Well.

This is the part where I say something self-effacing, like, “Hah, well, we can’t expect another lucky break,” or “I say, that was a good effort and an implausible series, eh wot?” (for some reason I am imagining these in a British accent). But I can’t really muster that up. Instead, I’m feeling something more along the lines of

AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Which is an approximate representation of my feelings after the game. My friend, with whom I was watching the game, had to follow me onto the quad with my shoes, screaming that I had forgotten them (in between screaming “WE WOOOOOOOOOOOOON!!!!!!”).

Then I made everyone go to Dunkin Donuts so we could get some Boston Brewin’ (graceful in victory? I never.) and received some delightful texts, such as “Bruins in 9,” which was a response to the fact that I never wavered from my “Bruins in 5″ prediction.

The OT winning goal (what a heart attack phrase!) was scored by: Joel Ward. You know, the Predators playoff hero whom we signed to a long(ish) and expensive(ish) contract after his stellar play in the postseason last year. He hadn’t impressed us… so far. Now he scores the most important goal so far this season. (Want to read something that will make you feel truly awful about humanity? Check out the classy reactions of the hockey fan world to this goal. It’s not just Boston that’s full of racists — it’s everywhere!) (Now, to make you feel better after that, why not listen to radio guy John Walton’s call? Don’t worry, it incorporates the phrase “GOOD MORNING, GOOD AFTERNOON, AND GOOD NIGHT, BOSTON!” which I think must be his catchphrase.)

The primary assist went to Michael Rudolph Knuble — and if you don’t know how I feel about him, you probably haven’t been a longtime reader. Shame on you!

But the big name, the one to whom we owe this entire series success, is no surprise. Braden expletive deleted Holtby. What a netminder. What a beauty. He held us together through this entire ordeal, and this game wasn’t a cakewalk. He put up with some weirdo stuff, like Rich Peverley taking a baseball swing at his head, and maintained his sass and gloveliness the whole time. (Delightful article on him by The Goalie Guild that incorporates the phrase “goalie swagger,” like all great pieces of writing should).

With that done, let’s look towards the future: there are a bunch of options for who we will face next round, and by a bunch I mean: the Rangers, or the Flyers, or the Panthers, depending on how Thursday’s games pan out. Ahem…

If the Rangers win, that’s who we play. If the Senators win, we play the Panthers (if they win) or the Flyers (if the Devils win). Personally, I won’t be sad to see the Rangers — Hank’s weakness has always been high glove side, and the last Game 7 we won was against them — but the Panthers have their potential as well (we’ve already seen them, what, 1600 times this year?). I personally believe that the Rangers and Devils will win, because two nights ago I dreamt that Marty Brodeur and Ilya Bryzgalov were swing dancing together, and if that’s not a premonition, I don’t know what is.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an email to send my favorite professor. I think it will read something like this:

The Capitals decide they want to cut another year or so off my lifespan and drop Game 6. Now we’ll see the Bruins in Boston on Wednesday for a Game 7 that is far too far in the future. I frankly dread seeing Professor Bruins Fan — in fact, the last time I ever see him will be Wednesday afternoon! I’ll never get to see his reaction or experience his taunting! Now I’m depressed all over again.

In a bit of poeticism, Mike Green scored his first goal since October 22 yesterday, which was Earth Day. This is is second goal in the playoffs, but he is also +5. Dear me. And even more surprisingly, so is Roman Hamrlik! I suppose I’ll have to stop hating him, which is fine, because I can easily replace that hate with some for Dennis “-4″ Wideman. Thank God Hunter benched Jeff Schultz. I’d rather have a slightly menacing John Erskine skating around harmlessly. Mike Knuble also got his first playoff goal this weekend, which caused my friend and I no small amount of glee. How come Hunts hasn’t figured out how to use him effectively? Stick him in the crease on the power play and watch the magic happen.

I’m not one to begrudge a rival’s talented play, and I have nothing but adulation for Tyler Seguin’s gorgeous OT winner. Holtby commited to taking away the angle by sneaking up to the edge of the crease, and Seguin simply out-waited him and shot into the gapingly open net. Dennis Wideman (useless paperweight that he is) leapt valiantly in an attempt to block it, but it was too late. So I’ll give Tyler Seguin his propers…

…only to rip them away moments later. From the Puck Daddy article:

You won’t believe me, but when I was going down the wing, the first thing that came to my mind was to pass, and then to shoot it off his head.

That’s really f***ing classy, Mr. Seguin. I know, I shouldn’t expect anything but trashy from someone who has his surname tattooed down his bicep in Gothic characters, but really? Joking about head shots in this NHL climate? You’re lucky Brendan Shanahan doesn’t bench your ass for a game. I find that comment genuinely repulsive. It’s like Boston sports teams are actively trying to make you detest them. Well, you’ve succeeded.
» Continue reading “Capitals-Bruins Going To Game 7″

Figure today is as good a day as any to bust out the playoff bracket. Trade secret: I write a lot of these by hand, both because it’s impolite to use a computer during most of my classes, and because it means I can edit&revise on-the-fly, since I’m forced to re-read them. Otherwise I wouldn’t even read them the one time. So here’s what I wrote, verbatim:

Just did a bracket. Feels awful. I don’t, in any real way, believe the Caps can win the Cup. We’re not the best (I think I’ve made it clear that the Prez reflects that). But there’s a chance, like for every team that makes it to the postseason, that we can blindly luck into it. So here’s my Hope Bracket.

NYR-OTT: NYR, 5
BOS-WSH: WSH, 6
FLA-NJD: NJD, 4
PIT-PHI: PIT, 7
VAN-LAK: VAN, 4
STL-SJS: STL, 6
PHX-CHI: CHI, 5
NSH-DET: DET, 6

NYR-WSH: WSH, 7
PIT-NJD: PIT, 5
VAN-CHI: VAN, 7
STL-DET: DET, 5

WSH-PIT: WSH, 7
VAN-DET: VAN, 6

WSH-VAN: WSH, 6

(NB. I don’t even believe my Hope Bracket. Even if we did stumble blindly through the first two rounds, I don’t think there’s a shot we take the Penguins. They always win. They’re like the institutions in The Wire.)

My Realistic Bracket looks more like this (the West has been omitted since it’s the same):
BOS-WSH: BOS, 5 (There’s no way we don’t win the first game 4-1, then get swept the rest of the series. I, as Mark Messier or Daniel Alfredsson would say, guarantee it.) It’s also the one I submitted to Rinkotology.

NYR-NJD: NYR, 4
BOS-PIT: PIT, 6

NYR-PIT: PIT, 5

PIT-VAN: VAN, 6

Don’t ask my rationale: I don’t have one. It’s pure intuition, and, in the West, some coin tossing (“Have I watched even a single Blues game this season?!”). If I do use some semblance of logic, it’s so very basic as to be easily divined (“Well, Pittsburgh has Crosby AND Malkin!”). Actually, looking at it in retrospect, what I seem to have done was unconsciously pick my least favorite team in each match-up and assume they’d win, because I’m allergic to optimism (except in the case of VAN-PIT, where even I won’t let myself look at the worst-case scenario).

Here are the odds from Bovada as compiled by Puck Daddy. My favorite part, as always, are the prop bets. Unfortunately there aren’t that many really interesting ones; remember when TSN was keeping a big whiteboard tally of “too many men on the ice” penalties? Here the most interesting one is “how many times will Luongo get pulled” which admittedly makes me extremely happy.

Enjoy the game tonight: 7:30 on CSN-Washington, NESN, or, if you live out of market, NBCSports!

(Remember to check out the competish at A Cup A Bruin.)

It’s pretty much all there in the headline. He’s a center who was playing for Farjestäd in the Elitserien over in Sweden. Yes, that would give us 3 Swedish centers. GMGM’s got a thing.

So, not to second-guess His Swarthiness, but how crucial is this exactly? First off, McPhee supposedly went to Europe to talk to Evgeny Kuznetsov and instead comes back with his guy. Secondly, we may not be the deepest at center, but we’re like a kiddie pool at goalie. Thirdly, we also need a good shutdown defenseman more than we need a center, since a lot of our d-men seem a little more concerned with scoring than defending.

Still, I do love the Swedes. Hur kommer jag till flygplatsen!

By the way, I wasn’t joking last post about wearing a playoff speculation helmet. I write all of my posts like this:

Anyway, it’s defensemen day! Might as well start with the obvious…

-How about this Dmitry Orlov, eh? He got off to really lackluster start, but I’m getting more and more impressed with this kid. I bet he’ll be a swing player that no one sees coming. He went something like 20 shots without getting a goal, but he’s not a bad assist guy and he is rarely the direct cause of a goal against (unlike some d-men with more points who make a major defensive oopsie about biweekly).

-Okay, okay, we’ll talk about Chara. He’s a hundred feet tall and weighs three tons and can throw other players around like ragdolls. He’s also got 52 points, which is more than any of our d-men as well as all but two of our forwards. In our defense (ohohoho), Mike Green only played 32 games, some of which he was clearly not working at 100%. It’s been kinda tough overall to evaluate just how good this Caps team can be, since it’s not been all that many games that a full health Green and Backstrom and any of our goalie corps got to shine at the same time. On the other hand, Chara’s got a great shot at the Norris again this year. And speaking of great shots, let’s keep in mind his slapper can hit 108.8 mph oh my god under no circumstances should any of our guys try to shotblock.

-That said, I think it’s fair to call Green the other stand-out defenseman of this series. He plays a totally different style than Chara (who picked up the Norris the year Green was also nominated, not that I’m bitter…), and he’s shown that he can be utterly clutch when needs be. His nickname is “Game Over Green” due to his penchant for scoring OT winners.

-Does it annoy anyone else how people (by which I mean Canadians) call Chara “Chair-a”? C’mon. I have also heard on at least one occasion someone refer to him as “Zed-no.” Really? REALLY?

-The Broons’ number one d-pairing is Chara-Seidenberg (German!), which apparently manages to score points while still maintaining a creamy plus-minus AND averaging more TOI than any of our pairings, including Alzner-Carlson which is the most consistently paired duo. They do take way more penalties than us, though; Karlzon play like gentlemen in comparison. Which is all well in good if they’re looking to win the Lady Byng.

-In fact, the Big Bad Bruins are much more truculent while also being a higher-scoring team than us. I need to quit looking at stats — I’m pessimistic enough as it is. How about something light-hearted?

-The best thing that I can say about Roman Hamrlik: He’s a trained chef! So he’s got that going for him.

-Still, the best thing I can say about Joe Corvo is that his name is English for Jose Cuervo! I’ll bring the limes!

For information by people who actually know the Broons, rather than those who just open up the (lovely and wonderful) NHL.com stat pages and draw sweeping generalizations, check out A Cup A Bruin. More like BOOING, amirite?

Time for me to put on my Mark Messier-designed concussion-proof helmet and do some real live hockey analysis. Today: FORWARDS~!

Looking at the page of stats NHL.com has generously given the world, there are some sweeping generalizations to make. Let’s approach them in bulleted form:

-There are no 30-goal scorers. [points, laughs] The Capitals have one in Alex Ovechkin.

-They do, however, have 6 guys with 20+ goals, one with 29 and one with 28 (those would be Tyler Seguin and Brad Marchand). The Caps drop off dramatically from 38 goals with Ovie, then Semin with 21, and Chimera (?!) with 20. Hmmph.

-There are, however, four 60+ point scorers. (Seguin, Patrice Bergeron, David Krejci, and Milan Lucic). The Caps… have Ovechkin.

-Bergeron, Krejci, and Seguin also have the highest assist totals, which is understandable since they’re all centers.

Wait, WHAT?

That’s like, Pittsburgh-caliber s*** right there. Are you freaking KIDDING me? Their top three centers all have more points than our number 1 assist guy, who happens to be SEMIN, which is a huge problem all on its own. Milan Lucic, NOT A CENTER, has more assists than anyone on our team. Argh.

-Milan Lucic also manages to have 135 PIM, compared to our leader of Matt Hendricks with 95. Lucic is 6’4″ 220, while Hendy is 6′ 211. And he’s not even their number one fighter! That would be Shawn Thornton. And since it’s forwards day, I can’t even mention the Eastern Bloc nuclear experiment capable of throwing other players around like ragdolls. If we even try to get physical, the best case scenario is getting laughed out of the garden. Worst case: Milan Lucic gets convicted of manslaughter.

-I’m done. This is a horrible mismatch. They have plus-minuses through the roof. Their shooting percentages are spread more evenly than freshly rolled fondant. They’ve got guys with 60+% faceoff wins. I bet their Corsi ratings would make a madam blush.

-We have a wild imblance between our good guys and our meh guys. Ovechkin and Semin have been playing great, and our stats are skewed by the fact that Backstrom only played 42 games, because I can only hope that he would prove to be a better set-up man than MILAN LUCIC. With the exception of our top guys, they seem to just be better man-for-man. Shawn Thornton has more points than Matt Hendricks, who was at least nominally not signed for his toughness, and his hands are made of cement. He really was signed for how well he can reconstruct someone’s face! Argh!

Well, after that descent into hysterics, I can’t imagine why you WOUDLN’T swing by tomorrow, when I will break down the defensemen like Chara could break down a Cadillac… WITH MY BARE HANDS. Check out A Cup A Bruin if you’d like the evil perspective on the series, and leave anonymous taunting comments!

(Note: I do not advocate leaving anonymous taunting comments on the Bruins blog.)

(Feel free to do it on the Steelers blog, though!)

Like I said in my last post, I don’t really want to talk all that much about the Rangers, since I’m reasonably sure I’m going to have to do a big ol’ series preview post about them, and how many times can you say–

Hah! You just tried to trick me into revealing CRUCIAL SECRETS about the New York Rangers!

Anyway, happy last day of the regular season, and happy Super Saturday! Every team in the NHL is playing today, which makes it like Christmas, except your three-year-old cousin isn’t asking why you have a beer in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. Instead, it’s your friends!

I don’t really consider this game terribly important, since our seeding isn’t in our control. The game Caps fans should really be watching is the Panthers-Hurricanes game, and by “really be watching” I mean only if you have chronic insomnia. Are you kidding me? We’re likely going to face the Rangers because I’m pretty sure my intermural floor hockey team at least has a shot against the Hurricanes. And Florida only needs one point to lock down the 3 seed. Surely they can manage an overtime loss.

Today should be spent relaxing, content in the fact that we have a playoff spot, and hockey is a game of such randomness that regular season performance has very little to do with postseason performance. (The Presidents Trophy is the real indicator of the best team in the NHL, thanks to a little thing we like to call “sample size.” But it just doesn’t have that same ring to it.) And to help relax, why not take a gander at Puck Daddy’s Super Saturday Drinking Game? Look, I’ll start you off strong: one of my favorite tags on this blog is “Southleast Division!” That means chug!

The Capitals have clinched a playoffs berth! Yay!

At the expense of our new starting goaltender! Boo!

Last night’s regulation win over Florida guaranteed us the 8th seed in the East — and a first-round series against the New York Rangers. Tomorrow is Super Saturday, with every team in the NHL in action, and the results of our game and Florida’s game will determine whether or not we surpass them for the SE Div title and the 3 seed (which would have us face New Jersey). Florida faces Carolina, which should honestly be a gimme game. We, of course, face…

the Rangers.

There’s a chance we see the Blueshirts for the next 8 games. Our playoff record in the past against them has been pretty good, but they are running away with the East this season and could very well take the Presidents Trophy. I don’t really want to do a huge preview for them right now, mainly because it seems likely I’ll have write one in about two days, but needless to say this is a great team that could stomp all over us if we let them. And right now, that’s okay(-ish). We can consider this a trailer, before the actual movie starts. We just don’t know yet if it’ll be a thriller, a comedy, or possibly a horror.

And of course, the poor Sabres have been eliminated. I’ll try not to gloat the next time I run into BSF.

Now to the issue I’ve been dancing gingerly around. Former Cap (and Bavarian!) Marco Sturm ran into Neuvirth and collapsed onto him so that his left knee took the blow and bent awkwardly. He then writhed on the ground with an anguish that was felt by every Caps fan watching (and also everyone who has ever blown out their knee).

Holtby performed admirably in relief, but with Vokoun already out and Neuvirth’s future now shaky, it looks like we could go into the playoffs with the Hershey cadre of Holtby and Dany Sabourin. I honestly have no idea who is under Sabs on the depth chart, especially since Stingrays starter (and Bavarian!) Philipp Grubauer is done for the season after surgery. Olaf Kölzig is a part-time goalie coach…?

On the other end of the goalie spectrum, what the hell was up with Jose Theodore? He left after giving up 3, then came back after a commercial break. Did he eat some bad poutine?

The Capitals face the Rangers at 6:30 on Super Saturday, but games start at 1, so make sure you buy enough beer to last you through at least the early evening games!

It occurs to me that I enter an alarming number of conversations with people that an eavesdropper would be totally unable to understand due to the utter lack of context we provide. Yes, I categorize people primarily by their favorite team, and therefore require no antecedent for “we.”

You may remember my friend Buffalo Sabres Fan, whom I hadn’t seen since the day before the crucial Sabres-Caps game that we totally muffed. I ran into him again today, which was probably the best possible scenario of the next time to see him. I’ll relate the conversation below.
» Continue reading “Capitals Playoff Scenarios: A Dramatic Rendering”

With Buffalo’s regulation loss to Pittsburgh the Capitals once again, uh, control their destiny. We have the same number of points, same number of games, and the tiebreaker of Regulation/OT Wins (aka wins without counting shootout, aka ROW).

Now the only trick is to win one more, just ONE, or even just OTL while the Buffalos lose in reg. We play Montreal tonight, which should be a gimme win except for the Capitals there ARE no gimme wins. Every win is a struggle, even when it’s a desperation scenario. Buffalo is playing Toronto, which is pretty much free points for them, unless they’ve locked into “unbeatable when it no longer matters” mode already. (Spoiler alert!)

(Digression: Living the hectic jetsetting lifestyle that I do, I was in the car driving to Massachusetts while the Bruins game was on. You can only catch the radio stream in a very specific area around DC, and I totally forgot about it until about the last 3 minutes of the game, when we were up 2-0.

Advice: Never listen to the end of a Caps game while you’re driving. No one can squander a lead like our boys in red, and there’s nothing quite like feeling that good ol’ Capitals despair while behind the wheel.

Also: shootouts do not translate well to the radio, though in practical terms this just means the heart attack is more sudden.)

But! Tremendous news! The CSN news alert text messaging system works even in Western Mass, and I was greeted this snowy (?!) morn by the most beautiful words in the world:

Nicklas Backstrom confirms he will return to the Caps lineup tonight against Montreal!

Thanks, 43803! Sign up for text alerts for the Caps, and get gratuitous Wizards alerts as well!

Obviously I am overjoyed. I know I make a big deal about goalies around here, and nothing can capture my heart like a netminder, but Nicky Backs was my first love, and seeing (or at least imagining) his flowing blond mane take the ice tonight is the best unsolicited present I could ever receive. (Too bad I only brought my Ron Francis Whalers jersey with me to New England!)

I could say that tonight is a big game, but really, every game until mid-June is a big game. We need every win until the playoffs, and once in the playoffs (knock on wood!), obviously every game is crucial [insert NHL promo here].

In other news, Vokoun’s groin is acting up again, so that’s worrying. The Habs have just fired their GM, which I’m not sure has any real effect on the players, but will definitely be a factor when everyone else writes their game previews, so I might as well mention it.

AccuScore on my phone is telling me we have a 66.7% chance of winning, which tears me in half. The stat geek in me says “Good, that makes me feel better!” and the bleak, pessimistic fan of The Wire in me says “This will just make our inevitable loss taste much worse.”

The winner, of course, is the Toronto Maple Leafs fan in me, who is shouting drunkenly and making obscene gestures at the Canadiens.

NO HABS NO!