Making the grade: November

I can't recall the stat, but CSN had mentioned that the Capitals had not had a winning November since 1999 (maybe) or a few years before the lockout.

We can talk about the horrendous November-opening shutout and closing shutout but the reality is, this wasn't a bad month of Capitals hockey.

Let's re-cap the month a bit...

Ovechkin finds his shot, Backstrom returns to his crazy self and the Capitals continued to pile on the goals.

The Capitals special teams went from mid-bottom of the league to top 10 in the span of three weeks and some guy name Fleischmann is one goal away from his goal totals from last year.

If the voting goes as I see it, Ovechkin should be the month's first star, and Backstrom should at least be the third.

The defense was solid on some nights, and not so solid on others but the real story is that the Capitals goaltending was much improved over October. Johnson had his great run and when that fell apart, Theodore picked up the slack and started playing like his 4.5 million dollar self.

8-5-2 is not a bad month, considering where the team was last November. Did I mention the Caps still lead the Southeast?

Sure there are those games we wish we had won, and efforts that just weren't worth writing home about, but with how jam-packed the team's schedule was and the injury plague the Caps endured, any team would be happy with that record.

November grade = B