Sometimes, as a young reporter, it’s best to keep my mouth shut around the rink and just observe or listen (probably not often enough, I’m sure some players would say). You get a first-rate education in hockey if you pay attention. But the Capitals have made their bread and butter over the last several years as a young team, and occasionally you realize the players are learning right along with you.
That’s why Mike Knuble is so invaluable to this franchise. He’s the prototypical classy veteran, always demonstrating a mature respect for the game.
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Mike Knuble described his team as ‘outclassed’ in the third period after their 5-2 defeat by Dallas Tuesday. Bruce Boudreau, in his post-game press conference, talked about how the team lost a lot of battles in the third—which they entered tied at 2. In fact, the team lost those battles for the pucks throughout the [...]
Sometimes, you wonder if Mike Knuble really is 39. In Saturday’s game against Ottawa, for example, Knuble finished the game with two assists, but he also tied with Troy Brouwer for most hits (4) by a Capitals player in the game. Knuble now has three points on the season, and all this is after he [...]
Yes, we posted the playoff opening video the other day. The Caps just posted another view of the video giving a better look and feel of the arena. You have a camera on the arena to the left, the video board to the right, and the upper and lower LED boards above and below the video respectfully. It’s worth another look, especially if you were not able to attend game 1 or 2.
How will you remember the 2010-11 Capitals’ regular season? I ask because at least one prominent person in town – the team owner — thinks that to date I’ve judged his team too harshly on the campaign. My critique began near the end of last summer, when I observed management execute a largely passive approach to roster improvement in the offseason, while East rivals Pittsburgh and Philly aggressively improved. Not that I’m a throw-mad-money-at-free-agents kind of guy; never have been, never will be. But if you’ve just been vanquished in round one, as the Caps were last April, and you sit on your hands all summer, rest assured your conference peers will gain ground on you.
Through about 50 games into 2010-11, there was plenty of ground-gaining, you’ll recall. For instance: the Caps, having won the Southeast division title just a year ago by 40 points, trailed the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Southeast in late February. That’s ground-gaining alright. And it’s not as if Tampa in the offseason acquired Bobby Orr and Mr. Hockey in their prime.
Also filed in Alexander Ovechkin, Brooks Laich, Bruce Boudreau, Dennis Wideman, Front Office, George McPhee, HBO's 24/7, Jason Arnott, Marco Sturm, Marcus Johansson, Mike Green, Morning cup-a-joe, National Hockey League, Scott Hannan, Ted Leonsis, Washington Capitals
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After John Erskine and Jared Boll dropped the gloves Thursday, a quality fight’s memory got lost in the aftermath of Erskine leaving the game in the next period as an injury “precautionary” measure, according to Bruce Boudreau, which forced the Capitals to rotate 5 defensemen for the remainder of the game. But it was a [...]
If it ends up being a Philly-Washington conference final, the Eastern Conference champion might as well start digging a grave now to bury the battered bodies. That was a grueling 65-plus minutes of hockey last night between the two teams, and the Caps definitely got the worst of the physical play in the 3rd. The fact that Jason Chimera isn’t seeing stars right now and Scott Hannan is still walking (at least, we think both those things are true) is a testament to superhuman toughness.
I’m highly suspicious of the likelihood that the actual jockey for the great Secretariat, Ron Turcotte, is an OFB reader; nonetheless, a commenter identifying himself as such had over the weekend what I regarded as the best reflection related to my Saturday morning cup-a-joe, which dropped the gloves on this stinker of a Caps’ season: [...]
Also filed in Alexander Semin, Cody Eakin, Columbus Blue Jackets, Eastern Conference, Evgeny Kuznetsev, George McPhee, Jason Chimera, Marcus Johansson, Mathieu Perreault, Matt Bradley, Matt Hendricks, Morning cup-a-joe, National Hockey League, Southeast Division, Tampa Bay Lightning, Trap hockey, Washington Capitals
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Mike Green said after the Caps skated Friday afternoon (by 5 pm, it was still in the 50′s) that he probably skated in weather this warm before as a kid, but never with his full gear on for a full practice. “It was different — it was getting hot out there,” he said. “It was [...]
