Would you rather Olie Kolzig retire this offseason, and forever be recognized as a Cap, or see him pursue the Stanley Cup for another season or two?
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Category Archives: Olaf Kolzig
A Netminder’s Impact on a Community - The Video
By The OFB Team
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Today we told you about a WJLA-TV featured segment on Olie Kolzig’s impact on a family with an autistic child.
Here’s the video.
The departure of Kolzig is made a little more real when you see the graphic “Olie Kolzig - Former Capitals Goaltender”.
A Netminder’s Impact on a Community
By The OFB Team
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
As Olie Kolzig’s official departure from Washington Capitals approaches, he will leave the District with more than fond memories and his name in the Capitals record books—his impact in the community will persist in even more meaningful ways.
WJLA’s ABC 7 News at 5 today will feature a segment on an autistic child who plays for the NOVA Cool Cats and will discuss the impact that Kolzig and the Caps have had on him and his family. The NOVA Cool Cats are a special hockey team which “exists for the enrichment of the athlete with a developmental disability.” Kolzig has long been a staunch supporter of autism research and is a founding member of Athletes Against Autism.
Nate Ewell, director of Media Relations for the Caps, has been told that the segment is “Oprah-worthy;” it should air around 5:45 p.m. today.
Farewell to Our All-Time-Best Netminder
By pucksandbooks
Thursday, May 8, 2008
It seems reasonable to posit that Olie Kolzig’s play as a middle-thirtysomething netminder during the first two seasons after the lockout was distinctly solid. Not spectacular, clearly, but quite solid. He didn’t have the most formidable blueline corps in front of him, which to some extent his numbers reflected, but few in the sport would have pointed to those seasons and suggested that Olie Kolzig was no longer a no. 1 netminder in the NHL.
Heading into 2007-08, we knew that Kolzig the gracefully aging elder statesman was a superbly conditioned and distinctly dedicated professional athlete. He spoke very openly about the adjustments he was incorporating in the twilight of his career to ready himself for a new and long season and its rigors. This was an explicit acknowledgment that he was feeling the effects of Father Time. Still, he appeared to be aging a bit like wine. During training camp he spoke of playing another two or three seasons after ‘07-08, under a new contract, hopefully with Washington.
Last fall, the present and the forecasted future for Olie Kolzig seemed promising, without a scintilla of wishful thinking attached to it.
The difficulty, the angst, as it’s settled in among Kolzig’s legion of loyal fans here this spring derives singularly from what settled in upon Kolzig’s game this past season. Most glaringly, October through January: really bad numbers. Now Olie Kolzig, save his Vezina season and his spectacular run through the postseason in 1998, has never really been about stellar numbers. But this season’s were unprecedented in their wretchedness. At one point deep into the season the statistical Olie Kolzig didn’t rank among the league’s top 40 netminders. George McPhee wouldn’t have dealt for a no. 1 netminder bearing looming unrestricted free agency unless he believed he needed an upgrade — immediately — in net. The acquisition of Cristobal Huet proved to be one of the GM’s most impressive personnel moves in his 10-year run in Washington.
No one would reasonably have suggested that with Kolzig in net instead of Huet the Caps would have won 11 of their last 12 regular season games and stolen a Southeast title away from Carolina. The lone loss during that run was with Kolzig in net.
Moreover, there was something peculiar and unnerving about Kolzig’s very public rebuke of Bruce Boudreau to the Washington Post’s Mike Wise at a time when the team was really gelling and making early rumblings of transforming its season. He intimated that the locker room had become a home for Hershey Bears, and that he was a bit out of place in it. He very explicitly called into question the head coach’s faculties in handling goaltenders. The bellyaching seemed out of character. It seemed distracting. Knowing what we know about Kolzig and the franchise deep in the spring of 2008, one wonders if that wasn’t the breach from which there was no repair.
Which brings us to early this offseason when every apparent indicator suggests that Olie Kolzig has played his last game in a Capitals’ sweater. The situation strikes many of the team’s fans as outlandish, as cruel and cold-hearted to the core on the part of management. These fans are reacting as fans should. Caps’ management, however, is acting precisely as it should.
The fans, understandably, want the franchise’s all-time best netminder to enjoy the promising harvest from a rough rebuild. Kolzig having guided the team to its only appearance in the Stanley Cup finals, this thinking goes, it’s only cosmically just that he’d lead them into postseasons ahead, when the Caps would enjoy roles as favorites rather than long-shots and underdogs. He’s been through so much this sorry decade, his sympathizers sigh. And it’s true. But fairness and cosmic justice and Hollywood endings aren’t the domain of the National Hockey League.
This is about business. The business of winning hockey games. And the cold hard reality is that in this Olie Kolzig NHL offseason the skill set he has to offer is at odds with the present composition and ambition of the only NHL hockey organization he’s ever served. Gordie Howe shouldn’t have left Detroit, ever, but this isn’t a mythical, age-resistant athlete we’re talking about. Olie Kolzig, somewhat sadly, but also somewhat predictably and certainly rather naturally, is aging away from the Capitals’ ascension.
He may well find gainful if non-no.1 netminder employment elsewhere in the NHL this offseason. And as with Peter Bondra, Dale Hunter, and Calle Johansson before him, if that comes to pass it will be jarring and painful to see him compete in a sweater not the Capitals’. Against the Capitals. The man who stood so tall when all around him hockey was so small here actually working to defeat the Caps? I could almost feel an opposing force emanating from the keyboard as I typed the thought.
But by April 5, when Cristobal Huet backstopped the Caps into storyline-of-the-year contention, the business writing was bright on the arena wall. No longer losers, with losers’ payrolls, the winning Caps now need to pay up for services very well rendered. (Think Mike Green.) The team needs not Olie Kolzig so much as his $5.45 million per.
Kolzig and his agent, to judge by their public pronouncements, believe that #37 is worthy of no.1 dough and no. 1 minutes, somewhere. The Caps can’t deliver either to him. It’s really that simple. There is also the matter of their having a capable backup netminder under contract at a budget-friendly rate for ‘08-’09. And Brent Johnson’s contract will expire right about the time it would appear probable that one of a stable of young, highly skilled, recently drafted netminders is ready to ascend to an apprenticeship behind Cristobal Huet or someone like him.
It’s business — the business of pro hockey. Uncomfortable at times to be sure, but never sidelined for sentimentality.
Enough about business, though. Olie Kolzig deserves his night of honor, he deserves to have his sweater retired, when the timing is right, and the wager here is that it’ll happen. Kolzig with his commitment to his club and his leadership in his hockey community came to embody what fans cherish most about pro athletes: he was the rare superior performer and role model. His fans deserve a night to shower him with a decade’s-plus worth of admiration. But until that night, gone now seemingly forever is Verizon Center’s chant of “Olie, Olie, Olie.” The place won’t quite be the same.
Hall of Fame netminder Eddie Giacomin played 10 seasons for the Rangers before being dealt to Detroit. He famously discussed his return to Madison Square Garden to face New York as a Red Wing, where Rags’ fans stood and thundered down — drowning out the national anthem — chants of “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie” while Giacomin stood in his new crease with tears streaming down his cheeks.
“The New York crest is embedded in Eddie Giacomin’s heart,” he said of that night and New York’s impact on his hockey career.
Giacomin never won a Stanley Cup. He also never forgot where was his home in hockey.
Let it be said — God willing one day soon — that this player, his organization, and his fans realized that Olie Kolzig is Washington’s Eddie Giacomin.
Kolzig’s Home a Free Agent Too
By The OFB Team
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Kolzig's Washington Area Home
A Uniform of One Color for an Army’s Offseason
By pucksandbooks
Sunday, April 27, 2008
The Capitals unveiled their new uniform look early last summer, but it’s this offseason that will fully showcase just how successful the makeover was.
Saturday afternoon I stopped by the Kettler-Capitals’ pro shop to see a buddy there working a weekend shift sharpening skates and moving merchandise, and the movement of goods this spring, he reported, has been brisk.
“It’s been a zoo in here the last few weeks,” he told me.
Fans seemed to appreciate the new look just two or three games into the preseason last September. Until then, they’d seen only photographs of the fashion upgrade in action-less stills. Once vivid, high-def-in-digital game imagery of the new threads was published on line, praise for the makeover was widespread. The team modernized its on-ice look, but not lavishly or outlandishly or, most importantly, faddishly, and there were clear but subtle acknowledgements back to the original threads. It was a look that appeared to be the best of the old blended with a hip new.
More fans wearing more of the new color and look became apparent at Verizon Center after the end-of-the-year holidays in 2007, and as the team turned its season around by late winter in 2008, even more of the red, white and blue filled the home rink. The new look was fast becoming a smash hit.
When the stretch-run became white-red-hot, so too did the look of the nation’s capital. The team declared “Red Outs” for the final week of regular season play, and the fans responded fanatically. The uni-color solidarity within the Phone Booth continued into the postseason. Comcast’s Lisa Hillary told me during one home postseason game that Verizon Center looked distinctly like Calgary’s Red Mile of playoffs past.
Planned or unplanned, the team’s return to its original colors has afforded an opportunity to market the old with the new. On my visit to the Kettler shop Saturday I saw rack after rack of red, but the names and numbers on the t-shirts were both old and new. Semin, Clark, and Ovechkin were joined by Hunter and Langway. My father, who wore his red senior’s hockey sweater to two postseason home games, will later this week be receiving an old-school, old-logo-ed red t-shirt bearing Rod Langway’s nameplate and number on its back, along with instructions to wear it both while mowing his massive yard and barbequing for Saturday night houseguests. He loved Langway.
I have plans for some heavy-duty recreating this summer. I’ll be sweating a lot in red.
Saturday was gorgeous in D.C., and the moreso to be navigating the route back from Kettler-Capitals toward Maryland on the GW Parkway. The first Saturday of being eliminated from hockey’s postseason is always a painful one for me, but under that Chamber of Commerce sky Saturday, with my sack of red as companion, I felt immense pride instead of pain, and I began thinking about Washington’s hockey hardcore as well as the new converts this spring showcasing their pride in the hockey team this offseason. There is so much to be proud of.
Our Army should be arriving at neighborhood pools this offseason covered up in red. Yard work should be conducted in a ‘Rock the Red’ tee. Jogging, rollerblading, dog walking — all of it should be completed while identified as Ovie, Olie, Huntsy, or Langway. We should attend rock concerts at Nissan and Merriweather and Rock the Red there as well.
Let’s Red-out the region this summer. The Washington Post is watching.
At Kettler the Day After
By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
You can cross one name off your list of free agent concerns for the Capitals this offseason — Head Coach Bruce Boudreau. Speaking with reporters at Kettler-Capitals Iceplex just moments after wrapping up a season-concluding meeting with the team this afternoon, the coach confirmed that he’d had discussions with General Manager George McPhee about a new deal. He didn’t want to speak in specifics, and he wanted to defer to the GM for a more formal acknowledgment, but he did say, “I’m gonna be coaching the Caps a little while.” He was smiling.
The coach also confirmed that Alexander Ovechkin played hurt in his first playoff series. He suggested that some struggles the left winger experienced at times in the series were related to the injury. After the game last night Ovechkin did tell Sovetsky Sport’s Dmitry Chesnokov that he had played games 6 and 7 on painkillers. When Chesnokov pressed him for more details about the injury, AO replied, “I cannot tell you that.”
The coach remains in awe of his star. Alluding to Ovechkin’s extended stay in D.C. that was secured earlier this season, he said, “Thirteen years for that guy — maybe it should be 18!”
Nicklas Backstrom, it was announced while we were gathered at Kettler, has been named a finalist for the Calder Trophy.
The coach is going up to Hershey tonight to take in game 4 of the Bears’ opening series with Wilkes Barre-Scranton. The Caps’ affiliate is in a 3-0 hole in that one. When asked how he thought he’d spend his first offseason as an NHL coach Boudreau said that he didn’t quite know but added, “This is the environment I feel comfortable in.”
Both the coach and the superstar were effusive in their praise for Washington’s hockey fans. Ovechkin wants the city’s fans to pick up next season where they left off this. “I hope the fans support us the same way [next year]. The atmosphere was unbelievable.”
Boudreau pointed to a pronounced difference in the arena from fall to spring. “I’ve really seen it pick up since I came here,” he said. “[There were] an amazing amount of jerseys in the crowd last night.”
Matt Cooke, on Tom Poti’s overtime tripping call: “You’d like to see them call something that wasn’t a marginal call, something that takes away a scoring chance.”
Lastly, the coach acknowledged that he’d had a private and very personal conversation with Olie Kolzig. He didn’t offer much about its substance, but he did say, “[Kolzig's] one of the classiest men I’ve ever met in this game.”
The goaltender’s Kettler locker, for what it’s worth, still had his nameplate in place.
Odds & Ends
By DC Sports Chick
Saturday, March 22, 2008
TSN has a poll on their site this morning on the topic of the week. Vote early and vote often! Here are the current results:
Viktor Kozlov- photo courtesy of ajc.com
Seriously, this is laziness at its best. How hard is it to check a player’s name- especially in a town where they already have a Kozlov? Not to mention that “Viktor” is spelled wrong too. I suspect that Atlanta just doesn’t care anymore, and who can blame them. Two wins in the last 17 games would depress me too.
Over at the AJC’s Thrashers Blog, Craig Custance shared this item:
Mark Recchi is part owner of the Kamloops Blazers in the WHL and his team is taking on Olaf Kolzig’s Tri-City team in the first round of the playoffs, so they have a sidebet going.
Now THAT could get interesting. According to Custance, the Blazers are the underdog, so Olie could make out well on this deal.
And finally, the sharp-eyed OrderedChaos noted this by saying, “Nicklas has not aged well on Yahoo!”:
Nicklas Backstrom- Yahoo! Sports
Knee-Jerks & Notes: Caps-Thrash, 3/14
By pucksandbooks
Saturday, March 15, 2008
I’m trying to remember the last Capitals’ game that had Alexander Ovechkin skate sub-20 minutes. He didn’t even hit 18 minutes. He went for 17:40 Friday night. It wasn’t that he failed to perform to Bruce Boudreau’s standards; rather, the coach recognized that Friday represented Atlanta’s third game in four nights, and he rolled four lines and wore down the weary Thrash. All 18 of Boudreau’s skaters hit double figures in minutes skated, including callup Sami Lepisto (who tallied his first NHL point).
If you watched the game you saw perhaps the turning point/culmination of the Boudreau strategy when two consecutive Capitals’ lines in the second period cycled the puck throughout the Thrashers’ zone with little resistance — a possession dominance interrupted only by a Donald Brashear penalty. The game-score didn’t reflect a lopsidedness of affair then, but after that display, you knew the Caps had the game.
- No one should have been mesmerized by the Caps’ shot dominance (37-12). On February 16, the Islanders outshout Atlanta 49-10. Atlanta has managed to outshoot its opponents this season a grand total of nine times. No wonder Hossa didn’t resign.
- Imagine where this Atlanta team would be in the standings without Kari Lehtonen.
- Friday night was easily Sergei Fedorov’s best game as a Washington Capital. The scoresheet shows him earning two assists, but when I suggested to Bruce Boudreau in his post-game presser that Fedorov could have had “four or five assists” on the night, the coach replied “easily.” And when I mentioned Fedorov’s play to Olie Kolzig, he reminded me of #91’s sacrifice of his body to block a shot: “I actually gave him a little bit of grief for it. I said, ‘Look man, I’ve only had eight shots in the game, you think you could let me have one from the blueline.’ He’s still got it for an old guy “
- “It was as complete a game as we’ve played,” the Capitals’ head coach said afterward.
- When I asked Kolzig if the pre-game warmups were the toughest part of his Friday night’s labor, he replied, “As a goaltender, those are the hardest games to play. You don’t get any kind of flow. You’re constantly talking to yourself — ‘Hey, stay in it, stay in it.’ Because for the longest time there, it was a 2-1 hockey game. The last thing you wanna do is let your team down.”
- Boudreau noted that Fedorov’s playing time the past three games has increased, and he reminded the media that in January and February, he was out for 16 games. “He’s starting to get in real good shape . . . so we haven’t seen the best of him,” he said.
- Of Atlanta, Gabby pointed out, “They had an emotional, come-from-behind win last night [over Calgary] , and they didn’t get in here until late, they’ll be an awful lot better when we play them again next week.”
- Gabby on scoreboard watching: “That’s all I do. I kind of wish for one team then I say no I want the other team. It’s a fun part of the year — when you’re in it, to be scoreboard watching. The biggest thing is, when you don’t play, you lose. That’s what I’ve found. There’s some many teams vying for positons that . . . hey, we’ve got a day off tomorrow, somebody’s gonna gain on us somewhere.”
- The Hershey Bears concluded the longest roadtrip in team history (9 games) with a 5-3 win over first-place Philadelphia Friday night. Only two home games on a weekend two weeks ago separated the Bears from a sixteen-game roadtrip. And the Bears are badly battered. They return home on Saturday and Sunday for a pair of games with the Manitoba Moose.
- Sports Illustrated’s Michael Farber, who just last month profiled Alexander Ovechkin and his family in the magazine, is back in the Caps’ press box following AO’s pursuit of 60. He came rather close to it Friday night, smacking a crossbar and a post along with tallying no. 57.
Olie Kolzig’s 300th Win
By The OFB Team
Friday, March 14, 2008
Click here for the Washington Capitals’ tribute video for Olie Kolzig’s 300th win, shown immediately after the Wednesday night game. There are some fun guest stars from the past, including Jeff Halpern “accidentally” wishing Olie a happy 40th birthday before correcting himself.
Olie Kolzig congratulated by Huet
Losing Skid Halted - Caps 3 / Flames 2 / AO 55, 56 / Kolzig 300
By The OFB Team
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
How Well Do You Know Olie Kolzig?
By The OFB Team
Friday, March 7, 2008
James Mirtle seems to know him pretty well . . . check out Mirtle’s terrific profile of the Capitals’ netminder here.
The Southeast Field Thins, and Some Starting To Dream Large
By pucksandbooks
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Through the middle of the first week of March, we’re gaining, at long last, a firm sense of identities in the Southeast division. To state the most obvious, Tampa and Atlanta have forks in them: It’s a three-team race through the final 15 games, and Florida could be the next casualty. Their no. 2 goalie is their best and hottest goalie.
Speaking of hot no. 2 goalies, we learned Wednesday night in upstate New York that there’s a lot of fight left in Olaf Kolzig. ‘Clutch’ is the only way to describe no. 37’s stellar effort against a Buffalo club that had prevailed in almost all of the previous 15 games against the Caps. Since the 2003-04 season, Buffalo had vexed the Caps more than any team in the East; in 15 games, including three this year, the Caps had earned only four points out of a possible 30 against the Sabres. Dispassionate or partisan, you can’t look at Wednesday night’s outcome — hard on the heels of Monday’s Massacre — and not think something special might be brewing.
In this the springtime of our increasing content, none of the bad karma of the past much seems to matter. This is a hockey team that’s absorbed two-and-a-half seasons’ worth of rough blows, appears today to have profitted from them, is guided by an upstart and Adams-candidate coach, a Hart-and-a-few-other-pieces-of-hardware leading left wing, and perhaps most of all is skating in a hockey sunrise’s aura.
Take a look at the way this weekend sets up: Huet — white-hot in his career against the Bs (who responded to Monday’s massacre by failing to score a single goal at home against Florida the very next night) — a likely starter Saturday, and Kolzig, seeking victory no. 300 of his career, at a sold-out Verizon Center Sunday afternoon, against the black and gold and poorly coiffed. Think Coach Boudreau might reference what’s at stake for Olie in his pre-game comments Sunday? Think the home partisans might be behind no. 37 to prevail in that one? Think Kolzig himself could ever want to win a game as much as that one, on national TV?
I know the Hollywood writer’s strike is over, but is elite script-writing suddenly stationed in a D.C. hockey rink? Some weeks back, the Caps were rather commonly identified as the season’s “feel-good” story. It’s suddenly starting to feel a lot better, and more significant, now.
Wednesday morning here had the feeling of anticipation of a playoff game in the evening, and the game in Buffalo was contested very much like a postseason showdown: the scoring was low, the checking tight, the goaltending superb. There was even a grotesque and incongruous imbalance of power plays tilted against the Caps. And for good measure, a lengthy ‘was-it-a-goal?’ replay that outlasted the Caps’ flight to Buffalo. Somehow, just like in springtime 10 years ago, the visitors prevailed. This team has won four of its last five, against formidable foes, and imagine if they can add their captain to the mix in the next few weeks.
But here’s what’s beginning to distinguish the 2008 Caps from their counterparts of 10 years ago: the every-shift presence of a go-to guy who can come through in the clutch en route to a Hart Trophy (among others). Seriously, it’s necessarily the case that if the Caps qualify for the potseason the league’s finest performer will be wearing a Caps’ sweater. How marvelous would it be to have Kolzig partially backstop another memorable run in hockey’s spring, but with the franchise’s greatest-ever talent also helping out? Not Todd Krygier as hero, but rather the planet’s best hockey player. That ‘98 Caps’ team finished the regular season 10 games above .500 — kinda about what this team just might.
We began hearing the first whispers of “That Caps club could be dangerous in the postseason” a few weeks ago — before the arrivals of Huet, Fedorov, and Cooke.
All of us in D.C. are understandably focused on the night-in, night-out scores of March 2008, but it’s worth noting that a durable changing of the guard in the Southeast is likely taking place as well this spring. Atlanta won the Southeast last year, was unceremoniously swept in round one by the Rags, and has made little news since save for the sell-off of Marian Hossa. Tampa was able to resign Dan Boyle last week, and at long last acquire a good netminder (Mike Smith), but it parted with another key piece of the 2004 Cup champions, Brad Richards, and will again miss the postseason. The battered Hurricanes’ are playing fabulously this stretch run, but there’s an awful lot of age in that organization. Among the rest of the Southeast there is precious little in the way of prized prospects to bolster the present mediocrity.
The Caps’ owner on Tuesday told television viewers of Washington Post Live that his team absolutely had to win two of its next three games. Wednesday night, it won the toughest of those — the first, on the road, against a club it rarely had beaten the past three seasons.
Times are a ‘changin. But is some respects, they’re also looking like better than our favorite spring.
Washington Capitals Vocabulary Lessons
By OrderedChaos (Mike Rucki)
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Mike Vogel asks Capitals players about their favorite hockey terms, including gems like Grocery Stick, Gitch, and Schmelt. Get a few chuckles and learn some new words while you’re at it.
Two Steps Forward, One-and-a-Half Back
By pucksandbooks
Sunday, March 2, 2008
This one really hurt. The great gains made Friday in Newark were swiftly returned against a lesser foe Saturday at home. It seems incongruent that so stellar a team effort to open a weekend could be followed by so collosal a mess of stinky individualism 24 hours later. But that’s exactly what happened, and more importantly, it’s what happens when George McPhee’s core collection of 20 to 24-year-olds, many of whom are playing their first meaningful games in March in their NHL careers, are pitted against an equally desperate, more veteran club.
Frustrating as it is, it’s actually supposed to be this way. Call it, growing pains.
I shared a post-game elevator ride with Saturday night’s CBC broadcast team, silently listening to the commentators dissect the downside of so much “skilled youth” skating in high-pressure, high stakes, unchartered territory. The broadcasters were deeply appreciative of the young Caps’ abilities — and deeply convinced of their struggle down the stretch. Not certain doom, mind you, just certain struggle. Verizon Center throngs of 17- and 18,000 strong nightly will attempt to will the Young Guns into first place in the Southeast from outside the plexiglass. But the community of the fervid and faithful will be powerless to effect any shortcuts through the inexperience out on the ice. The cold hard reality is that over the next five weeks, much of them under the bright CBC lights, there will be moments of great glory juxtaposed by evenings of ugly infamy.
Just as there should be.
Bruce Boudreau wanted Friday night’s 60 minutes against the Devils “bottled” and replicated against the Leafs. A year from now, the wager here is, he’ll get it. Now, though, he can’t. Likely, he knows this, as does his general manger. That all three of Tuesday’s trade dealine acquisitions were north of 28 in age is almost certainly no coincidence. Now, though, they must be introduced and acclimated to their stranger teammates. Some nights (Friday) they’ll appear to have been partnered together for two or three seasons, on others (Saturday), like speed dating acquaintances.
How many times Saturday night did a lone Cap attempt to puck-carry past three or four perfectly positioned Leafs? (About 25.) This is precisely what the young and the inexperienced and super-skilled do under duress. It isn’t out of selfishness — the opposite, actually. The supremely skilled but novice desperately want to hero-lead their teammates through the tough times.
“We tried to beat four guys,” Sergei Fedorov said afterward. “You need to use everyone.”
“We need to get used to each other,” he added.
The good news is that there’s resiliency and composure among this band of very young brothers. I expected to see a bunch of beaten and downcast Caps in the room afterward. The really young were quiet, but there were no tantrums, no moaning and groaning, no ‘woe is us’ from a single one. Meanwhile, vets like Fedorov and Kolzig were stoic and calmly, thoughtfully analytic. Ugly as it was, Saturday was merely one night’s failing with more than 15 games remaining. A week’s slate with high-quality opponents produced four of a possible six points.
The team’s coach, however, was appropriately angry.
“We got outworked in a game we couldn’t get outworked in,” he said. “Today we were all individuals . . . We got what we asked for.”
A reporter, noting the brilliance of the night’s first power play, had the four thereafter characterized for him by Gabby before he could finish his question — they “looked horrible,” the coach interjected. Insidious individualism — again cropping up out of good intentions — had infected the man-up units as well.
More rough returns from hard lessons still be learned: the failed finishings from cross-ice and back door setups — a Saturday night of seemingly a dozen whiffs: “We’ve gotta be so hungry to score that we bear down and bury them through the back of the net,” the coach reflected.
Sunday will offer no instruction, no meeting room shouting from the head coach. “A mental health day,” Gabby announced it.
The effects of stress are felt at every age.
Goalie Talk out at Practice
By pucksandbooks
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Out at Kettler earlier today, I had a chance to eavesdrop a bit on Gabby talking about the goalie situation right before the team headed to the airport. That “plan” that the head coach alluded to yesterday became clearer today. Brent Johnson is the odd man out — he’s the clear no. 3. There will be competition among all three, but beginning this weekend, Cristobal Huet (now no. 38 in your program) and Olie Kolzig will begin a competitive rotation in game assignments.
The practice situation is where it gets weird. The third goalie will join the team “late” in practice skates and try and get some work in.
Buzz Trades, a Big Game, a Big-Buzz Atmosphere Stream of Consciousness
By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Was in the then MCI Center the night of March 13, 2001 — also deadline day — when earlier in the day GMGM dealt Zednik and Bulis and a pick to Montreal for Zubrus and Linden, and the mood in last night’s rink felt larger and more significant . . . that dealmaking carried a component of risk; this was pure aggression with minimal assets heading out . . . the better comparison may be with March 1997, carried out not in a single day but over the course of a couple of weeks, when McPhee, in his first season on the job, added Brian Belllows and Esa Tikkanen . . . Enjoyed most of all throughout the late Tuesday afternoon and evening messages from friends and strangers who were busy with business throughout the day and wholly unaware of the deadline day madness that enveloped the Caps, who arrived at the news late and lavished it (in my email inbox) with happy obscenities and exclamation points . . . Mike Vogel, looking terrifically telegenic, rinkside on Comcast in the 5:00 hour to help analyze the breaking big news, me comparing his polished appearance before TV DC with his pre-sunrise, blogging-through-the-Moscow-night, comrade shagginess with me during last year’s Worlds . . . big bonus: dinner with Ron Weber in the press room on such a big day . . . look at all the media big wigs who show up when hockey creates the day’s sports buzz: George Solomon of the Post, three Times’ reporters, the one-time Queen of OFB even, I think I may have even seen Arch Campbell in Bruce Boudreau’s post-game presser . . . Ted’s box is filled as I hadn’t seen it since perhaps opening night . . . Commissioner Bettman, in his pre-game presser: “This is a team that has been built on prospects and for the future” . . . He’s in town for some chit-chat on the Hill about drugs and athletes, and he mentions “players as role models” and a clear concern that his sport not be painted with a broad brush of they-all-do-it cynicism: “What goes on in one sport doesn’t [necessarily] go on in others” . . . “We’ve had one player in two-and-a-half years caught [for performance enhancing drugs],” and he references the tough remedies that face the offenders — a quarter-of-a-season suspension, three-quarter-of-a-season, three strikes and you’re out . . . and I think, Bud Selig he ain’t, but it’s also true that this sport has a much different relationship with its players union than all the rest . . . He is also asked about the prevalence of players exercising the “No” in their no-trade clauses: “Nobody makes a club give a player a no-trade clause” . . . I ask the commissioner about Ted’s expressed wish to take the team on a goodwill tour of Russia, “sooner rather than later,” and he expresses cautious support. When he references what a “big deal” it’s going to be for Jagr to return to Prague next season, I think I have my answer about the likelihood of Ovechkin’s returning to Moscow . . . He also acknowledges that the league today doesn’t have the relationship with the Russian Hockey Federation it once did . . . Even the arena’s game night personnel working in catering and as ushers seem buoyed by the day’s big news — they are all chipper and wide smiling in every encounter. . . On a day like today I appreciate the professionalism and the quasi-renaissance of renewed hockey coverage by our town’s two print beat reporters, both of whom blogged and filed on Tuesday until their fingers were sore, giving Washington hockey fans timely and superb breaking news; following Corey’s blog a bit during the game, I chuckled at his reflection “at some point I’ll eat” . . . Midway through the game I have a minimial amount of notes and reactions recorded, as friendly folks keep bending my ear for reaction and basic “Can you believe all this?” empathy, vanquishing my between-periods composition, and I relish it . . . Peter Bondra is back in the press box tonight, and on the ice sheet below the young prospect he was traded for, Brooks Laich, is having a career night, and I just sorta like the symmetry of that . . . in the second row of the press box, where the Caps’ communications staff works each game, I see each and every one of them, no one missing, and I think there’s so much work for them to do on a day like this they all have to be here, but it’s probably also the case that such a day makes a Caps’ staffer proud to have the careers they do, and they want to be in the rink, well dressed, helpful, and full of good cheer . . . very loud rock music typically greets bloggers and press in the post-game locker room after victories, but tonight it’s quiet, and I infer that the day’s drama has drained the entire team, that they want as efficient an encounter with media as possible, hot showers, and a race home to crash in bed . . . the circle of cameras and microphones and scribes around Kolzig is unlike anything I have seen in two years — it’s five-deep at turns, and Tarik has to make like a gymnast to get his recorder squeezed into some open space around Kolzig’s locker . . . no one much asks Olie the Goalie about the game, instead, The Trade . . . question after question on the trade: was he shocked? was he upset? how can it possibly work with three netminders? did the team approach him about a trade? . . . he says, among other things, “The thing that surprises me is that there’s three goalies here” . . . Coach Boudreau acknowledges the challenge of managing three netminders, but he dismisses a contention that the day’s developments insult the greatest goalie in Caps’ history; he maintains that the consumate professional will rise to meet the new challenge . . . Here’s hoping Fedorov this spring is Bellows of ‘98, Matt Cooke that year’s Esa Tikkanen, Olie Kolzig . . . Olie Kolzig.
In-Game Knee-Jerks & Notes: Caps-Isles, 2/20
By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
I’m not one to traffic much in the off-ice affairs of star athletes, at least not in published fashion, but with local media’s over-the-top coverage today of Alex’s overseas ingenue, there was for me a slight sense of light and welcome distraction from the day-in, day-out drain of the team’s postseason pursuit. Another positive spin on the matter: when was the last time you saw the Washington Post take inches worth of interest in the romantic runnings of a Caps’ player?
With a victory tonight the Caps will equal exceed the total number of wins for 2006-07. They can also go three games over .500 for the first time since . . . the season’s opening three games.
With big rugged bodies Andy Sutton and Brendan Witt out of the Isles’ lineup tonight, it’s going to be interesting to see what manner of net-crashing Bruce Boudreau asks his players to undertake. The predatory nature of NHL teams is perhaps best illustrated in a situation such as tonight’s between the Caps and Isles. Earlier today the Caps returned two young and inexperienced players to Hershey, Eric Fehr and Sami Lepisto. With tonight’s being the team’s only game of the week before Saturday, Boudreau appears to want to exploit the Isles’ backline vulnerability with a more veteran lineup.
Lunar Eclipse outside Verizon Center (photo by Mike Rucki)
We’re within a week of the NHL trade deadline. To deal or not to deal, if you’re GMGM? It’s a question I’ll try and place before a few scribes up high during the intermissions.
Nolan’s opening D pairing: Martinek and Meyer.
2:17 in: Sniping Semin lights lamp on a breakaway, off a fine head-man feed from Matt Pettinger. 1-0 home team.
Milan Jurcina’s struggles this season — he’s been wildly inconsistent from week to week, offering physically dominating performances one night and inexplicably mistake-prone ones following — I think need to be corrected if the team is to do anything more than make a ceremonial postseason performance.
13:37: Brooks Laich it appears to earn a tip-in power play tally off a Mike Green point wrister. Olie is announced with a secondary assist! 2-0 Caps, and while the shots are 7-6 in favor of the Isles, in all other respects this appears to be a game that the caps ought to win comfortably. This blogger can’t remember the last game the Caps won comfortably.
2-0 Caps after one. Continue reading ›
A Grade of C+ on the Crucial Road Swing through the South
By pucksandbooks
Sunday, February 17, 2008
I’m sticking to my prediction: on game days, it’s antacid through early April for Caps’ fans. Jonathon Warner of 3WT asked me last night to predict the Southeast division’s resolution, so of course I told him I’d get back to him around April 5. Near that evening’s end.
Of a possible six points among this week’s three divisional road games I thought three the baseline for a passing grade. Insomuch as Alexander Ovechkin was magnificently neutralized by both Florida Friday night and Tampa last evening, and the team displayed great gumption in salvaging regulation-time victory from the jaws of an infuriating overtime Saturday (and more Tums and Pepto for Washingtonians), I’m grading the gang out at C+.
I fielded calls and email from out-on-the-ledgers after Friday night’s loss in Florida. That was a game determined by a miscue (a Mike Green whiff) and a bad bounce (on BJ’s left post). But generally speaking, the Caps would rather face Detroit or Ottawa than the Florida Panthers. Since the lockout, the teams have faced each other 22 times. The Caps have won a grand total of six of those games. Six. It doesn’t seem much to matter that Roberto Luongo is no longer in South Florida — it’s a mean moon rising for the Caps in Sunrise.
At least three compelling storylines emerged from this roadtrip. The most obvious, in light of his first-star effort last night, is Olie Kolzig’s revitalization. The Washington Times’ Corey Masisak this morning notes that the 37-year-old netminder “is now 11-3-2 since Christmas. [He] has allowed a total of 10 goals in his past five games.” He’s in a groove for sure, and the consistency and game-stealing he’s displaying gives one ample evidence to believe that the rotation with BJ that Bruce Boudreau has insisted on in 2008 is paying big-time dividends. Yes the Caps would have liked more than three points from this trip, but if they arrive in mid-March with a fit and sharp no. 1 netminder — all things injuries being somewhat equal — you have to like their chances in the race for the division crown.
Sami Lepisto made his NHL debut last night, and his 14 minutes of ice time seemed in their impact more like 24. He displayed the poise and mobility and deft puck distribution that had Hershey Bears’ officials and fans raving about him. It was only one game, but it was a very good one on a must-win night, and Lepisto’s resume in his first season of North American pro hockey is stellar. He skated a +27 with the Bears and put up almost a point per game (32 points in 38 games, good for 4th on the team in scoring) as a rookie rearguard — much of those numbers accumulated while Hershey’s blueline was decimated by injuries.
A third-round selection in the 2004 bumper crop of Caps’ Entry Draft picks, Lepisto represents one of the more intriguing prospects in the entire Caps’ organization. For whatever reason the Caps have seldom selected Finns, in an era when that small, Scandanavian, hockey-mad outpost has delivered scores of smart, sturdy defenders, reliable two-way forwards, and the odd stud goalie to the NHL. Prior to coming over to North America, Lepisto had three full seasons of experience in Finland’s top pro league with Helsinki Jokerit. (The team, incidentally, that beginning next season will be coached by Glen Hanlon.) Contending NHL teams need not only to select well in round one each June but to pick up serviceable players intermittently in later rounds. As a young pro hockey player Sami Lepisto already looks a good deal more than serviceable.
Another non-first-rounder, Tomas Fleischmann, may have announced his comfort zone arrival as a productive top-6 NHL forward on the road trip. The owner of a new two-year contract, Flash had 2 goals and an assist in the three games and looked a lot like his did in the AHL the past two seasons — among the best players on the ice each night. So many hockey fans render etched-in-stone verdicts on players’ value and potential from an opening 50 or 100 NHL games. Alexander Semin, for instance, had 10 goals in his first 50-plus games as a rookie. Fleischmann is from the same draft class, and now has 8 goals in 56 games on the season. Flash is particularly important to the Caps as a skilled winger on the left side should the unthinkable in terms of injury take place. The Caps didn’t give him a new two-year, one-way deal out of a sense of charity.
So the old and new came through on an important road swing through the South. On the radio last night studio host Jonathon Warner a few times used the word “separation” as Caps’ fans hoped it would relate to the team’s fortunes on this road trip. Mike Vogel, calling in from Tampa, was quick to dispel us all from such a silly notion. New data arrived this week further confirming that this will be the springtime of our disquiet.
Knee-Jerks & Notes: Caps-Habs, 1/31
By DC Sports Chick
Friday, February 1, 2008
Montreal Logo - image from TSN.ca
Knee-Jerk Reactions
Good crowd, good ice, two streaking teams, and a crammed press box.
- The game started off with a high-stick hello — apparently the Canadiens thought they’d need to smack Ovechkin in the face with a stick in order to send a message. The only thing louder than the outrage on that hit was, lamentably, the “O” during the anthem.
- Great stuff attempt on that first power play by Laich. If only it went in.
- The RDS feed was on in front of us (pucksandbooks is yapping away with all his Hershey buddies in the house while I do the game work), and it appeared that Brashear went to the box for “rudesse,” which apparently means “roughing” in Habs-speak. We’ve seen worse infractions during a Metro ride. Especially this season.
- It was Hershey night at the Phone Booth (Josef Boumedienne and Sami Lepisto were signing autographs before the game, then watched the game from the press box), and even Coco arrived to help Slapshot with mascot duties.
- What a slapper by Ovechkin! Any harder and that would’ve taken Huet’s head off.
- Season ticket holder Pat Sajak is in the house. Although he didn’t look too enthused at being highlighted in the center ice scoreboard. What we wouldn’t give for his seats…a ceramic dalmation, perhaps?
- Thank you, lack of Montreal defense, for Ovechkin’s second goal of the night. Too bad that was immediately followed up with Montreal’s first goal of the game.
- Quintin Laing is an absolute workhorse out there, despite a lack of ice time in this game (six minutes in the first two periods). But we already knew that.
Hershey Bears Logo
- Montreal is getting a team back in the QMJHL next season, after a five-year absence. The St. John’s Fog Devils have been sold to a Montreal businessman. Speaking of the Q league, Capitals’ prospect Mathieu Perreault is on a 20-game scoring streak!
- Courtesy of the Caps Cribs segment: Quintin Laing and his wife have the cutest little boy, who sleeps in the closet in their apartment. As Laing explains, “It’s a very big closet.”
- There are three Russian journalists in the press box tonight. The game’s first five goals scored were by Russian players, so the journalists were understandably beaming.
- Ladies, get out the stilettos — Hockey ‘n Heels is coming back in February! (Note: wearing heels is optional, and probably not a good idea if they do the on-ice shot tutorial again.)
- Brashear has had an impact on the ice tonight — and several Montreal players have felt that impact.
- And the hits just keep on coming! What a physical game this is — no shortage of glass-shaking or open-ice collisions tonight.
- Ovechkin’s first hat trick at home: through the defender’s legs, up over Huet’s left shoulder, into the cage at about 170 mph, and back out the cage almost to the blueline. He sure enjoys playing against Montreal. No wonder their press was begging him to sign there.
- Guillaume Latendresse broke up all the Russian goal-scoring with the Habs’ third goal.
- The lack of a whistle leading to Montreal’s fourth goal is sure to be a hot topic during this game’s post-mortem.
- There are hat tricks and then there’s what Ovie accomplished Thursday night: a four-goal, bash ‘em and blur-by-’em “one for the ages” (that’s Mike Vogel’s post-game quote) feat of dominance, in front of a sizable contingent of Montreal press, and ESPN’s Scott Burnside, that may go a real long way to forging the Gr8’s Hart Trophy award. Oh, and he did it all with a broken nose. That contract’s beginning to look really good!
Post-game reactions
- Comcast’s Lisa Hillary asked Ovie if Tuesday night’s disappointment fueled his outburst tonight. Not so much, apparently. “My girlfriend [I knew] was coming,” he said, beaming. “That’s why,” he added chuckling.
Washington Capitals Coach Bruce Boudreau
- Olie Kolzig: “I think I might set a record for lowest save percentage with a winning record.”
- Gabby on Ovie: “He’s an amazing person.”
- “What was going through your mind when they tied it?” the head coach was asked. “Exactly what was going through my mind was we’ve been up 3-0 four times and they’ve come back to tie it … but we’ve won every game. That’s the first thing I thought of. So I said, we’re, ok!” [press room erupts in laughter]
- More Gabby: “I thought it was a game we absolutely dominated the first 30, 35 minutes. They only had 9 shots … Coaches have always said get a hit early and get into the game, and he [Ovechkin] loves the challenges and you could see him going after Komisarek more than Komisarek was going at him. That’s a big boy, and when you play as much as Alex does, I mean, it doesn’t seem to tire him, and that’s good for the Capitals.”
- On not losing consecutive games and its meaning: “It means they can play with anybody they want … We don’t have the consistency of the Detroit Red Wings or anything, but when we put our minds to it, play the way we’re supposed to play, and when we get the good goaltending like we got tonight, we’re a pretty tough team to beat.”
Weekend Photo Notebook
By Gustafsson
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Here are a few images from Thursday’s game with Edmonton (more after the break).