game, especially the "Frank the Tank" bit from "Old School" and the dance scene from "Napoleon Dynamite".


• Chanuck and I found out today that we're having a girl, so his suggestion was to name the baby after the #1 star of the game. I prayed that Guillaume Latendresse or Roman Hamrlik weren't named the star, because I wouldn't know how to explain that one. And don't get me started on Siarhei Kastsitsyn. Much to Gustafsson's delight, Guillaume was named the #1 star. Nothing went right this night.

Gustafsson's Knee-jerks:

• Reiterating a point from above, I would be very happy if Bitsy did not sing another anthem in the booth. Her over-emphasised words come out sounding just awful... "Whore the ramparts we watched...." "Hand the rockets red glare..." Our friends to the north did not escape the new renditions as we heard "Ho Canada!".


• Miss New Jersey is here again, I guess she's become his official Caps blogger? She seemed a bit miffed that she did not occupy the seat she had in previous games. Such drama.


• In press row, it's hard to gain insight from the out of town reporters when they're speaking French. A lot of good high school Latin did me.


• Seems like a sparse crowd for a game against a Canadian team (announced attendance was 12,670).


• The first period saw a beautiful pass by Green to Kozlov, who promptly fired the shot into Huet's gut.


• Nice work by Backstrom on the goal after the feed by AO cutting the score to 2-1 Habs, however, the shots are not following... 18 for the Caps, 7 for the Habs.


• Greg Wyshynski is sitting next to me and he mentioned to me that he heard on XM that the Red Wings are an impressive 20-1-1 outside of their division.


• A negative effect of the goal judges being moved is the increased time between the puck entering the net and the lighting of the red light. I don't like it.


• Habs 3rd goal right off the faceoff. The shot clock disparity is even worse. It's now 22 for the Caps.... a whopping 8 for the Habs.


• Kozlov hits another post.  Perhaps he should aim that shot just a wee bit closer to the netminder, but away from his gut.


• The Caps certainly got their shots tonight, but the majority were from the outside.  They lead 37 - 21.


• The locker room after the game was barren.  A few players game out to speak to the media, but it was a somber mood.

After a lengthy wait, Kolzig met the press.  Clearly frustrated with the game, he said he's going to take the tape of this game and throw it in the trash can.  He thought the team played well, but it was one of those nights where the pucks were bouncing their way and every one of Montreal's shots was a chance that ended up in the net... one of those games as a goalie you hate.  "I mean look at the last goal, I make the save, the thing's sitting between my legs and the guy digs it out and puts it in the net...  it was just one of those nights."

Kolzig went on to say that they're not playing bad hockey, but it's a fine and they need to find a way to get on the positive side of that line more consistently.