By Dave Gilmore, on May 15th, 2012  The 2011-12 Capitals were as frustrating as a hockey team can be. From night to night they vacillated between inspiring play and sheer disorganized chaos.
They were a team that played for two head coaches, three starting goaltenders, and were without two of their stars for long stretches of the campaign. And yet, they not only made the playoffs, but made enough noise in them to take the number one-seeded Rangers within a few minutes of an Eastern Conference final.
Yet, there are few who’d call the season successful by the measures set out in September. It was supposed to be cruise control until the playoffs, where things were supposed to go much differently than they had in the team’s four previous attempts to break through to a Stanley Cup final. Instead, we got the manic collection of talent that reached its apex for brief stretches and its nadir for much longer ones.
To a certain extent, every year in the modern NHL is a reset of sorts. But for Washington, 2012-13 will absolutely look more different than any Caps team has in five seasons. Here are twenty burning questions we have about next year’s team, and a few futile stabs at some answers.
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By Dave Gilmore, on April 24th, 2012  Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images The NFL Draft has grown steadily in popularity every year since has been televised. Now a primetime event with an in-your-face buildup and breakdown, a portion of the public is understandably suffering from “draftlash,” a knee-jerk aversion to all things speculative and celebratory about the league’s annual labor influx.
Is the NFL Draft over-hyped and over-analyzed? Almost certainly. Is it still the best off-season event on the calendar of the best sport on the planet? Absolutely. Here’s five reasons why. READ MORE >>>
By Dave Gilmore, on April 17th, 2012  Perhaps I’m just looking for a silver-lining after last night’s 4-3 loss by the Capitals to the Bruins. Or maybe I’m just geeked up for summer movie season. Being down two games to one isn’t an insurmountable hole from which to climb, but in the numbness that happens beyond the loss has me wondering why this series has already been so emotional.
The reason? The same reason I’m trying not to get my hopes up for Marvel’s The Avengers. It’s all about the villains.
Milan Lucic, Brad Marchand, Zdeno Chara and to a lesser extent Tim Thomas are like an all-star team of infuriating opponents all wearing the same sweater. They are coached by the joyless Claude Julien. They dress in black. They hail from the most obnoxious den of sports fandom in the Western world. Oh yeah, and they are the reigning conquerors of Lord Stanley’s Cup. They are, unequivocally, the greatest villains the Caps could’ve drawn for a first-round series. READ MORE >>>
By Dave Gilmore, on April 10th, 2012  “The whole thing is quite hopeless, so it’s no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably won’t come.” – Frodo, The Lord of the Rings
The Washington Capitals are 30 to 1 longshots to skate with Lord Stanley. Only the Florida Panthers, who bested them at almost every crucial juncture of the season and won the Southeast, have worse chances (40 to 1).
You can count on one hand the number of Capitals who are playing the best hockey of their careers, and none of them are guys whose jerseys are readily available for purchase in the team store. If you were to list the Capitals three goaltenders in reverse order of playoff readiness, you would get a list of the Capitals three goaltenders sorted by severity of injury.
There is, frankly, little rational reason to hope for anything other than an unceremonious dismissal and the dismantling of the roster. Not a single ESPN analyst out of 12 picked the Capitals to win their first round series against the Bruins.
The 2008-09, 2009-10, and 2010-11 Capitals did not wear the favorite hat well. Maybe the underdog is simply more their style.
And if anyone is an underdog, it’s these maddening 2011-12 Capitals. READ MORE >>>
By Dave Gilmore, on April 3rd, 2012  There are few structures that mean as much to me as Oriole Park at Camden Yards. I didn’t go there a single time last summer.
The Yard couldn’t have caught me during a more formative twenty years of my life. From age nine to 29, it has been my place of pilgrimage to the confusing and enriching church of baseball. Now it sits closer to me than it ever has before. I see it more often than I see the house I grew up in, 23 miles due north. It’s my stone and brick Velveteen Rabbit, a passing reminder of something that was so seminal to my life at times, and so distant and vestigial at others. READ MORE >>>
By Dave Gilmore, on March 30th, 2012  I like fantasy baseball in theory. I love drafting my team, reading the prognostications and listening to the podcasts that cover the game. Somewhere around July, especially if you’re in a rotisserie-style league, the grind wears on me and I start to lose interest. There has to be a better summer time-wasting activity than watching my closers lose their jobs and seeing my entire outfield perpetually on the DL.
Our esteemed editor emailed me the other day asking if I’d be interested in playing in a summer fantasy movie league inspired by the NSFW Show‘s version of the game. Within an hour, I had the document cointaining the draft pool and the rules drawn up. This is what I’ve been craving to get me through to next fantasy football season.
I’ve experimented with things like this before, organizing an ill-fated but mentally stimulating fantasy rock music league with some of my friends. I’ve played every “run your own movie studio” themed video game that’s ever been made. I watched all of “Entourage.” I know, I’m not proud of it either.
Fantasy summer movies are fun, simple, and inclusive. If someone nails the technology side of things and offers this as a web or mobile application, it could be the next big thing. Until then, we’re like roto baseball players in the 1980s, combing through newspapers and hand-writing our league’s story.
Here’s how we’ve set up our league, and why you should go do this immediately. READ MORE >>>
By Dave Gilmore, on March 27th, 2012  Photo: Mitchell Layton For the second season in a row, small sample size notwithstanding, 22-year old Braden Holtby has been the Washington Capitals’ best goaltender. For the second win-or-die game in a row, coach Dale Hunter is giving the nod to Holtby tonight against Buffalo.
In his NHL career, Holtby has played in 18 games, and in all of them has displayed a confidence and swagger in front of the net that shows a visible boost in the 18 men in front of him. Even the four games he’s been lit up in the past two years, the young goaltender hasn’t been fazed.
Hunter might be the paragon of the Capitals organization, but the rough road the first-year coach has seen has exposed the fact that the team’s current makeup might not match Hunter’s coaching preferences. With three good goalies to choose from, Hunter is calling on number 70 in crunch time. Holtby, the Canadian who plays like a defenseman who happens to wear a mask and glove, might be Hunter’s best match in net and the Capitals best chance at the playoffs. READ MORE >>>
By Dave Gilmore, on March 20th, 2012  The NFL is benevolent socialism in a vacuum. Most people understand this, but few fans encourage their teams to act on it. Perhaps the fact that our country fought a 50-year Cold War against socialism that many fans still remember makes it hard to embrace this reality. It’s a shame really, because exploiting the cheapest labor possible at every position under the salary cap is exactly how you weather a system that knocks everybody down to the middle eventually.
As the first wave of free agency transactions have come and gone, the Ravens find themselves poached of some of their (previously) most efficient talent. Fans are upset, naturally, at the loss of integral pieces to the puzzle such as Jarret Johnson and Cory Redding. But the way the NFL is structured, losing players to the free market can often help a team more than it hurts.
I appreciate Johnson, Redding, Ben Grubbs, Tom Zbikowski, and the other players lost and leaving for their contributions. As newly signed free agents, they are all likely overpaid. Good for them, and good for the Ravens for not entering bidding wars to maintain the status quo.
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By Dave Gilmore, on March 6th, 2012  Pro football is a grown man’s game. I mean that in the sense that, while they are coached and instructed, ultimately everything good and bad carried out on the field is done by grown men. They are free to choose any profession they want to seek out, and they choose to play football in the NFL willingly.
The NFLPA, as the players’ union, would obviously like there to be a unified front on player sentiments regarding the hot-button issues facing the league. In the most recent era, it has been lasting head injuries and the things that cause them, and in the most recent weeks, it has been incentives to injure opponents. Neither create a “safe working environment” by OSHA standards, but players seem to be much more comfortable with their own demise than someone profiting from it.
And that is the problem with the NFL today. There is not a unified front on the head trauma issue because the player pool is in a period of transition. What the league is transitioning to is a mystery, but there is a division between those willing to absorb the implied risk of a pro football career and those who claim to have been (metaphorically) blindsided. Current players bristle at a quick 15-yard flag or a fine for helmet-to-helmet contact. They feel the rules have been changed on them mid-flight. The liked the old way better. The way where the assumed risk was still the same, but the only ones suffering or profiting from a dangerous tackle was the tackler and tacklee themselves. Now, the NFL takes a bite out of the tackler’s paycheck, and the guys in the other jerseys get 15 precious yards. The players who are upset at the recent allegations of bounty systems among teams aren’t mad at the actions, they’re mad at the outcomes. Many are not calling for the game to be played differently. They simply want to absorb the good and the bad of their decision to play pro football like grown men.
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By Dave Gilmore, on February 28th, 2012  The last opportunity for there to be fundamental change in the 2011-12 Washington Capitals has come and gone.
The dust has cleared on Monday’s relatively quiet trading deadline, with several teams tinkering in a flurry of last-minute deals. Going into the final day of transactions, it seems the Caps were poised to make a deal, either conceding the final twenty games of the season to fate and building for tomorrow, or refusing to back out of a tight race for the back door of the NHL playoffs and adding temporary reinforcements.
Days ago, vice president and general manager George McPhee seemed open to strategies, depending on where the Capitals, now in 9th place in the Eastern Conference, stood at the trading deadline. Ultimately, he adopted neither. As McPhee explained the lack of deals, “there wasn’t anything there that would’ve been the right thing for our club.” McPhee went on to elaborate that there were only a few sellers league-wide, and a few were in the Capitals’ division, making player movement a difficult task in an already tough market.
Given the context of the current roster and the season it has underwent, McPhee was right in not forcing movement. If an ideal trading parter wasn’t available, then the Capitals were faced with the possibility of taking a loss on whatever deal they made. Mortgaging the team’s future for a temporary boost over the final 20 games would’ve been the fan-friendly move, but ultimately would’ve hurt a future version of the franchise that has a healthy first line center for 82 games and a more varied scoring attack. Writing off 2011-12 as a loss, with so many possible points left on the table, in order to stockpile young players and draft picks, would’ve proved just as detrimental. You can’t win a Stanley Cup if you don’t make the playoffs, and even when you come in as an also-ran, you cannot throw away a perfectly achievable invitation to the 16-team tournament because the circumstances aren’t ideal. READ MORE >>>
By Dave Gilmore, on February 21st, 2012  I hope that was as bad as it gets. It’s hard to imagine how it could get much worse than last night’s 5-0 loss against a depleted Carolina Hurricanes squad. Cal me an optimist, but if that’s the low point, and the team can pull it together for the final 23 games of the season, this campaign won’t be a lost cause.
That is not to say, with less than a week until the NHL’s trade deadline, that the status quo is good enough to make the playoffs. Change needs to and will occur. The Capitals are too close to the Eastern Conference’s top eight teams to be sellers, but with a nearly-full payroll and the very real chance there will be no postseason hockey in D.C., general manager George McPhee will also need to be a very cautious buyer.
This is life in the Phone Booth. Things are never as good, or bad, as they seem. Even after the debacle at RBC Center, the 2011-12 Capitals are not a lost cause. Yet. READ MORE >>>
By Dave Gilmore, on February 14th, 2012  He milked the recruiting cycle from every conceivable angle. Untold promises, swaying of high school teammates, cryptic tweets, leading public appearances, and photos in full Buckeye attire. When the dust settled on Friday night, Stefon Diggs became a Maryland Terrapin.
I wrote in September about how Maryland’s garish new uniform set is designed to appeal to players like Diggs (who I mentioned specifically as a marketing target for the new threads). There were certainly many factors that played into Diggs’ decision to pick the Terps over Ohio State, Auburn, and Florida, but if it’s not clear from the photo, Diggs likes the gear. Diggs himself, in tandem with a re-tooled roster and coaching staff, will represent the new marketing tool for rebuilding a program that could be described as the ACC’s most intriguing “fixer-upper.”
The Terps will win more that two games in Randy Edsall’s second year as head coach. Diggs will contribute to that, certainly, but his impact will be felt exponentially if he stays at the forefront of the team’s identity. The most prized recruit, perhaps in school history, is actually the best recruiting tool Maryland currently has. READ MORE >>>
By Dave Gilmore, on February 7th, 2012 
The loss is a tricky statistic. It rarely tells the whole story, and in Guthrie’s case, doesn’t even come close. Jeremy Guthrie, it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.
In the past five seasons, Jeremy Guthrie has absorbed 65 Oriole losses. In other words, 17% of the time they played “Hard Day’s Night” as the stadium cleared out, an L was going next to Guthrie’s name on the score sheet. In those five seasons, there have been well over 100 pitchers-of-record in Baltimore. For perspective, loss-machine Daniel Cabrera did not account for as many defeats (59) in his five-year reign as Oriole whipping boy. Nobody has taken the brunt of this era of Baltimore baseball harder than Jeremy Guthrie.
This is not to say that Jeremy Guthrie is blameless in every one of his losses. Lack of run support has long plagued Baltimore’s top pitchers, but Guthrie had his share of throws he’d like back. In 2009, he surrendered a league-leading 35 home runs to opposing batters. In 2010, presumably to reel opponents’ power numbers in, Guthrie hit the second-most batsemn in the AL (16).
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By Dave Gilmore, on January 31st, 2012  The only thing more obsolete than the NFL Pro Bowl is complaining about the NFL Pro Bowl. Fans have been tired of the former for years and have now just given up on the latter and simply stopped watching. Making the Pro Bowl the NFL’s black sheep event is warranted for all the usual reasons people list.
There may have been a time when the NFL needed the Pro Bowl. That time is not 2012. I’m not propsing that it be tweaked, moved or reinvent it. The NFL needs to cut bait and simply can the Pro Bowl as we know it. So what does the league do the week before or the week after the Super Bowl? Tap the one asset the NFL has where there is any headroom for growth: new talent. College football all-star games are already suffering from “bowl sprawl,” with five major games in January. The future NFL star is the lowest-hanging fruit the NFL could possibly ask for.
Imagine if the NFL (with the cooperation of the NFLPA, which already stages a college all-star game), put on a top-flight all star game in Hawaii or Florida featuring the best draft-eligible players. The NFL Draft and Combine grow larger every year and this would be a great opportunity for NFL fans not immersed in the college game become familiar with their future NFL stars. Who wouldn’t watch that? It’s a slam-dunk. Roger Goodell, earn your extension and make this happen.
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By Dave Gilmore, on January 24th, 2012  It’s been an emotional 48 hours. Let’s call it a “cooling off period.” If you said anything bananas on Facebook or Twitter or to an entire room full of your friends, so be it. All is forgiven, tensions were running high, after all. It was an abnormally stressful situation in perhaps the biggest game in a decade for Baltimore Ravens fans.
Now that the cooling off period is over, and you’ve perhaps retracted or rethought some of the things you said or wrote, how do you feel towards Billy Cundiff? If you’re not experiencing something nearing “empathy” by now, that’s a problem.
I’m not saying you can’t be frustrated or wring your hands over the should-haves and what-ifs. That’s natural when you’re so invested in a cause that fails, especially one you have no direct control over. However at this point, the deconstruction of the Ravens 23-20 loss needs to be about the game and the playoff run in its entirety, not a single play (which happened to be the last play of the season).
Billy Cundiff did as we all should and will do in life: he tried and failed. There is literally no reason for Cundiff to have not given his best effort under the circumstances. Things could’ve gone down differently. A timeout could’ve been burned, a catch could have been made, a block could’ve been sealed just a bit longer – nobody is faultless on an NFL Sunday. Nobody. AFC Championship games included.
So ruling out the fact that Cundiff didn’t try and make the kick, what are we left with? The answer is that we are forced to confront our own doubts, fears, failures, and fallibility. If you’re screaming at Billy Cundiff still a day or two later, Google mapping Lee Evans’ home or a deranged Niners “fan” sending death threats to Kyle Williams via Twitter, you have a lot more going on than fandom. READ MORE >>>
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