This New Years Eve the Bears hosted first-place Philadelphia at Giant Center and sent the Phantoms home 2-1 losers. With the win the Bears moved within 5 points of first place in the East. Unbelievable. And they’re poised to get both Dean Arsene and Eric Fehr back in the lineup in 2008.
A New Years toast to new Bears’ bench boss Bob Woods.
U.S. 5, Finland 0. And it’s still early.
JVR has already tallied a goal and three helpers. Colin Wilson has two goals and a helper. He’s a 2008 draft eligible — think he’s helping his cause for next June with this WJC showing?
Mercifully the second period has ended for the Finns. Updates forthcoming.
Update: Joe Palmer in the American net for period three. His first appearance of this WJC.
Update: There’s been a change in scoring from the first period — Colin Wilson’s now being credited for the U.S.’s first three goals, a natural hat trick.
The Finns have showed some third period heart, notching two power play tallies. It’s 5-2 U.S.
Final: U.S. 5, Finland 3. That third period will give what might have been a cocky bunch of unbeaten Americans something to stew on on New Years Eve. Or: my NHL scout was right about U.S. backup netminder Joe Palmer:
“Palmer has an .880 save percentage in the NCAA. One scout who does exclusively college hockey told me he thought Palmer was one of the worst goalies in the college game.”
But who needs negative thoughts in victory on New Years Eve? Not only is a win a win at the WJC, going undefeated through preliminary round play is stellar by any standard.
Congrats to Team USA, who now rest through the quarterfinals and await a semi-final opponent on Friday.
Give the NHL credit when credit is due: the marketing for tomorrow’s game has been — most particularly by NHL standards — superb. Last Friday’s USA Today had lavish coverage of the game and of outdoor hockey in general. The league has fed superb images of the construction of the rink to scores of electronic media, making the Winter Classic a staple of Web sports navigating for at least the past week. And the league is wisely using its broadcast outlet, the NHL Network, as a lead coverage catalyst. Take a look at the broadcast schedule there today, for instance:
1:30 - 4:00 p.m.: Winter Classic Preview
4:00 - 6:00 p.m.: Heritage Classic (Montreal vs. Edmonton)
6:30 p.m.: Sidney Crosby Revealed (skip that) (as if he hasn’t been revealed already enough)
7:00 - 9:30 p.m.: Replay of the Winter Classic Preview
Buffalo of course is nobody’s idea of a holiday destination, but it is in New York, and that has a lot to do with the league getting the coverage it is for this gig. Clearly, it learned a lesson from the Heritage Classic. That was a magnificent event, including as it did the Old Timer’s Game featuring Wayne and his old Oiler teammates and some greats from the Habs’ past. The feature game itself was competitive and well played. But the whole event took place in frozen-over Alberta. It was broadcast on Hockey Night in Canada, but there was zero U.S. television coverage.
There is no longer much in the way of compelling college pigskin on New Years Day anymore, larded as it is with three- and four-loss, third- and fifth-place-in-their-conference teams about the networks. A national champion is never crowned on New Years Day anymore. That’s a travesty.
Scores of NHLers in recent days have expressed support for the league’s staging an outdoor game every year. They speak of games like this with uniform enthusiasm. New Years is the perfect occasion for it.
The NHL has something fantastically distinctive with outdoor hockey. There’s nothing the other sports can do to match it for intrigue. Better: it’s anything but forced, schlocky fabrication — it’s a return to hockey’s roots. And fans, in Canada and the U.S., are responding, in droves. Sabres’ officials last week claimed that they could have sold 150,000 tickets for tomorrow’s game. I don’t dount it.
One hundred thousand of them likely would have come from Toronto.
At one point during the post-game show last night Jonathon had Nicklas Backstrom on the phone from the Scotiabank visitor’s room, and at the end of the exchange Jonathon told his listeners, “You could just hear Backstrom’s smile [on the call].” Great radio personalities showcase an empathy with their guests and listeners, and this Jonathon regularly does, most particularly with his callers.
A game like last night’s makes fans want to reach out and connect with the rest of the supporting community, in something more personal than message boards, and a program like Jonathon’s allows precisely that. Perhaps a figure like Jonathon suffers from commerical radio’s larger decline the past decade-plus, but if the Caps make a notable push in the standings in the season’s second half, Caps’ fans are going to want to hitch a ride on this radio program. Bruce Springsteen has a catchy little diddy out these days titled, ‘Radio Nowhere,’ but last night, listening to Jonathon’s program, I felt like I was lodged in Radio Somewhere Warm, Informative, and Fun.
I was Blackberried during the Saturday night family holiday gathering, and the required 36 or 38 third-period updates I could have done without. But once home, I was able to have every goal, and some other notable plays, replayed for me by visiting the Caps’ home page and streaming the video highlights found in the game recap box. I hadn’t been in a position this season to need that before, but now I appreciate it.
Donald Brashear’s now legendary maiming of Chris Neil, however, was not included in the package. I’m going to have to ask the Caps’ communications folks about either the oversight or some more sinister reason for excluding it. I mean, it’s Christmas time.
From my chum Marleen this morning I received not only a faithful blow-by-blow summary of the slow dance — “Brash uncorked 18 straight haymakers on Neil’s head . . . the announcers claimed just 15, but I counted, rewound the Tivo and slow-motion counted, and it was 18 glorious noggin-knockers” — but a powerful sense of my needing to make the YouTube retrieval of this medieval deathmatch my Sunday obligation. It took a bit of digging, but oh was it ever worth the effort, and now it’s recorded, as it should be, forever for posterity at OFB.
JoeB, previously noted appropriately for his astute call of Alex the Gr8’s greatest-ever goal in Phoenix his rookie year, rises again to the occasion in Scotiabank Saturday night.
“Oh my goodness . . . gracious . . . Chris [Neil] go down already.
“Chris Neil ate about 15 [Donald Brashear] lefts.”
We can forgive JoeB, during all that excitement, for not fact-checking the fist-throw count with Marleen in real time.
Tarik’s lead this morning, I thought, was letter-perfect:
“If Alex Ovechkin was less than 100 percent because of stitches in his thigh, it wasn’t evident Saturday night against the Ottawa Senators.”
One might have attributed last month’s 4-1 triumph in Ottawa to the Sens taking the then victory-starved Caps lightly, but what now? Tuesday’s third matchup of the season between the teams will tell us a lot, I think, about the sort of mettle Bruce Boudreau’s players will take into the season’s second half, for they’ll host one ornery Sens’ squad in a late matinee then. But win or lose Tuesday, the Caps have already delivered an interesting potential storyline between these clubs. If — if — the Caps could somehow scratch and claw their way into the East’s eighth spot at season’s end, they’d very likely face the Sens in the postseason’s first round. And regular season MoJo between clubs often influences playoff karma. An interesting, thought, no?
I could get used to these kind of winter-time Sunday mornings.
I looked at this jersey and wondered who exactly was the target audience for this style. It’s the kind of thing I could see someone wearing as they work on their car. Perhaps it’s intended for summer wear, seeing as how regular jerseys get a little warm in July. During the season, it might be ideal for someone who wants to show off their guns. Just guessing here, because I have no clue who would want to wear this.
However, if women have to be subjected to pink jerseys, there’s no reason why bad fashion should be limited to one sex, or even one sport: it’s an equal opportunity crime. I can only surmise that someone checked out the sleeveless jerseys that some MLB teams wear and thought, “What a great idea! The NHL needs this!” Never mind that no fan in his/her right mind would need or want one of these to wear to a hockey game, since it doesn’t get hot enough in the arena to warrant one. Not to mention that the team doesn’t wear these jerseys either, but let’s not focus on the details. If anyone can shed some light on this fashion faux pas, please let me know; I’m genuinely intrigued by this item.
Ruegsegger, van Riemsdyk (tourney’s leading scorer), and Mike Carmen with tallies today, Carmen’s the game-winner, in the Americans’ 3-2 victory over Russia. Meanwhile, Sweden stunned the Canadians 4-3.
A number of you emailed me overnight wondering what wager I had with Dmitry Chesnokov for this game. The answer rhymes with Filet-at-Smith-and-Wolenskys.
The 9-pt. U.S. has clinched first in its group and is assured of a place in the World Junior semifinals. Their opponent? Either Canada or Finland.
The U.S. will skate again on Monday against Finland.
On Wednesday night a crowd of 20,511 crammed the United Center to see Chicago defeat Nashville 5-2. The sellout was the largest crowd to see a hockey game in Chicago in eons. And: the game was televised for those in Chicago who couldn’t get a ticket or make it to the game.
With Havlat having missed lots of hockey this season the Hawks are 19-15-2, boast two of the most exciting young guns in the game in Patrick Kane and Jonathon Toews, and they’ve defeated the best team in hockey, Detroit, all four times they’ve played thus far.
It’s fantastic to see this Original Six franchise very relevant again in one of America’s great sports towns.
The U.S. outshot Switzerland 51-18 Friday.
The 2-0 Americans face 2-0 Russia Saturday.
For some moments, commendably and without precedence under such duress, we silently admired the array of festive holiday cards hanging in warming splendor across the crown of the dining room’s entrance. Marleen however, mere seconds into our meditation, delivered a troublemaker’s thoughts and shattered permanently all aim at tranquility.
“I don’t understand why we don’t crosscheck them in the throat, forcefully.”
By “them” Marleen was referring to Sidney Crosby the power play QB, Sidney Crosby the Hart Trophy holder, Sidney Crosby the omnipresent marketing symbol of Versus, Hockey Night in Canada, and Reebok and undoubtedly the name of Gary Bettman’s next grandchild.
So provoked, I sought to restore some semblance of a spirit of charity in a sacred time in the Christian calendar.
“Penguins versus Baathist regimes, I root for Baathist regimes. Easy call, too.”
Marleen’s husband Michael at this moment became preoccupied with the age-old dilemma for Caps’ fans taking in a game between the two Pennsylvania franchises.
“Overtime results, in which both teams earn points, are particularly painful,” he noted.
Once again, I appealed — however naively — to our room’s better angels.
“Catholic catechism,” I interjected, “in such instances instructs us to light candles in support of a high tally of reserve list designating injuries, on both sides.”
“Enough of them,” Michael then clarified, “so that if the schedule denotes a home-and-home between them, night two requires the wholesale callup of a majority of the rosters for both clubs’ farm teams.”
The appeals of religious dictates generally are of limited utility with my friends Mike and Marleen — they are secular fatalists, and the moreso on Caps’ visits to Pennsylvania with a McCreary or Fraser or McGough wearing stripes then. With this in mind, I next vaguely referenced a relatively obscure United Nations resolution (”S87″ I called it) that forbade both unilateral and coalition humanitarian aid to a Pittsburgh stricken by natural disaster.
“What prompted that?” Michael asked.
“The Nedved and Jagr mullets,” I replied.
Next I reached for the remote and scrolled fast away from the cable sports sections of the torture chamber TV and to an oldies-movies outlet to try and temper our room’s bubbling bile. I landed on a Gene Kelly film.
“He’s from Pittsburgh,” Michael pointed out.
“Cross-check him in the throat,” Marleen ordered.
Moments later, he was introduced to the media as Capitals Head Coach, no qualifiers attached. Seconds into his remarks he referenced how the move allowed the Hershey Bears’ organization to move forward and make Bob Woods the Bears’ official head coach. Then he pointed out how he felt about the Capitals’ organization.
“The [Capitals'] organization has been so good to me. I just want to win for them.
“The goal is to be here a long time.”
He acknowledged that the decision by General Manager George McPhee allowed him to be “a little more comfortable” behind the bench. But he also signaled the limitation that came his way with this move: “until further notice I’m here.”
“By no means does this mean that there’s any comfortability in my situation,” he added.
Rather immediately media were able to infer that this decision addressed the current Caps’ season and not necessarily the next season or the season after that. Perhaps that’s because the general manager himself won’t necessarily determine who’ll coach the Caps next season. But at season’s end, or some time appropriate in the offseason, somebody is certain to sit down with Boudreau and take full inventory of the wins and losses and general state of things Caps, and decide more fully his future with the team.
The head coach was asked about his family back in Hershey, and whether they’d be joining him here and settling in a bit. His reply was so hockey, and therefore so Boudreau.
“My son is his team’s only goalie, so they won’t be moving down.”
The head coach was asked about the Caps’ overall improvement the past month. Both the power play and penalty kill are appreciably better, and the team has scored about a goal a game more under Boudreau compared with Glen Hanlon’s Caps. But perhaps what’s most telling about Boudreau’s impact is his team’s overall competitiveness. Even in a seemingly lopsided score like the 5-2 setback against the Habs earlier this month, Boudreau noted, the game’s outcome wasn’t determined until well into the third period, his team competed hard until the end, and Habs’ coach Guy Carbonneau afterward would admit that his club was outplayed. Detroit Head Coach Mike Babcock would admit to the media after his club’s shootout victory over the Caps how fortunate the Wings were to win.
There are more wins than losses under Coach Boudreau, and the losses suffered are hard-earned by the victors.
But if Boudreau really wants to make a lasting impression in D.C., he need look no further than his challenge tonight, in Pittsburgh, the House of All Horrors for the Caps. Boudreau might know these two rosters — and Pens’ bench boss Michel Therrien — as well as anyone in hockey. While in Hershey Boudreau’s Bears met the often Therrien-led Wilkes Barre-Scranton baby Pens 25 times. Boudreau won 14 of those games, including a tidy 4-0 sweep of the 113-pt., East Division-winning Jr. Pens in the 2006 postseason, en route to Hershey’s Calder Cup title.
Let him keep up those winning ways against Sidney and Co. in D.C. and see what table he earns at the Palm.
Exciting game tonight, with the Caps dominating the visiting Lightning much more than the final score might suggest. As Lightning coach John Tortorella put it, when asked about the game-winning goal, “Don’t talk to me about the net being off or this and that. It could have been 8-2.” The Capitals played with heart, twice going down by a goal but roaring back with late-frame tallies that fired up the team and the crowd alike.
The Caps seemed inspired by the organization’s vote of confidence in Coach Boudreau and the removal of his “interim” tag, as all three Capitals goal-scorers tonight said in their post-game interviews. While Matt Bradley made a point to emphasize that the team never treated Boudreau as “interim”, Dave Steckel perhaps put it best: “He came in here and did a great job. He earned it.” And the coach has instilled in the team the need to reclaim home-ice advantage and make the Phone Booth a tougher place for visiting teams. Brian Pothier agrees: “Every team has to come into the Verizon Center saying, ‘This is going to be a really hard game.’ So far this year we haven’t established that, and it’s something we need to do.” Let’s hope tonight’s performance is the start of just that.
Coach Boudreau and several of the players spoke strongly about belief after the game tonight–belief that continued hard work would pay off; belief that being down a goal despite outplaying an opponent was something they could, and would, overcome; belief that no opponent or obstacle is insurmountable. The team unity and confidence are inspiring; Head Coach Boudreau has indeed earned his new title.
Boudreau’s positive impact on the team was quickly evident as the Capitals, losers of five straight at the time, marched into Philadelphia to beat the Flyers 4-3 for Boudreau’s first game behind the bench. While the team has had its highs and lows since as Boudreau changes the system and mindset of the team, the players’ increased energy and improved discipline speak well of the Head Coach’s influence.
For more, click here for the team’s press release.
Jeremy Smith in net for the Americans. Goals from Sweatt, Rakshani, Carmen, Fairchild, and Okposo. Max Pacioretty apparently took a knee, missed some action, but returned.
Karl Alzner and Josh Godfrey and their Canadian teammates kick off their tournament this afternoon against the Czechs (starting at 1:30 EST).
Rink ice is rarely rented during the holiday week. The principal payoff for a year’s worth of surrendered Sundays making ice there is this week: the evening sheets are mine for endless recreating. If Christmas makes children of us all, Christmas week makes me l’enfant de shinny.
My beer league teammates always answer the call. Richard and Andrew, hideously youthful, supremely skilled, and great friends, I ring first. Brian from Buffalo — a slick stickhandler — I dial next. Ted and Tree I sound out, too — even a small game of shinny needs muckers! Our beer league team, with conspicuously little roster upheaval, has been together more than 15 years.
Together we six form a hardcore set of shinny skaters: willing to pack the gear bags and leave behind out-of-town family and friends, on multiple nights, for rink travel near and not so near, to skate in age- and rules-ignoring splendor. To sweat, smile, and rib one another for hours. To be together playing the game we love. To be boys again.
Necessarily, we have no goalie; for impromptu games of mere recreation they are harder to come by than shopping mall parking spaces this week. We’ll play for pipes.
Our dressing room is half its normal game volume of bodies, but it feels full because of the sacrifices made to be here and the spirit of our endeavor: we few, we happy few, we band of unsanctioned shinny brothers.
I am middle-aged, and while keeping up with the room’s rancor I dress with the apprehension of an out-of-shape, quasi retired, let’s-see-if-can-trick-my-body-into-one-more-night-of-magic wish-maker. The odds, I know, are long. The desire, however, during this week, never wavers.
Near 8:00 and otherwise armored, I announce myself ice-bound, helmetless, “in honor of Rocket.” I never play shinny in a helmet, especially in small games among friends. It’s my individual act of civil disobediance, and I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of it. Sometimes, after shinny, I’ll ride home late in my Jeep sans seatbelt, blaring loud rock music, too. Somehow I seem to survive this razor’s edge of living.
We position the two cages perpendicular to their normal perches in the creases, and skate across the Olympic-sized sheet’s offensive zones. That’s space enough, and after we chew it up a bit we’ll move down to the pristine end and chew that up too.
We skate furiously for ninety seconds or so, then settle in to more upright, carefully timed bursts of forechecking and attack. The beer-leaguer’s aerobics. Often, puck carriers are afforded conspicuously easy entrace to the scoring zones. But then they confront a minefield of cage-defending checkers. The pace deadens at times, but we fail to break for water and breath for fully twenty-plus minutes. That’s something.
It’s a small game, the scoreboard is dark, the stands are entirely empty, but the competition among us is as fierce as if we were contesting the finals for our league’s Stanley Bucket. When a player alleges a tally from the feintest of nicked posts or crossbar, he’s instantly shouted down, sometimes even by his teammates. Goals in our games are awarded only to the irrefutable cracks and clanks of heavy, well-targeted wristers.
When we do break I collapse in a corner, crumpled to the ice, my chest pounding, exertion vapor forming a halo about my head. For a few seconds I am melancholy from middle age mediocrity, reflecting on AWOL speed and reaction time, on newly arrived joint stiffness I knew about previously only from my father’s post-skating complaints. But I am in my gear, soaked with sweat, skating (at times hard) with my ‘mates deep into an evening before holiday mornings without an office to report to. This form of fatigue will ensure a motionless sleep under blankets tonight, and in the morning I’ll happily shuffle in ache through the well-earned stiffness to the kitchen coffee maker.
We made a rule: no goal counts unless it was assisted — at least one pass from a teammate. Once I made a fancy rush up through all three foes, dangling and pivoting, elliciting cries of praise from my linemates, and thundered a rocket smack in the middle of the crossbar. As the puck angle-launched high up over the netting behind the cage I hot-dogged swawn-dived onto my belly and skidded out to center ice, to exclamation point my feat.
“No pass!” the three defenders gaveled in unison.
“But I own your jocks and socks,” I protested.
“No pass,” my linemates, a bit quieter, confirmed.
Here is how I know I am an old hockey player: when caromed pucks elude and race down the Olympic-sized sheet I look for others to retrieve. Once, not all that long ago, I did the retrieving, and took pride in it. Retrieving that small black disc down at the other end now seems an Olympian task, as if I’m skating on a Great Lake. Now I watch Richard and Andrew make like jack rabbits and galloping stallions after the puck.
Bastards.
Here is how I know I am a lucky hockey player: our next skate is Thursday.
One of the great traditions in hockey is something other sports don’t do. The NHL actually closes for two days allowing the players, officials, and team staffs and employees spend the Christmas holiday with their families. The last time they played over the holidays was Christmas Eve of 1972 when Michael Nylander was a mere 12 weeks old.
OFB will follow that NHL tradition spending time with our families and friends where we’ll raise our glass to peace on earth, good will toward men.
The Kings have a wealth of gifted young players in their organization and a 30th place standing to show for it. The Caps have a stud, some very good young players, and a 29th place standing to show for it. They also have thorny contract negotiations taking place (sort of) with their stud. Coach Boudreau possesses what might be termed fluency with a fair number of players in the Kings’ organization. Additionally, the Kings have a history of parting with a motherload of talented youth in order to acquire the services of the game’s premiere talent. It’s Tinseltown, after all.
And then there’s this: in year three of AO’s reign in D.C. the Caps are meandering toward a finish of between 75-80 points, and potentially a fourth consecutive last-place finish in the Southeast.
To quote Bryan Ferry, don’t stop the dance.
The ‘Net is filled (overly so) with innuendo-specius speculation-baseless rink rumors, and I’m not pecking away at the keyboard this holiday weekend to contribute to that. Rather, I’m here to suggest that, should the Caps and Ovechkin arrive at an impasse in new deal discussions, excruciatingly painful though it may be, a deal with the Kings could make sense.
Caps’ fans do have to consider this possibility.
We know that contract talks between Caps’ management and team Ovechkin aren’t progressing terribly well because (1) many months after Sidney got his new pact AO still doesn’t have his and (2) someone with access to the particulars told me so. This is not to suggest that all is hopeless or even that the genuinely serious, roll-up-the-sleeves-and-sip-late-night-coffee talks have come and gone. They haven’t. However, one vital area of concern appears to have emerged: the team and the star are lodged in different compensation realms. Worse, both sides have eminently reasonable defenses for their positions.
Let us say, just for argument’s sake, that AO is seeking upwards of $10 million per season. Even if the Caps wanted to pay him that they couldn’t. The CBA is explicit: no single player can earn more than 20 percent of a team’s payroll. The Caps are currently a hair below $40 million in player payroll. They’d need to be at $50 million before opening night next season in order to accommodate a $10 million demand from team Ovechkin. You might plausibly forecast an ‘08-’09 Caps roster boasting the additions of say Eric Fehr and Karl Alzner, but that wouldn’t take you anywhere near $50 million. Then there’s the very real possibility that Olie Kolzig’s $5.5 million compensation comes off the books beginning this spring, and that he’s replaced by someone markedly cheaper.
{Important correction: The actual CBA, available on line here, (you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader version 6.0 at a minimum), illuminates maximum player compensation thusly:
“50.6 Maximum Player Salary and Bonuses; Fixed Dollar Amount of Player Salary
(a) No SPC may provide for a total aggregate Player Salary and Bonuses that is in excess of twenty (20) percent of the Upper Limit for any League Year (the Maximum Player Salary and Bonuses). For a Player signing a multi-year SPC pursuant to which he receives the Maximum Player Salary and Bonuses in any League Year during the term of such SPC, the Maximum Player Salary and Bonuses for every League Year covered by the multi-year SPC shall be based upon the Upper Limit at the time the SPC was signed.
So it’s as clear as day.
The Caps in fact could pay Ovechkin $20 million annually were the league-wide, per-team cap $100. (That’s not happening under Bettman.)}
Ken Lay couldn’t make these accounting numbers work for a massive Ovechkin contract. In a very real sense, the Caps have their hands tied by prudent fiscal management by management.
And this blogger wouldn’t have it any other way.
No doubt General Manager George McPhee has formulated some specific thoughts about a player’s earning 20 percent of payroll and the likelihood of that player’s team contending for a Stanley Cup. The Ducks, who today are taking a cap hit of approximately $51 million, won the Cup last season, I’d wager, because their big two on defense (Pronger and Niedermeyer) were well but not exorbitantly paid. Moreover, they got Teemu Selanne’s 48 goals at a bargain rate. What of the Cup-winning ‘Canes and ‘Ning payrolls? Any bank-breakers within? In fact, the absence of astute fiscal management in Tampa Bay forced a breakup (Modin, Khabibulin) of that champions’ roster. Mediocre Tampa is today a one-line attack and a glaring vulnerability in net. And will be so for a while.
The Red Wings have enjoyed some exemplary regular seasons of late carrying along Nik Lidstrom’s enormous salary. Anything else to show for it?
These are accounting — and therefore fan-unfriendly — questions for management to ponder.
Which brings us back to a hypothetical glance at the last-place Kings. Twenty-five year-old Cammalleri is a rising star, and we already know what Boudreau thinks of him. 2006 first-rounder Jonathon Bernier made the Kings and started and won his first game in net against the defending champs in October. He’s back in Lewiston now, but his immediate future looks rather bright. No deal for a once-in-a-generation talent like Ovechkin could be carried off with merely a no. 1 liner and a no. 1 prospect in net. But what if the Kings could be persuaded to sweeten the pot all the way up to include Jack Johnson as well? What if such a deal deposited no.1 players at three separate positions for the Caps, and you were at a negotiations impasse with Alex, and as a management team you were convinced that a mega-contract not only couldn’t be achieved but was Tampa-like limiting going forward?
How good would that deal look then?
The Caps go into the holiday break on a sour note — the Grinch went 5-hole. Let’s all have some nogg, shake this off, and hope our gifts are filled with 2 points when we get back to it. Happy holidays, Caps fans.
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