The Capitals acquired center Zach Hamill of the Boston Bruins (or rather, the Providence Bruins) in exchange for Hershey left wing Chris Bourque Bourque Bourque. I assume this happened because Chris Bourque is the son of Ray Bourque. Yes, THAT Ray Bourque. You know, the one who won a Stanley Cup with the Colorado Avalanche.

Otherwise there is no upside for acquiring Chris Bourque. He is the black sheep of the Bourque family. Ray used to go to Flames games and cheer “Go Rene! That’s my boy!” just to taunt Chris. Chris Bourque played 8 KHL games before giving up in disgust. Exactly one year later he switched to the Swiss League (note: this is not an upgrade). He returned to the Bears and put up 27-66-93, apparently in penance.

I don’t know anything about Zach Hamill, but his name sounds familiar, so I assume I have a hockey card of him. This is not surprising. I have 95 Al Iafrate cards. He (Hamill, not Iafrate) went 8-3-21 with the Peebs in 41 games, so, not great. They’re both first round draft picks who seem to have sputtered somewhat in their development, as they’ve been league-hopping for about 6 years each. Frankly, the most important thing about this trade is it’s given me something to write about. Thanks.

After a few days off, I’ve recovered sufficiently to say something about the Capitals. (Literally recovered. I have scabs on my knee from my nails cutting where I was clutching it during Game 7.) Unfortunately what I have to say is “what a shame.” These Caps really had the look of a team that could go all the way. Or perhaps what I mean is that we could have looked that way, but factors against us combined to make it not so… And thus took us, I think a few years further away from a Cup.

First, we will bid adieu to Tomas Vokoun, who signed an astoundingly cheap contract knowing full well he would only be here a year. He has in fact complained before at how homesick he was. There’s nothing wrong with missing your family, but perhaps he could’ve considered the before he chose the career of “professional athlete in a country that is not your homeland.” Personally, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for him. Maybe I would have more if he had ended up being that Cup-contending goalie he was meant to be, instead of putting up average to good reg season numbers then getting injured immediately before the postseason began.

Secondly, we will almost definitely bid adieu to Sasha Semin, who, while never the lynchpin of anything, was always a welcome addition to our offense. To me, his gorgeous sniper-like wrist shots made up for the lazy offensive zone stick penalties. Even when they made the coach do this. I understand why he would want out, but I’m going to miss him.

Also on the list of players I would miss: Mike Knuble. He’s 40 and coming off an unimpressive season thanks to Dale Hunter Hockey (TM), but I think we can squeeze a couple mil under the cap to retain his services, eh GMGM? He says he both feels fine and wants to keep playing, and even if he didn’t get the 20 goals he wanted, he still has grit and adds the presence of a grizzled veteran. And may I remind of you of when he outraced a man half his age to wash out an icing in the Rangers series? The man still has the internal fire.
» Continue reading “A Look At Capitals Free Agents, Part 1″

Per ESPN, Alexander Semin will not pursue a contract extension with the Caps, and instead will test the waters of free agency.

According to his agent Mark Gandler:

I think the issue is with the organization, not necessarily with the coach. They told us Alex is not going to play short-handed, he’s not going to play in the last minute. He’s going to get the same icetime as everybody else … Alex is not ready to be a role player. He wants to be a full-time player. It’s important to him.

Semin has always been one of the players most heavily tarred with the xenophobic “enigmatic Russian” brush. He has been variously accused of being lazy, of not trying, of not caring, and of not being a team player. And yet he is one of the most purely talented hockey players in the entire NHL. He has an absolutely killer wrist shot and he goes through periods of offensive dominance mingled with periods where he lies fallow.

I really like Gandler’s description of him as a “role player,” because it fits so perfectly and yet doesn’t really make sense. A role player is usually a face-off specialist, or a third-liner who lodges mega-PK minutes. But Semin really is a role player: it just so happens his role is gorgeous shots of first line quality. He isn’t a practical role player, because it’s not something he can just do the way one can take a face-off or block shots, but it’s the only area in which he is truly reliable (that and offensive zone stick penalties).

He’d be a great addition to a team that wants devastating secondary scoring, but devastating in morale rather than quantity. A perfect Semin shot is devastating to a goalie because there’s nothing you can do about it: it’s simply beautiful. He can also be devastating to his own team, in the offensive-murdering penalties (that make coaches make this face) and the frustrating times when he can’t seem to score.

That said, I look forward to the Blue Jackets picking him up in desperation!

Edit: Upon landing in Stockholm, Semin said, through translator Pavel Lysenkov (of Sovetski Sport), “There was no talk at all that I am not going to sign with the Capitals for sure. I have not talked to them [the Capitals] about leaving.”

Dammit, Semin. I’ve got too many emotions as it is already.

Dale Hunter has announced he is stepping down as head coach of the Capitals, citing “family concerns” as his reason.

I saw this coming in about the same way I saw predicted his hiring. I also reckoned that if he didn’t get a cup with these Caps, he was out. You can read Greg Wyshynski’s take on it here. I personally want to look at two factors that I think contributed to his lack of success.

1. Former NHL stars or highly sucessful players do not make good coaches.

2. Junior level coaches do not make good NHL coaches (at least not when going straight from juniors to the NHL).
» Continue reading “Dale Hunter Resigns As Capitals Coach”

Congratulations to the New York Rangers on making it to the third round for the first time since 1997.

Thoughts on the Capitals:

-I basically felt the same way as George McPhee during pretty much the entire game. Part of which was spent with a Rangers fan who had a) both a genuinely New Yawk accent and b) used the phrase “my girlfriend’s husband” and literally could not be more of caricature. (P.S. I have a huge crush on George McPhee.)

-1 power play, refs? I’m not a huge fan of the NHL conspiracy theories, but the Capitals received ONE total power play in the entire game. And it was a delay of game. The Rangers do NOT play that cleanly. Also, I bet you a hundred dollars the finals are Los Angeles-New York (happy birthday Gary Bettman!).

-Looks like Dale Hunter finally started reading this, because Wideman only got 15 minutes of ice time. Or maybe he hasn’t, because Knuble only got 5:57. Remember how I said last game the Capitals seemed to always have someone in the right place at the right time? This was the opposite of that.

-Speaking of, sort of, how long do you think Dale Hunter will be around? If he is coach next year, I think he’s on a very short leash. I have my issues with him (that I will discuss in another post, get excited), but I think we can all agree his hardcore shot-blocking Rangers-copying style is unsustainable for 82 games.

-Thought I had just now: wouldn’t it be awesome if the Caps just played in whatever style their competition did? Issue: the teams that get this far all play in more or less the same style. Sorry. Bad bullet point.

-Apparently the stat line for “rookie goaltenders whose fiancee has a baby two days before a Game 7″ is 0-1. Still, if anyone’s concerned, that’s a very small sample size.

-What happened to the odd man rush? We had fewer than we had last game, and still couldn’t buy a goal. (Insert “buy a vowel” joke here, what with Pat Sajak being a season ticket holder?)

-I had two Good Charlotte (DC band!) songs prepped for tonight. Unfortunately, I have to use this one: “The Day That I Die“. I’m aware how embarrassing it is to listen to Good Charlotte: just slightly less embarrassing than listening to Billy Joel. NEW YORK BURN

Happy off-season, Caps fans. If you find something to do besides vandalism, tell me.

I’m leery of accidentally jinxing the Capitals with what I’m about to say — after all, Holts had a shutout going until the NBCSN morons actually said it, because they hate the Caps — but for significant stretches of time this team reminded me of… well…

They reminded me of the 2009 Capitals. On multiple occasions they set up their PP-style cycle at even strength, they were putting on consistent pressure that created odd man rushes, and Ovechkin nearly scored while seated on the ice, which happened second most memorably in 2009 (the first most memorable being, of course, the goal).

Notes I Took During The Game:
-Brilliant start. We came out like a team with a major chip on our shoulder (which we were), and the Rangers didn’t know what to do. They didn’t regroup until about halfway through the first, and then only sporadically. We looked good. I mean, real good.

-Number 8 scored at 88 seconds in, which was a delight. I will give you zero dollars (Canadian) if you can guess how he beat Lundqvist. Plus, he had assists from 19 and 52, which bodes well. Green’s looking like he did in — well, you can probably guess.

-What a PK. With no Beagle and Laich in the box for the first one, that was huge. Anything after that would be trivial. Even a double minor. Killing that was a huge momentum swing and confidence boost for the Caps. Really exorcised the demons from last game.

-On that subject, are the Rangers blading or something? I’ve been hit in the face with a baseball hard enough for it to leave stitch imprints, and I’ve never started bleeding. Are these guys anemic?
» Continue reading “Capitals Force (Surprise, Surprise) Game 7 Against The Rangers”

Every once in a while I hear someone use the phrase “rally caps,” and they usually refer to something silly someone’s doing their headgear to psyche themselves up. But what it makes me think of, as most things do, is the Washington Capitals (this can be a problem when I take a class on the development of the modern city, and I try not to drift off distractedly everyone time someone says “capitals”).

“Rally Caps” is as good a nickname as any for this incarnation of the Capitals. We’ve had a day to recover, and now it’s time to rally. That’s all I can hope they do after that sucker punch of a game on Monday (frankly, I’m just satisfied I didn’t have to puke and rally after that debacle).

Fun fact: if you Google “rally caps,” as I did while writing this, the first hit is the Wikipedia article I’ve linked to. The rest of the hits are variations of the headline “Rangers Rally, Beat Caps in OT.” Thanks, universe.

Anyway, here’s an issue around which Caps fans can rally: the hubris of a team selling tickets for the next round when they were still two games out (at the time). I guess we’ll see tonight if the Hockey Gods will punish the Rangers for their audacity… or reward their cockiness.

Much as I hate to invoke Bill Simmons’ preposterous, martyresque, and (worst of all) Boston-sports-centric Levels of Losing, I think I might have to. The only thing that stops it being a Level III Stomach Punch is the fact that the Capitals are still alive, and, though that was emotionally devastating, it doesn’t feel totally hopeless. It’s almost what we’ve come to expect from the Caps. We all understood. We spent the last five minutes saying, “When is Marian Gaborik just going to tie this thing already?” or “Look, it’s icing. I guarantee Brad Richards scores off the faceoff here, come one.” It was probably with 7 seconds left that I let myself believe we could actually win this.

I won’t be making that mistake again.
» Continue reading “Capitals Lose Game 5 In Most Infuriating Way Possible”

I wrote recently about how, as much fun as a 3OT game is, it’s not good for a team planning a deep run. Neither is a Game 7. They’re both physically and mentally exhausting, and when other teams are finishing in fewer games and OTs (see: the West), it puts us at a serious disadvantage. Both teams were clearly feeling punished during the 3rd period of game 4, and that was with a 2 day break between games with no travel. Right now I’m watching the LA Kings steamroll the Blues in 4 games. Who do you think will be better equipped to face the next round: the Kings or whoever wins the WSH-NYR series, which is going to at least 6 games and already has one 3OT game?

Thrillingly, this might be one area in which the Capitals have a distinct advantage. We had two seasons of outlandish performance (G/G 09-10: 3.82; 08-09: 3.27). Then we had a season in which Mike Green played 32 games (G/G 10-11: 2.67) and a season in which Green played 49 games and Backstrom played 42 (G/G 11-12: 2.66). Consequently, we backed into a playoff spot on the last day of the regular season. The top 5 scorers on the #1-seeded Rangers (whose G/G is only 2.71) all played over 75 games. Backstrom still managed to be in the top 5 in points on the Caps despite playing only 42 games. And maybe I’m just projecting, but it seemed to me that the Rangers were in worse shape by the third period of game 4. You know, the period in which Mike Green scored the go-ahead goal and players such as Ryan “53:17 TOI” McDonagh were helpless to do anything.

I believe that the President’s Trophy is the indicator of which team is actually the best in the NHL: it’s the only environment in which the sample size is big enough, all the teams are under relatively similar conditions, and random events (such as injuries) have time to balance out. What the Stanley Cup playoffs test is luck (the winner is whoever’s goalie gets the hottest for the longest time, let’s not even pretend otherwise) and, to a lesser extent, ability to perform under pressure. Anyone watching the Capitals and the Rangers can tell that these teams are more or less evenly matched.

What it’s going to come down to (and already has, quite literally) is stamina, and here the Capitals have the edge. Puck Daddy ran an article asking if Dale Hunter was a genius or a goofball due to limiting the ice time of Ovechkin, Backstrom, and Semin. The ostensible reason is to play more defensively responsible guys as well as making it clear who was in charge (Hunter’s got a job in London no matter what, so his job security isn’t a factor), but an Ovie with only 13:36 TOI is an Ovie with fresh legs and manic amounts of energy. People have been taking pot shots at his conditioning, so if that’s the case, lowering his ice time might actually be the correct solution.

(Side note: Henrik Lundqvist played 62 games in the regular season, and Braden Holtby played 40 in the AHL and 7 in the NHL, which is still 15 games fewer at the most mentally stressful postion on the ice. However, goalies tend to get in a rhythm/streak more than skaters.)

Only time can tell. And that time is 7:30 on Monday. (See things from the enemy’s perspective over at Black & Blueshirts.)

In other news, beloved Capitals color commentator Craig Laughlin is having surgery during the offseason. Best wishes from your number 2 fan (after Joe B)!

There was a contingency plan in place for NBC in case this game went so long it interfered with the Kentucky Derby. Luckily, they didn’t need it. The Caps have now split 2-2 with the series going back to New York.

I was pretty satisfied with this game. The first period was a delight for the home team: we had a high-tempo game (14 shots on goal in the 1st = as many as we had in the entirety of game 1) and our power play looked very sexy. Too bad that didn’t help (at least not until the 3rd period, but hang on, I’m getting there). Instead, Ovechkin appeared to be buoyed by the 8th minute yet again as he fired a beauty of a slapper that was apparently scared of Lundqvist’s glove, since immediately jumped out and into the safety of the back of the net.

Things aren’t all sunshine and roses for Ovie, though, because it looks like some people want some supplementary discipline for his hit on Dan Girardi. He may be known for his exuberant hits, but I doubt anything will happen: no one was hurt and Ovie is a superstar. If any action is taken at all, I bet it’s a fine — it wasn’t as bad as Shea Weber.
» Continue reading “Capitals Tie Series With Rangers”