Post game / Semin.

I've always bitched about the fact that Semin never bothered to learn English. It still pisses me off. That said....




More tomorrow.

We won the game. Post coming tomrrow.

Yeah, we won. We rocked the red and cheered our asses off, and we pulled this one out. We should NOT have had to pull out it. Yes the officials made some bad calls including the Mike Green disallowed goal. So what? We did it, but, we should not have had to do it that way against the ATL. Period. Here are a few photos from our seats to enjoy...































Yeah, we won. We rocked the red and cheered our asses off, and we pulled this one out. Thank you Semin for the hattrick! Love you, but you gotta do more.

We should have been better. This should have been a 'no problem' win. It was not. My writeup will be tomorrow. Green coming back sparingly was a big plus. BUT...the devil is in the details my friend. It should not have taken what it did against ATLANTA! No links in this because I just got home, and I am going to bed. See you all tomorrow. Thank you for reading! Please, comment!
Esp if you disagree!

Special shout out to Sam and William. You were both ON YOUR GAME tonight! Love you guys!
LET'S GO CAPS! Sorry for any and all mistakes, we just got home, and we had been drinking quite alot tonight. Go figure, its the caps! The drive us to it don't they?

Second Southeast Showdown

VS

GAME 8

It's been a very busy morning here in Del Ray on game day, so this post is going to be quick and dirty. After what has been a forgettable week for the Washington Capitals, they are looking to right themselves tonight in only their second divisional match up so far this young NHL season. The Atlanta Thrashers (3-4-0) fly into Verizon Center tonight looking to keep the Cap's winless in divisional play. The Caps fell to the Thrashers in Atlanta in their season opener, and only division game thus far. Tonight's game isn't just important for getting back on track and back into the win column, the Caps now trail the division leading, and NHL leading Tampa Bay Lightning (5-1-1) by 3 points in the standings. All games count, but points taken away from division rivals and added to the Caps totals are even more important, even this early in the season. If the Caps are going to go for the division title for a 4th straight season, all divisional games are a MUST WIN. Many times we have seen where standing points given away early on in the season have come back to haunt a team at the spring that is in the hunt for either a playoff spot, or a division championship.

Matt Bradley is still out and is day to day. Marcus Johansson and D.J. King will not play tonight, and Mike Green will be a game time decision. The Capitals called up both Jay Beagle and Mathieu Perreault from the Hershey Bears for tonight's game. They were on the ice for the morning skate, and presumably will play this evening. Here is Caps365's Mike Vogel's video report from the morning skate:




I have to say, I for one hope that Green is ready to come back and plays tonight. I know many Caps fans rag on Green, and complain about him, or just do not care much for him but I think he is a KEY PIECE that is missing right now. Sure, he has his faults, but the bottom line is he is big, he is physical, he does play decent D, and, he puts the puck in the net regularly. When I hear people complain about Green's defencive work, all I can think to myself is this: I would take Green over Sergei Gonchar ANY DAY, PERIOD! Perhaps its just me, but I seemed to have noticed that Alex Ovechkin has seemed to play more defence lately in Green's absence, and has struggled to find the twine of late. Perhaps getting Green healthy and back in the starting lineup is what this Caps team needs right now to get themselves and their anemic power play jump started. I think this will free up Ovechkin some, and will allow him to focus just a bit more on what he has done best since his arrival here, and that is score goals. The added goals from Green, especially on the power play should help out considerably as well. I'm rocking my red and heading out to Verizon Center here shortly so enjoy the game tonight and LET'S GO CAPS ! ! !

A Calling Out From The Top

Last year at this juncture of the young NHL season, the Washington Capitals were 3-2-2 after 7 games. This year they are slightly better after 7, at 4-3-0. Ah, but simple wins and losses do not tell the full story, as they rarely do. Belying these better numbers, are some rather troubling statistics if you dig a bit deeper. This year, after 7 games, the Capitals have:

• Two regulation wins
• Scored first once
• Scored more than two goals in regulation once
• No leads after one period
• One lead going into the third period
• Have scored a paltry 4 power play goals in 30 opportunities (13.3%) good for pedestrian 17th in the NHL.

So, if it seems like the Capitals have struggled, even when they have won games, you are not alone in noticing this. These seemingly small little facts, coupled with some rather visible on ice struggles have caught the eye of not only us the fans, but the Capitals biggest, most important fan, owner Ted Leonsis, as well.

Today on his blog, Ted's Take, the Caps top boss called out the team, and deservedly so. Simply put, he has said what many of us have been thinking for most of this week.


"It isn't them, its us. We aren’t a very good team right now. We have a lot of work to do in practice. We have to heal up as we seem to lose a player in every game to injury that jumbles up the lines. We are what our record says we are and right now, we are just an average NHL team."


These are just a few of the very candid thoughts Leonsis had on the current state of our beloved Caps today. You can click the link to his blog above to read the rest. The Caps are missing the services of several key players, not the least of which is top defenceman Mike Green. However for a team with the supposed depth the Caps are touted to have, this should not be too big of a hurdle to overcome. Suffice it to say, that all eyes will be watching very closely when the Atlanta Thrashers, the team that handed Washington its first loss of the season and an 0-1-0 start, come calling to Verizon Center on Saturday night.

After handing 2 straight wins and 4 standings points over to the Boston Bruins it will be interesting to see if the Capitals can get things together and will have revenge on their minds. You can find the box score for the debacle in bean town here, as well as the Washington Post and Capitals own postmortems here, and here respectively, and here is Bruce Boudreau's post game presser:



It should be noted that there has been one very bright spot thus far this season, and that is the Capitals penalty killing. At least it was until last night. Going into last nights game the Capitals were a perfect 24 for 24 (100%) on the PK. That all came crashing down last night, allowing goals on all 3 Bruins power play chances. Let's hope that was just a fluke because if the PK starts to struggle, the Caps are in some real trouble.

That said, this bad stretch is not the end of the world, but could it be an indication of things to come? Perhaps the Caps are not as strong as they were last season? What do you think? Can we handle the injuries and still play like the 2010 presidents trophy winners? Or should they possibly look into bolstering the blue line, or perhaps add a slightly less soft scorer? Or, are the Caps just simply snake bitten right now? Unable to find virtually open nets or capitalize on rather glaring mistakes of the opposing teams goaltender or defence? Let me know what YOU think. The comments are open. Let the fun begin.

BTGL Returns

After a full year off from the Blogging community as it relates to the Washington Capitals, I have decided to revive this blog. Oddly enough, There seems to still be a decent following here.

It has been a busy year for me, and a lot has gone one. While I have gone into semi retirement, it seems I have stayed every bit as busy. Having completed my Virginia Master Gardener certification through the Virginia Cooperative Extension, taken two scouting trips to Florida for a potential move there, moved twice, and continuing to be a very active Master Gardner volunteer in the communities of Arlington and Alexandria VA, I have not had much time to devote to writing about the team I love most, even though I still watch almost every single game.

I made a promise to myself while attending the Caps training camp this season that I would make an effort to write here at least once per week, for the 2010/2011 season, so here I am.

After a fantastic 2009/2010 season winning the Presidents trophy for the first time in franchise history for the NHL's best regular season record, the Capitals set season franchise records for: most points in a season (121), most wins (54), fewest (including over time losses) losses (22), winning their 3rd straight, 5 overall South East division championship, and 6th over all divisional championships. They also sold out Verizon Center for every single home game of the season, all but forcing them to introduce standing room only tickets. Ah, the Capitals playoff hopes seemed very promising indeed. The feeling around Verizon Center and Washington was that this could possibly, finally be our year. Many fans, including myself were hoping, if not almost expecting the Capitals to push deep into the post season.





Alas, this IS the Washington Capitals we are talking about. True to Capitals form the Capitals continued to take a page from their great history in the late 1890s, and could not shed the old ghosts of playoffs past, which came to call on them. The old "Choking Dogs" curse as it now seems it is, still has a firm grip on the Capitals.

The Capitals faced the #8 seed Montreal Canadiens in the opening round last spring, in what looked to be a fairly lopsided match up in the Caps favor. However, the Habs came into the phone booth and silenced the stunned sold out solid red crowd of Caps fans with a 3-2 overtime victory, planting the seeds of doubt in the minds of Caps fans everywhere. The Capitals would come back to win the next three straight, taking a 3-1 series lead. The series seemed to be all but assured to go the Caps way. Not so, as the ghosts of choking dogs past would have it. The Canadiens came back to win the next two games to force a deciding game 7 do be played on Verizon Center ice in front of the raucous red rocking Capitals faithful. If at any time in the Caps franchise history they were going to prove they were for real, and had shed the "Choking Dogs" moniker, surely, this was it. Having the best team the Caps have ever had put on the ice since they came to Washington in 1974, this HAD to be it. RIGHT?

WRONG!

Once again, the unthinkable, yet now oh-so-believable happened. The Capitals, after taking a 3 games to 1 series lead, LOST game 7 at home, 2-1 sending the sold out standing room only red clad crowd of Caps fans home, stunned and many in tears. An emotional train wreck. It's funny, because as much as I had hoped beyond all hope this would not happen, I had a gut feeling that it once again would. I even mentioned it to my partner in crime. The Capitals are definitely one of the KINGS of the monumental playoff failures in the NHL, and they just could not get out from under that. Having watched them do this many times in the past, I was neither shocked nor stunned. Just sad, and pretty numb. I have said this many times before, and I will say it again here now: Being a life long Washington Capitals Fan, is almost like being an abused spouse. They hurt you time after time, year after year, then make up for it some, give you hope that things will change for the better, only to do it all over again in some way, shape or form. Caps fans are addicts, we just have to keep trying it, hoping that each dose will be as good as the first, and the next high will take us higher than that, all the while knowing the fate we will probably ultimately endure. We know pain and suffering. Perhaps some of us subliminally like it? Who knows. But one thing is for sure, after all the pain and suffering we have endured in 35 seasons of Capitals Hockey, we keep coming back. For all of the newer Caps fans out there, This is nothing new, this is what it has always been like. Constantly sold out, raucous crowds packing the old Capital Centre in Landover, MD, filled with hope, and at times having immense joy, only to ultimately be let down, crushed. The only difference was back then, we all wore white and did the "whiteout" thing.

Yet, somehow we still believe. We're STILL HERE, and as I said, we keep coming back. I guess there is something to be said for loyalty huh? I suppose we can take solace in the fact we are not alone. We have something in common with Chicago Cubs fans. There are still a few NHL teams out there that are as old, or older than the Caps who have never won the Stanley Cup either. I guess those fans could possibly feel our pain too?

So here we are again, going into the 2010/2011 NHL season, same hopes, same dreams, same fears. Uncle Ted, and the Caps will surely come through, and take us to the promised land! Won't he? I for one, still believe. Ahhh to be a Caps fan... Hope springs eternal doesn't it?