On Frozen Blog

Last season, the NHL and the media covering it blanketed all four Capitals-Penguins’ games with coverage focused exclusively on superstar rookies Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby. It was as if the other 42 athletes dressed for the games didn’t exist. One year later, the two hockey teams are receiving coverage in the leadup to tonight’s first matchup of the ’06-07 season between the teams.
It’s a highly healthy development, and credit goes to some startling and unexpected storylines. First, nearing mid-December, the Caps hold the eighth and final playoff spot in the Eastern conference, with the Penguins just three points behind. All four of last season’s Caps-Penguins’ games were contested by Eastern bottom-feeders. There was so little in standings stake at place. Both clubs would need health and a bit of luck to qualify for this season’s postseason, but tonight could be the preface to a much-anticipated, long overdue renewal of the springtime bitterness and drama that has bred beautiful bile between the teams’ supporters. And given the youth both clubs boast, it appears likely to be a renewal of considerable duration.
Unless the Penguins move to Hamilton. Or Las Vegas. Or Portland.
Joining Ovechkin and Crosby as high-profile, game-changing talents are Penguins’ rookie Evgeni Malkin and Caps’ almost-rookie Alexander Semin. These two are every bit as likely as the league’s 2005 poster boys to score the winning goal tonight. Malkin is a big offensive dynamo, as adept at playmaking as he is at scoring, and he’s evoking comparisons in western Pennsylvania to no. 66 (with less whining). Semin is a stickhandler almost nonpareil, with wicked wrists in the slot to match. If the game stays tight it will be intriguing to see if coaches Terrien and Hanlon load up their respective first lines with these young guns to try and win it.
Kris Beech entered this season largely as an afterthought among Caps’ and Penguins’ fans, but of late he’s helped shore up the revolving door of pivots on the Caps’ second line. A key part of the trade we no longer mention here at OFB, he’ll have perhaps almost as much motivation to perform well tonight as the first-line centers.
But perhaps the most surprising element leading into tonight is the play of Caps’ netminder Olie Kolzig. Last week Glen Hanlon claimed that the Caps regard him as the finest goalie in the league, and that Kolzig is playing the finest hockey of his distinguished career. It’s early still, but some around the league, including a few high-profile hockey talking heads, are lobbying on Kolzig’s behalf for the Vezina.
There’s strong preview coverage of tonight in the MSM. WaPost’s Tarik El Bashir, in addition to forecasting the Caps’ largest home crowd of the season tonight, dishes out some behind-the-scenes comings and goings at the practice skates the two teams held at Verizon Center yesterday. Dave Fay adroitly notes that the Penguins appear to be behind the Caps in the rebuilding schedule, having just jettisoned aged and unproductive John LeClair. And what the heck, here’s Pittsburgh Post Gazette Pens’ guy Dave Molinari and his take.
Monday night Mullet Madness at what used to be MCI Center. It’s good to have the hatred in bloom again.