And here I thought that Canadiens were nice people. Not last night.
The home crowd in Winnipeg had an audible “Crosby’s better” chant going during Friday’s Capitals-Jets game.
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Unfortunately for you, it’s too late to update your NCAA tournament brackets. Capitals Captain Alex Ovechkin submitted his bracket this morning and teammate Joel Ward snapped a picture and tweeted it.
Ovechkin picked Kentucky to beat Alabama in the finals and went with the unique “circle the team” method of selection.
Join Zach, Patrick and Matt for this week’s edition of the best sports podcast in Baltimore, the BSR Podcast. Here are some of the topics discussed on this week’s show: Matt Relives The Hangover
Fantasy Baseball With The Fantasy God
Podcast: Play in new window Matt Hendricks certainly isn’t the biggest name on the Capitals star studded roster, but in my opinion he should be the go to guy during shootouts. His pump fake seems to fool goal tenders every time and last night he sealed the deal against the Islanders as the Caps climbed back from a three goal deficit to edge New York 5-4 (SO). Now that you’ve seen the goal, you’ve got to listen to John Walton’s call. It’s embedded below. “Down goes Grabovski,” Joe Beninati said as Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin pummeled the Leafs’ Mikael Grabovski.
Apparently Alex Ovechkin was back in Bristol this week for a photo shoot. We don’t know all the details of Ovi’s feature on ESPN, but we do know that it features him in a tuxedo sitting on a king’s throne. Here’s a a picture that ESPN’s Lindsay Czarniak tweeted.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Joe Beninati‘s call on Comcast for the Capitals, but last night John Walton on the radio side stole the show. Walton’s call of Alex Ovechkin’s overtime game winner over the Islanders is one of the best I’ve heard in a long time. Hear it below the video. Three in a row, keep it up boys.
Kristoffer Backstrom, Nick’s brother, didn’t seem happy when 3 PM rolled around on Monday. ”Don’t understand why #caps didn’t do any trades(s) will be interested to hear the interview from GM McPhee,” Kristoffer tweeted an hour after the deadline. But that wasn’t all. ”I find it hard to believe that there was nothing out there.. Anything is for sale for right price,” he later added. Personally, I tend to side with ESPN.com’s Pierre LeBrun who have kudos to McPhee for taking a knee. ”One big trade isn’t going to clear star center Nicklas Backstrom of his concussion symptoms,” LeBrun wrote. ”McPhee did the hardest thing of all, resist the short-term fix. That takes guts.”
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 >>> The Capitals will take goals however they can get them. Even if it means one of their centers has to put one in the net off his face. And that’s exactly what happened to Mathieu Perrault last night.
After Washington’s 5-2 loss in Ottawa on Wednesday, things got a little worse. Typically playoff teams enter April with their goaltender on a hot streak, but in Washington the opposite appears to be happening. On their five game road trip the Capitals were outscored 13-5 and coach Dale Hunter has had enough. “Goaltending is a big part of the game and we need good goaltending,” Hunter said according to WaPo’s Katie Carrera.
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 >>> “Normally you can try and take some positives out of games, tonight, nothing,” Troy Brouwer to 106.7 The Fan’s Sky Kerstein after the Capitals 5-0 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes. “Florida lost yesterday, we were looking good, we were excited about today and then we come out and just flat, just terrible.” Washington put themselves in a 2-0 hole five minutes into the game and Dale Hunter pulled Tomas Vokoun in hopes of stopping the bleeding. It didn’t work as Andrea Nodl put one past Michal Neuvirth with :30 seconds remaining in the first period to put Washington down 3-0 heading into the first intermission. “We weren’t ready to play, gave up chances, gave the puck away, didn’t get the puck in deep, just all around embarrassing.” Brouwer followed Matt Hendricks’ lead, who fought twice in the second period, and dropped the gloves in the third to square off against Justin Faulk.
I’d want to slash my teammate too. Katie Carrera of the Washington Post tweeted on Thursday that Ovi and Wideman “got into it a bit” after exchanging slashes, shoves and a stare down battle during their morning practice. The spat between the Captain and the All-Star was all in front of General Manager George McPhee, who told Katie Carrera he’s not fine with the intensity during practice. “Yeah we don’t mind that at all. We’re not running a Sunday school; this is pro hockey,” McPhee said. ”That would have been a good one. That would have been a rock star versus the all star.”
While Tebow-mania dominated the football season, Lin-sanity has taken over the slowest sports time of the calendar year. The guys break down Jeremy Lin’s rise to the top, discuss the latest Orioles news, talk some Terps football and of course Kate Upton’s SI swimsuit issue cover. Here are some of the topics discussed on this week’s show. The Orioles Can’t Seem To Catch A Break
Capitals Are On The Outside Looking In As NHL Trade Deadline Approaches
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The last opportunity for there to be fundamental change in the 2011-12 Washington Capitals has come and gone.
I hope that was as bad as it gets. It’s hard to imagine how it could get much worse than last night’s 
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