Tinkering Continues As Caps Look To Sweep Bolts

When the Capitals were going through their slump, Bruce Boudreau started to move personnel around. It's lead to a some interesting line combinations. Some worked, some didn't. Sergei Fedorov is the first to admit he didn't really fit in on the top line. Partly of his performance in the 4-2 win against Atlanta.

"I wasn't really feeling it with my linemates, so we'll have to regroup and come back with a fresh attitude and try to put the pieces together," Fedorov said of his experience starting on the first line with Alex Ovechkin and Alex Semin. Fedorov also took three penalties or half of all the infractions called against the Capitals.

It wasn't the performance of the season for the Caps, they only mustered 26 shots on net, a season low.

Th Tampa Bay Lightning are looking to break the Capitals spell over them. The Caps are looking for their 11th straight win over the Bolts and they will do it against a team that has been playing better in the second half of the season.

Boudreau will most likely tinker with the lines once again. He is trying to get the matchups just right to add spark and get some momentum going into the first round of the playoffs. Some lines, like Tomas Fleischmann, Viktor Kozlov and Nick Backstrom, have a bit of chemistry as they accounted for half of the Caps' scoring Tuesday night.

Caps Notes:

• Donald Brashear is still ailing his sprained knee and most likely will miss the rest of the season in order to rest him for the playoffs. Brash could have been useful tonight against thug Evgeny Artyukhin who has been on a tear recently taking runs at everyone not in a Bolt jersey.
• Tom Poti may be sidelined as he is still nursing a sprained groin. But Poti maybe listed as a healthy scratch and rested.
  
• There was no practice scheduled for the Caps yesterday, and there will be no practice on Friday before the final game against Florida. Rest seems to be the order of the day as the Caps close out their final games. They have finished four of six games that have been played every other day. If it were a playoff series, the Caps would be up 3 games to one (the only loss was a overtime loss to Buffalo).