The Russian Connection gets it done against the Rangers (photo: Mike Rucki)

Based on tonight’s performance, the Caps will be just fine with that.

In the post-game press conference, Coach Hunter was asked if this game was similar to the Caps’ victory over Nashville. “This is more heated because it’s a rivalry,” he replied. “It’s more emotional, and the guys rose to the occasion.”

A game that started out hesitantly — as if both teams were aware of the HBO cameras and trying to avoid mistakes — turned into a dominant performance by the Capitals. After just two shots in the first six minutes, the floodgates opened and 55 shots were on target by the end of the game. The important number, of course is 4: Four even-strength goals for a Capitals team that hasn’t given its netminders much support of late.

Alex Ovechkin entered the game on a point-per-game pace (14g, 11a) in his last 25 contests against the Rangers. He’s improved on that rate slightly with his 2 assists, both on beautiful shots by Alexander Semin, though didn’t find the net himself.

The Capitals’ forecheck was in fine form, stymieing the Rangers’ attempts to exit their zone or move through the neutral zone. Two of the Caps’ goals were direct results of their aggressive forecheck — the first a sweet steal by Marcus Johansson, who dished to Jeff Halpern and crashed the net as Halpern shot to pot the rebound.

The Caps’ second forecheck-created goal started with a sweet open-ice hit by Ovechkin; Backstrom collected the puck and fired a smooth pass to a streaking Semin.

Just seconds earlier the Rangers had a golden opportunity to tie the game at two apiece, when John Carlson (whose first-period stumble led to the Rangers only tally on the night) misplayed the puck. Yet the Rangers failed to convert, and Semin,with a burst of speed, made them pay for their missed opportunity. And in a blink, what could have been 2-2 became 3-1.

But the feel-good goal of the game goes to Troy Brouwer. He was having a rough night, whiffing in front of an open net on the power play despite a tic-tac-toe pass from Ovechkin to Backstrom to Brouwer. Later, a two-on-one break with him and Ovechkin did not yield a shot on goal; then Brouwer missed another great chance down low. But his persistence paid off, as he camped at the top of the crease and redirected a Carlson shot into the net. Brouwer burst into a huge grin after the goal — you could almost hear his sigh of relief from the press box.

The Capitals’ PK units stood tall and denied the Rangers on five opportunities (including another pesky Delay of Game… a lucky fan got a souvenir lofted over the defensive-zone glass for the second game in a row), including two late in the third frame. “It was a commitment by the guys. You see the blocked shots out there, and the puck does hurt! But they committed to it . . . that’s commitment to win.” Hunter also complimented Vokoun, who put in a solid performance despite ample bench time of late.

There were problems: a few bad passes by Ovechkin led to odd-man rushes the other way. The Rangers paid very little price for getting in Vokoun’s crease, nor for blatantly snowing him more than once.

But the team played as, well, a team, and the scoreboard rewarded their efforts with a much-needed victory.

Officials do at times have a disproportionate impact on a contest’s outcome (Exhibit A), and fans may revile the men in stripes, but referees themselves are fans of the game and work hard to get the calls right.

Kerry Fraser’s paperback Final Call: Hockey Stories from a Legend in Stripes hit the shelves this week, and Fraser provides fascinating insights into being a professional referee. He shares some unique stories from his up-close view of thirty years of professional hockey.

For the most part, Ol’ Helmet Hair succeeds—yet he still missed some calls, as we Capitals faithful who chanted “Fraser Sucks!” might expect. And, as Fraser admits, he heard those chants loud and clear throughout his career.

Fraser is at his best when telling in-game anecdotes. For instance, he discusses Matthew Barnaby’s removable silver tooth. One of the infamous agitator’s tricks was to pop the tooth into his palm if an opposing player’s stick came near his face, then turn to the referee and show the tooth that the high stick had just “broken.” Apparently it worked quite a few times, even once on Fraser, until word got around to the other refs. Makes you want to smack Barnaby more than ever, eh?

Fraser’s mediation of on-ice conflicts gives one more respect for the man. Mind you, Fraser has a sizable ego, and no matter how much he admits it the ego can be grating at times. Fraser considers a referee as more than just an assessor of penalties, but also as a kind of “morality police” to keep things fair and above-board.

Some would argue that morality is not the purview of an NHL referee (and for the most part I agree). But sometimes that expanded role yielded positive results. For instance, Fraser brokered a peace between Tyson Nash and Theo Fleury, after Nash hurled personal insults at Fleury that well and truly crossed the line — we’re talking “Slap Shot” territory without the humor. During the first intermission, Fraser spoke to Nash’s coach Joel Quenneville (who, to his credit, immediately offered to bench Nash), and the next period began with Nash giving Fleury a heartfelt apology. Regardless of how one feels about this aspect of Fraser’s refereeing, it certainly makes for good reading.

Fraser includes a few Washington Capitals tidbits, such as Dale Hunter telling him, “Frase, if you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t tryin’!'” Fraser also looks back at a bench-clearing brawl in the old Capital Center, with Mike Gartner and Rod Langway getting into the fray. And his description of the magical Fenway Park atmosphere for the 2010 Winter Classic is truly terrific.

While Fraser’s ego is apparent throughout the book, he also pokes fun at himself in a charming way — such as including the above pic of 5’7″ (with good posture) Fraser next to Zdeno Chara, or his “Fraser’s Hair through the Ages” photos.

As for some of the book’s missed calls? Fraser would have been better served to have hired a co-writer, or a more stringent editor. To be fair, Fraser’s writing is better than one might expect from a life-long athlete — and hockey refs’ conditioning is almost as intense as players’ (minus the hitting of course), so calling them athletes seems reasonable.

But boy! Does he! Enjoy! Exclamation Points! And he leans a bit too much on phrases like “The apple sure doesn’t fall far from the tree!” He occasionally detours into Family and Faith — fine topics, to be sure, but not ones to bring up too often in a book of, as the title says, “Hockey Stories”. The book’s opening chapter, detailing his emotions during his final game, is a logical starting point but a bit too maudlin.

Final Call really hits its stride about 50 pages in, when Fraser discusses The Missed Call, Wayne Gretzky’s uncalled high-sticking in Game 6 of the 1993 Campbell Conference Finals that some say led to the Kings’ victory over the Leafs. From that point forward, Fraser’s hockey stories get most of the focus — which is exactly where the focus should be.

Fraser’s writing is occasionally shaky, and the first-person narrative keeps Fraser as the clear center of every anecdote he relates to the reader. As a memoir of sorts that’s understandable, of course; but there were times the “I”s seemed to dominate the page.

Overall, though, the pros of Final Call outweigh the cons—it’s a worthwhile read to experience the National Hockey League through one of its most respected and controversial referees. Love him or hate him, he’s certainly experienced some amazing hockey moments. Recommended.

[Note: The extra chapter added to the paperback edition is interesting, including a discussion of his ongoing crusade to make the NHL protect players against head injuries. But the hardcover is basically the same book, and at the moment the bargain-price hardcover is cheaper on Amazon than the paperback version.]

Hockey is a fluid and complicated game. Sabermetrics’ VORP and OPS and WAR seem to fit baseball well, if a bit coldly. Hockey doesn’t lend itself to discrete analysis the same way — for baseball, at its core, is a very individual sport when compared to hockey’s constant interaction between players on the ice, not to mention 18 players on each team changing lines on the fly.

Many have strong opinions about who among the Washington Capitals steps up (and what “stepping up” even means) when it counts. Data analysis cannot capture things like leadership, chemistry, and the myriad small-yet-crucial plays that don’t appear on the score sheet. But hockey does have tangible measures of success beyond wins and losses, and a closer look can sometimes reveal conventional wisdom to be not as wise as one thought.

Stats aren’t a panacea for sports debate, but sometimes delving into the numbers can shed a different light on an analysis. I will try to avoid, as Andrew Lang once wrote, using statistics “as a drunken man uses lampposts — for support rather than for illumination.”

With all that in mind, let’s take a look at how the Washington Capitals’ Young Guns perform in the regular season vs. the post-season—because really, as most fans will agree at this point in the team’s progression, the regular season is just a warm up. (I’ve added Brooks Laich to the mix, because of his leadership role and his new salary. Let’s call them Young Guns II… cue “Blaze of Glory“.)

What I wanted to see was which of the Capitals’ key players elevate their games when it matters most, and which players wilt in crunch time.  That these Capitals have played relatively few playoff games thus far in their careers limits sampling validity somewhat; and as the investment mantra goes, past performance does not guarantee future results.

Nonetheless, let’s examine a few basic hockey stats, comparing the Young Guns’ scoring in the regular-season to the post-season.

The first three stat columns are regular season: Goals per Game, Assists per Game, Points per Game. The next three columns are those same stats in the playoffs (hence the leading “P”). 37 post-season games for all but Green, who has 36.

Laich sees the biggest jump, lending credence to the idea that it’s the muckers and grinders, the ones who are “willing to get their noses dirty,” who flourish in the playoffs (c.f. Joel Ward).

What about penalties? After all, you can’t score from the sin bin, and too many penalties lead to opponent goals and exhausted penalty killers. Mike Green has a whopping 47 PIM in 36 playoff games, or about 1:20 per game—a dramatic increase from his 45 seconds-per-game regular season average.

One could argue that defensemen must be more physical in playoff hockey, so perhaps Green’s post-season penalty proclivity makes sense (Jeff Schultz, for example, increased from 1/3 PIM per game to 2/3 PIM). Unfortunately, Green’s +/- numbers plummet from regular to post season, from +.15 per game to -.17.

So while Green’s scoring climbs slightly in the playoffs, his penalties increase while his +/- drops. For comparison’s sake: Ovechkin’s average +/- rises in the post-season, so it’s not a team-wide phenomenon.

Back to penalties: Ovechkin has spent 18 minutes in the post-season penalty box. Semin has twice as many with 36 playoff PIM. Semin commits infractions at the same rate in the regular season: roughly 1 PIM per game. Ovechkin, with his “wrecking ball” reputation and hard-hitting style leading to a few 5-minute majors and 10-minute misconducts, averages 30% fewer penalty minutes than Semin in the regular season, and 50% fewer in April and May.

What does all this number-crunching suggest? The clearest conclusion is that Alex Ovechkin plays his best hockey when it matters most. Brooks Laich can say the same. The other three Young Guns, to this point in their careers, have not done so.

Bringing the Stanley Cup to D.C. will require all the Capitals to play well, of course, not just the Big 5… and even then it takes a lot of luck. But the five players who lead the team—and account for roughly half the team’s salary expense—simply must elevate their play when it’s all on the line. All of them.

They have the talent. I believe they can pull together and do what they must. But until they do, there will be no joy in Mudville. The numbers, one might say, speak for themselves.

[kudos to Greg Henesy, who started me down this path.]

(Photo by @cnichols14)

This summer, the major change to his offseason routine was actually allowing himself to rest more—counter-intuitive for someone who’d usually start working out as soon as he got home in the offseason. Holtby felt, however, that pushing himself too far in the summer affected his play in the second part of the season.

“I still worked hard, but it was being more responsible with my body – making sure that  I didn’t peak at the start of the season like I felt like I did in the last couple seasons,” Holtby told OFB Saturday.

He said when he was younger, he’d set numbers he wanted to achieve going into a new hockey season. But that mindset isn’t how he’s choosing to focus this year.

“My biggest goals coming in is that I really want to work on consistency in the latter part of the season, and I really want to prove that my time up here wasn’t a fluke if I get called up again, and that I can do a better job when I get sent back down to Hershey,” said Holtby, who was 10-2-2 for the Capitals last year and finished last year’s NHL stint with a 1.79 goals against average. His numbers in Hershey ended up  17-10-2 with a 2.29 goals against average and a .920 save percentage.

Summer brought an interesting twist in the Capitals’ goalie chronicles – the  team traded one of their two starting goalies, which initially looked like a promotion for Holtby, but the eventual signing of veteran Tomas Vokoun means Holtby will likely start the 2012 season where he finished playing the last – in Hershey.

It poses an interesting dilemma for a young player: is it better to sit on a bench at a higher-level club, or get the reps and the mental comfort of being out on the ice every game at a slightly lower level?

“If you would have asked me that last year, I would have said I wanted to be playing,” Holtby said. “But this year, I’ve kind of realized the NHL is my goal … – with the practices and every experience you get up here, it’s valuable – that’s what you can’t learn in the AHL.  But at the same time, there’s positives both ways. I do want to play a lot — I’m the guy that kind of goes crazy when he’s not playing.”

Holtby finished the 2011 season like the rest of us: watching Tim Thomas play himself into a killer beard, a championship-game MVP and a Stanley Cup.

But for those Caps fans who liked Thomas’ style of play, Holtby (when asked), grants he and Thomas probably bring a similar personality to the crease.

“I think his personality’s a lot like mine on the ice,” Holtby said. “He’s very competitive, and he kind of does whatever to stop the puck. I think with me, I’d like to work on a few more technical things than he has, I guess. But it works for him—he’s obviously the best goalie in the NHL last year.”

Part of the reason for emphasizing the technical in Washington, Holtby said, is because of how the goalie compliments  the forwards here.

“You want to be looked at as kind of the steady guy back there instead of the excitement most of the time, ‘cause the excitement comes from the forwards in this group,” Holtby said.

Per the Caps’ press release, here are the opponents who will see the old-school look… one can only hope that those teams with throwback sweaters of their own will follow suit (apologies for the pun). It would be great to see the Devils in their old pizza-box unis, the Habs rocking the stripes, and so cool if the Jets break out their original kit.

• Saturday, Nov. 26 at Buffalo Sabres 7 p.m.
• Friday, Dec. 23 at New Jersey Devils 7 p.m.
• Wednesday, Jan. 18 at Montreal Canadiens 7:30 p.m.
• Friday, Jan. 20 at Carolina Hurricanes 7 p.m.
• Sunday, Jan. 22 at Pittsburgh Penguins 3 p.m.
• Saturday, Feb. 4 at Montreal Canadiens 2 p.m.
• Sunday, Feb. 12 at New York Rangers 3 p.m.
• Monday, Feb. 20 at Carolina Hurricanes 7:30 p.m.
• Saturday, Feb. 25 at Toronto Maple Leafs 7 p.m.
• Saturday, March 10 at Boston Bruins 1 p.m.
• Friday, March 16 at Winnipeg Jets 8:30 p.m.
• Sunday, March 18 at Chicago Blackhawks 6 p.m.
• Monday, March 19 at Detroit Red Wings 7:30 p.m.
• Thursday, March 22 at Philadelphia Flyers 7 p.m.
• Monday, April 2 at Tampa Bay Lightning 7 p.m.
• Saturday, April 7 at New York Rangers 3 p.m.

HBO’s Sports Media Relations department confirmed that no Blu-Ray version is planned; they also pointed out that “this [will be] the first time a ’24/7′ has ever been available for purchase.” In other words, baby steps.

So while Blu-Ray would certainly be preferred by some, the Sports Emmy-winning broadcast will be a welcome addition to any hockey fan’s library even any format… and required viewing in Washington and Pittsburgh, of course. In fact, fans of the Flyers and Rangers may want to buy it too — not only is it great television, but the more DVDs that sell the more likely the 2012 Winter Classic will get a DVD (and perhaps Blu-Ray) release.

Sometimes, though, you unearth a great piece of furniture there, or lamp, or glassware, or any of the usual estate-sale fare you can imagine. Last weekend, though, I stumbled across a truly unexpected gem: an Eagle Toys N.H.L. Hockey Night in Canada slot-hockey set.

Mind you, the box was rotting… the playing surface warped and rusted… and almost all the players missing. To be fair, it’s from the early 1960s, and was clearly used often. The “Win a free trip to a Stanley Cup Final Game!” contest is all kinds of awesome.

How can you tell it’s old? Sure, that there are just six teams is an indicator — but the surest sign it’s from long ago is that the Maple Leaf player is smiling.