Watching tonight’s Washington Capitals game, as well as their recent victory over Boston, felt eerily familiar. The Caps’ roster was relatively devoid of superstars, they fought hard, beat a better team (vs. Boston) and lost a close one to a divisional rival tonight.
Without Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, and Mike Green, this Capitals team is surprisingly similar to the Capitals of almost a decade ago… a hard-charging team that delighted and sometimes frustrated its fans.
How so, you ask? Read on… and while these comparisons are far from perfect, consider them food for thought:
With the Alumni Pittsburgh Penguins clinging to a 5-4 lead and with Caps’ netminder Don Beaupre pulled for a sixth attacker this morning, old no. 12 seriously dampened the New Years spirits of the hosts with an equalizer strike! “BONZAI!!!” I stood up and shouted, fists pumping, from my third row perch in section 122. [...]
Can’t use any of these combos for tomorrow night’s game versus Anaheim, but this should look a lot like what Caps’ fans who travel to Pittsburgh New Years weekend could see should they take in the Caps-Pens Alumni game early on New Years Eve: Peter Bondra Michal Pivonka Alan Hangsleben Paul Mulvey Dennis Maruk Mark [...]
Some details have emerged about a Capitals-Penguins alumni game associated with this season’s Winter Classic at Heinz Field. First, the game will be played at 9:30 a.m. New Years Eve, on an auxiliary rink set up near the football stadium. I’m hearing something on the order of grandstands accommodating about 500 fans of Old Time [...]
Last night was the ever-popular Hockey ‘N Heels at Kettler Capitals Iceplex. The event, which sold out in under five minutes, was attended by 250 women of all ages. Activities included on-ice demonstrations with instructions from Karl Alzner, John Carlson, Marcus Johansson, Braden Holtby, and Peter Bondra.
Last night, I attended Hockey ‘N Heels at Kettler Capitals Iceplex. The event, by all accounts, was a huge success. When tickets went on sale in October, they were gone in half an hour. Over 300 women were in attendance.
Put Peter Bondra in the pro-Alex Semin camp. I had a chance to chat with #12 during Friday night’s 3-1 win over the Wild, and when I asked him how he’d go about coaching the enigmatic winger, how he’d address Semin’s conspicuous inconsistency, the general manager of the Slovakian national team emphasized that he’s seeing significant maturation [...]
Chris Bourque, Mathieu Perreault, and John Carlson all enjoyed standout training camps with the Washington Capitals this month. Bourque is still enjoying his. To slightly varying degrees, all three enjoyed prodigy player status early on in their hockey careers. On a hunch, I checked their respective birth dates. All three share the birth month of [...]
Something felt very very right about the Capitals retiring Dale Hunter’s number back in March 2000, and my¬†hunch is that a similar sense of appropriateness will accompany the retiring of Mike Gartner’s no. 11 this December. The Caps announced yesterday that they would be retiring Mike Gartner’s sweater then. Huntsy was the greatest captain in [...]
For those who live with hockey residing in the soul, every day carries some manner of frozen celebration, even in the dead of summer, but some days are better refrigerated than others. For me there are three or four genuinely dry-ice moments in the hockey calendar that are a given every year: the morning of [...]
