Wow, Washington and Pittsburgh served up another beauty tonight. At one point in the third period, I recall Gord Miller telling me that there had been four lead changes in the game.
The final two minutes of the 3rd were beyond belief. The slashing penalty that caused all of this called at the blueline by referee Denis Larue was ridiculous in my estimation, and the Caps would have deservedly felt they had been hosed out of the series had the Penguins been able to bang one home on the ensuing power play to win the game. Happily, the hockey gods seem to have a sense of justice in this series – a playful one, one in which the team scoring first does not fare very well – but a sense of justice nonetheless.
And so we come to another Game 7 Wednesday night in D.C., where the faithful will be Rocking the Red for sure and blowing the lid off the joint. Hopefully, the Caps step on to the ice a more determined, prepared and disciplined crew than they did in the last game, or the Crosbys will be the ones smiling broadly during the post-game handshakes.
To try and get some good Capitals (and Varlamov – anybody else think he’s still looking a little shaky?) mojo going for my adopted team once again, here’s another picture of Ovie that I took at a Caps/Lightning game in February.
Ovechkin Plus Puck Equals Da Bomb
p.s: Still working on the tale of my recent adventures – but it was beautiful outside tonight and there was hockey to be watched, so…you get “photographs and meh” instead of the unadulterated awesomeness that naturally evolves from any story in which I collide heavily with objects of even more substantial mass than myself, such as (for example) the Earth.
I’m not the only guy to suffer an injury around the ol’ homestead this weekend. The little fellow pictured below flew headlong into the window on the east side at the rear of our house. He seemed to be stunned (beautiful plumage, eh?) for a little bit, and Spouse and I stood nearby to make sure he didn’t get scooped up by any wandering cats or foxes whilst lying in the garden, no doubt pining for the fjords. We were more than a little worried he was going to shuffle off this mortal coil and join the choir invisible. Spouse said she felt like a murderer, so I pointed out that the sum total of her ignominious crime was “owning a window”, but she still felt like a monster.
Tired and shagged out after a prolonged squawk?
I took the opportunity to snap off a few pictures at very close range. After twenty minutes of resting or so, he gathered himself together and flew off to the top of the tallest tree in Juniorvania, fresh as a daisy.
This Small Body of Water is One Up on Junior After Today's Events
JUNIORVANIA (JP): In the annual season-opening yardwork test match, the score today was:
POND 1
MAN 0
Detailed scoring summary and complete game recap to follow.
Meanwhile, Captain of the Juniorvanian Men’s Team and Beloved Leader of the Homeland Junior is listed as “day-to-day” with an upper body injury, dirty overalls and a sense of significant embarrasment about his most recent spectacular display of public stupidity.
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Update (Sunday May 10): Seems my somewhat quixotic description above has left more than a few people wondering what specific mischief has been occasioned to my person, what got severed, etc. Fear not! Please hold your calls, emails and other expressions of concern (and by all means don’t clear your Junior Injury Bingo cards yet); it’s nothing serious, just some bruised ribs and a suitably diminished sense of self-worth. More to follow when today’s match is complete and I can spend some quality time at the keyboard.
Game 5 is about to get underway – I can’t decide whether to listen live or to save the recording I’m making and listen later. I am very nervous, but excited. C’mon boys, git ‘er done!
Game five of the OHL Championship series goes tonight at the WFCU Centre in Windsor, 7:05 p.m. I fully expect Spits fans to absolutely blow the roof off the new rink tonight when the Spits take the ice, and the team is going to come out charged up and ready to roll. I am very much hoping, as I have written elsewhere, that the Spits to book their ticket to Rimouski tonight. I am still charged up from watching the Spits beat the Battalion 4-1 the other night in Brampton.
The other thing that emerged from my visit to Brampton’s Powerade Centre: the following list of seven reasons that the Brampton Battalion should NOT win the OHL Championship.
(1) The team colours; guys: it’s called olive “drab” for a reason.
Sarge scares some kids (from www.spitfire-hockey.com)
(2) The Brampton players emerge from their dressing room and enter the ice surface at the start of the game through a giant inflatable tank. First, nothing says “invincible” like a giant air-filled pillow; and second, the “muzzle” of the tank droops rather obscenely. When we first saw it, my Dad expressed some degree of concern that they might use the damn thing to fire t-shirts or other swag into the crowd (a la the t-shirt bazookas in use at other facilities). He was right to be concerned. These guys really carry the military theme a touch over the top.
(3) They have a freaky looking mascot called “Sarge”. And I mean freaky, this thing is some kind of messed up. If a real live person were dressed in olive drab combat fatigues but had an oversized head that looked like one of those weird apple core dolls, that person would:
scare the shit out of me; and
look exactly like “Sarge.”
I think this mascot decision of the Battalion’s is very curious; whereas teams like the Calgary Flames have “Harvey the Hound” (an oversized, furry and friendly mutt), the Brampton Battalion have chosen to attempt to endear themselves to the children by circulating among them a perpetually scowling drill sergeant with an alarming complexion and a warlike demeanour. Not the choice I would have predicted.
(4) For about two or three minutes prior to the beginning of each period, arena staff play a recording of some sort of cannon firing over the facility’s loudspeakers. What a way to create a festive environment! What better way to evoke the carefree abandon of New Orleans at Mardi Gras or the joyful ebullience of the old Chicago Stadium: mimic the ambience of a warzone. I know I never quite feel like partying until the artillery bombardment has begun.
(5) They refer to the Battalion players as “troops.” ‘Nuff said.
(6) In the first intermission, “Sarge” (see above) skated around the ice and infrequently lobbed t-shirts over the glass to terrified children who reflexively returned his salute. His musical accompaniment, broadcast over the arena public address system, was the music from “The Great Escape.” A lone male in an olive drab costume slowly circling the ice, waving his arms to the music from a film about P.O.W.s – to me, it very much looked like the worst idea for the men’s short program ever conceived.
(7) At the end of each period, when there are but sixty seconds to play, the arena announcer bellows out “One minute to ceasefire!”
Really? Dude, the military motif? It’s too much. Seriously. Oh, and Dude? ONE GAME ‘TIL CEASEFIRE!!
Windsor 4, Brampton 1. My Spitfires are one game closer to (and only one win away from) their second OHL Championship. After suffering a setback on Monday in game 3 at the hands of a determined Brampton club, the Spits stormed out of the gate in the first last night and attacked the Brampton goal (occupied by Thomas McCollum) repeatedly and in waves. The sold-out Powerade Centre in Brampton was bursting at the seams with 4,861 junior hockey fans (including, I am happy to note, a very noticeable and very vocal contingent of Spitfire supporters), but the Battalion players seemed unable to draw sufficient energy from their assembled well-wishers to assist them in mounting an effective counter-attack at the outset of the game. The Spitfires carried by far the vast majority of the play in the first frame and outshot the home side by a margin of 12-7; in fact, with only the occasional generally fleeting Brampton foray into Windsor territory, to my mind that shot count is somewhat misleading as it fails to reflect the territorial advantage enjoyed by the Sptifires throughout the period. I suspect that many of those 7 Brampton shots were accumulated during the power-play they had when Windsor’s Richard Greenop was called for high-sticking well behind the play. At times during the first, the Windsorites seemed to cycle the puck low in the Brampton zone almost at will. To the credit of the Brampton defenders, they prevented with some frequency the prolonged Windsor cycling from developing into truly high quality scoring opportunities. In fact, for much of the period it seemed as though the Battalion would manage to survive the sustained offensive pressure in their zone; of greater concern for Brampton coach Stan Butler, no doubt, would have been Windsor’s success in the transition game. I counted at least a half-dozen odd-man rushes generated by Brampton turnovers either at, or just over the Windsor blueline – including one early four-on-two attack that must have had Butler reaching for the Alka Seltzer. Click here to continue reading Windsor Spitfires at Brampton Battalion: Game 4 Recap
This is how I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that print journalism must be anachronistic, irrelevant and doomed: I have been asked to write a piece on the Leafs for publication in an actual hold-it-in-your-hand, you-could-drop-that-thing-and-bruise-a-toe book. And get this: I am told that I will be getting paid to do this thing. From this latter fact, I conclude that the publishers of this tome are almost certainly lunatic immigrant millionaires with a tenuous-to-non-existent grasp on the English language. Believing that they are allergic to money, I suspect they have resolved to rid themselves of the cursed lucre in the most pro-social way possible; by contributing to the publication of a well-respected and important medical journal filled with scholarly research. I just pray someone has a camera when these well-meaning but misguided philanthropists are presented with the finished product – I foresee an instant and compelling portrait of blinking uncomprehension and, quite possibly, some feces throwing.
I can’t give out a lot of details at the moment, mostly because I don’t want you to steal this gig from me, but rest assured I will be pimping the book like a madman once it has been brought into existence. As much as you are now staring at the screen, cursing the rotten luck that leaves you bereft of detail, I can promise you that you will someday remember fondly the happy times before this godforsaken book was mentioned by me in every sentence.
I’ll bet you can’t wait to be that unhappy. In the meantime, I am busy trying to figure out how the hell I am going to manage to get everything done that I will need to: for example, not only do I now have to find the time to research and write the piece, if I am going to be a writer I also have to make sure that I spend the correct amount of time bellyaching about how making the deadline is going to be a bitch and so on. I guess this post is a pretty good start on that. I must be a quick learner.
All kidding aside, I do have some degree of concern about taking on yet another project: at present, for those of you keeping track, I am (theoretically) in the middle of:
NaNoReMo2008 – began in November. Supposed to last a month (hey, I figure Dickens is dead, it’s not like he’s waiting for me to finish so he can move on to the next book. Also, that screaming you hear is coming from San Diego; Mike, I don’t think there’s any need for the potty mouth….);
And those are just the projects I’ve blogged about! I also have it in my mind to convert some old VHS video to digital (I spent a large part of last Saturday wondering why I haven’t yet converted my copy of Leafs/Kings Game 7 in ’93 to an iPod-friendly format so that I can watch it whenever I feel the urge. This, as much as it may be a cry for help, is not a lie.) There are also three or four crates of old vinyl LPs that are practically begging for my attention, so much of my (formerly?) beloved music desperate to enter the 21st century at last.
Anyway, no doubt some of my time tippy-tapping away at my article will take away somewhat from the time I have available to examine my navel here for your benefit; you must be devastated, I can tell. I have to say, though, that over the last week or so, I’ve enjoyed spending a few minutes in front of the blank screen with the cursor blinking and a hundred poopy jokes wanting to be written. I guess I’m having fun writing, and I’ve pushed back a little bit at the multi-armed time-eating monster that my job has recently become. I have been forcing myself to make just a little bit of time to sit here and flap my virtual gums at you, and it has made me feel a bit better, so I am going to try (see the list of projects above) to keep it up.
Seriously, stop laughing at me.
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Note: The Spitfires lost to Brampton last night 4-2. I recorded the game via Freecorder, loaded it on to my iPod then carefully avoided hearing about the score; I listened to the game after I went to bed at around 11:30. About two hours later, I was bummed out – and sleepy. Anyway, Dad and I won’t be seeing the Spits claim the Championship Trophy tomorrow night in Brampton; I just hope I haven’t jinxed them too badly. We want another W!
Prior to Game One of The Crosbys vs. The Ovechkins, I posted a photo I took of Alex Ovechkin in February during our visit to the Sunshine State (otherwise known as the Week We Retired).
Keeping in mind the worldwide influence of this blog, it would seem apparent to me that the appearance of the said photograph directly contributed to the Caps’ victory over their arch-rivals. No doubt it was my photography that spurred the Gr8 Eight to play up to his potential, begin to justify the hype concerning this series and to chip in a goal to boot. In addition, I am sure that Simeon Varlamov’s otherworldly performance was his way of attempting to grab the attention of these pages and to earn the posting of an image of his own.
It's been THIS LONG since I scored. Seriously.
Because the Caps are my adopted team once again this post-season, and because I believe very strongly that the Penguins will play better in Game Two, I am going to use some ninja psychology on the 21-year old Capital netminder: I am going to decline once again to post his photograph hereabouts. Instead, I shall post a picture of Calgary speedster and Norris trophy candidate Mike Green. I am posting this photo of Green because:
It might help him remember what to do if he happens to be involved in a play during which the Capitals advance the puck into the Penguins’ net – unless he’s been drywalling his ceiling at home, it’s been a while since Green has had occasion to raise his arms over his head; and
If the appearance of this photo doesn’t spur Green on to change his approach to the game, a public posting of this image might get it considered for use on the side of the milk carton that will inevitably begin circulating inside the Beltway as those Rockin’ the Red begin to earnestly wonder about Green’s wherabouts.
Seriously, Mike, one shot on goal in twenty-six minutes of ice time and a partially blown coverage that led to your boy Simeon’s masterpiece save just aren’t getting it done right now; not for a marquee player that the Capitals are depending on. Anyway, Ovie, Green and their mates better cowboy up and get ready for a different kind of rodeo tonight.
Update 12:10 p.m. : On Frozen Blog is reporting that Capitals defenceman John Erskine left the morning skate early and that the Caps have recalled prospect defensemen Karl Alzner and Tyler Sloan from their AHL affiliate, Hershey (a club that is itself involved in a playoff series, believe it or not against the Penguins’ AHL farm team). Erskine was half of the duo I saw Boudreau matching up with Sidney Crosby in Game One (Fedorov was Sid the Kid’s shadow by times as well). Injuries on the blueline to critical personnel combined with an undoubted sense of urgency among the Penguins to bring a better game mean that the Caps’ task tonight will be significantly more difficult. I’m pulling for them, but I foresee a Penguins victory tonight following an improved showing from both Crosby and Malkin.
Elsewhere on the Ice Tonight
Keep on checking to make more checks: Go Spits Go!
A certain Major Junior A team from a certain City located in the extremities of Southwestern Ontario takes to the ice tonight against the Brampton Batallion for Game 3 of the Ontario Hockey League Championship Final. I have had some difficulty getting the live streaming audio from CKLW AM 800 to work properly for me throughout the OHL playoffs; I am hoping that won’t be the case tonight. Obviously, I have a choice to make – Crosbys vs. Ovechkins or Spits/Batallion. I think I’ll probably watch the NHL game on the tube and try to record the Spits broadcast using Freecorder; then I’ll listen to the .mp3 of the Spits game broadcast on my iPod when I go to bed. How far indeed – and yet not so far at all – we have come from those days falling asleep listening to Dave Quinn’s call of the game over my crystal radio set. The technology has changed radically; 35 years later, I’m still looking forward to the excitement of the Spits on the radio.
