Comments on: Rangers beat Caps 4-1 and the Two-Minutes Ovechkin Hate

By: Rhino40

Rhino40 — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:28:00 +0000

“ Let’s suppose for a second that the Capitals truly are hated by the refs– and maybe that’s true– I dunno. How do the Capitals rehab that image? How do they get the calls they want? This is not a rhetorical question; I really want to know.” Peter, I’ve been asking that exact same question every year, for the last twenty-seven years… As for the title of your post, I got the 1984 reference, hence: Finishing Your Checks is Roughing Gap Control is Interference Asking for an explanation is Unsportsmanlike Conduct

By: Rhino40

Rhino40 — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:19:00 +0000

Props to you Annie: “Magical Toughness Fairy”–I can’t begin to tell you what an absolutely brilliant juxtaposition that is!!!

IMO, The crux of the problem isn’t that OV got “old” or “lazy” or that any of the other intellectually bankrupt criticisms leveled at him are even remotely valid. In fact, for the first several years of his career, OV played Canadian-Style Tough even better than most Canadians did–skating hard every shift, Scoaring Moar Goals, and laying colossal hits on everything that moved…The only thing he didn’t do was drop the gloves.

…and the powers-that-be couldn’t f***ing stand the fact that this jet-set, D&G-wearing “Russky” was playing Their Game so well that even Mr. Hockey Himself was giving the guy mad props!

…so they punished him for Being Ovechkin by suspending him again and again and again…for doing the exact same things we all know would go punished–or even be praised!–if Sid-the-Id had done them.
This was the one and only thing that could possibly have stopped Ovechkin from being one of the greatest ever: They (the NHL disciplinarians) took a man off of the ice who loves to play hockey like few others ever have…and in so doing, ruined a once-in-a-generation talent.

By: Derek Eklund

Derek Eklund — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 01:16:00 +0000

5 star post!

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 23:08:00 +0000

Great post. Agreed completely with:

a) Ovi trying to avoid an interference call

b) Ovi’s iffy second penalty call on the double penalty

c) Ovi takes control of the puck way too much through neutral ice

Milbury actually sounded surprisingly calm after the 1st intermission when criticizing Ovechkin. Must not have had his coffee until the 2nd period…

By: Annie Lockyer

Annie Lockyer — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 23:00:00 +0000

You’re so kind; thank you, and likewise. I’m actually super insecure about it so that means a lot. I really didn’t mean to write that much but I agreed so much with your excellent recap that I decided, what the hell, today is as good a day as any to write the world’s longest sentence fragment about an intestinal tract.

By: Peter Hassett

Peter Hassett — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 21:26:00 +0000

I love the way you write, Annie.

By: Dark Stranger

Dark Stranger — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 21:19:00 +0000

I also noticed how little the 4th line played after a “certain” point in the game when they weren’t the ones that made any egregious errors today — it was the 1st line who did. Still, I don’t get why Wolski was scratched or where Perreault was either. And how does Crabb keep getting ice time over the other guys who rotate in and out of the lineup?

By: Peter Hassett

Peter Hassett — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 21:03:00 +0000

Rob, I watched that play maybe 5 times, and I had a really hard time picking it up. Coach’s challenge next year, pls?

By: Rob

Rob — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:15:00 +0000

What baffled me was the “holding” call on a play that a monster like Zdeno Chara does all the time: a reach in with the stick around the body. Even the tripping was incidental. It was the second straight game I thought some ticky-tack calls sealed the Caps fate, even as they play somewhat subpar hockey. Alex Ovechkin still moves with the puck well. That sort of movement should draw more penalties. I am not an apologist and Alex did not bring his A game this weekend. But what appears odd is that refs seem to call him differently than other players and that is problem.

By: Annie Lockyer

Annie Lockyer — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 20:07:00 +0000

I had a sick feeling in my stomach all morning yesterday before that eminently winnable game against the Isles; it was suspicion that a playoff contending team would take care of business, and pretenders would fall apart in spectacular fashion; and I already knew, in the back of my mind, into which of those categories this year’s Capitals fall. But holy mackerel do I get pissed when I hear this xenophobic garage on my television in 2013. It’s not just the NBC guys on national broadcasts piling on Ovi for all the wrong reasons, either, if you watch our opponents’ feeds instead of Locker and Joe B, you get every hack homer latching onto this narrative, lazily denigrating the talents and character of russian players, especially Ovi, every time they slip-up or god forbid, age like a typical human. I can’t pinpoint exactly what’s going on with the guy, but throwing up your hands and declaring he’s NOKD is crap journalism. I shouldn’t really have to point out that there’s no special toughness fairy granting magical powers of grit and specialness to every lucky bastard that happens to be born in the western hemisphere, but somehow, the hockey monoculture remains unconvinced.

Then I look at the ever occluding window of Capitals near-term of contention, and it begins to look possible, probable maybe that the vagaries of history and happenstance and ringing goalposts and Habs series gone awry may ultimately collude to prove slathering xenophobes like Milbury right, at least partially, in claiming that Ovi just isn’t tough enough to lead this team to a Cup. And the idea that this team I love may serve as another anecdote of cherry picked data added to the rocksolid confirmation bias that keeps Milbury and his ilk from the base self-awareness that would lead to realizing these opinions are utterly stupid, pulled from the nether caverns of their lower intestinal tract where the cancer of their North American exceptionalism grows strong, emitting noxious odors and the Soviet-era prejudices of a generation too intellectually lazy to come up with anything more sophisticated than “different people are different.” These things I know: they are fartbrains, and they are wrong, and they will be proven wrong because that’s what happens to idiots as data accumulates over the passage of time. But not this weekend, not by Ovi or this team, and I’m just going to be over here wallowing in my anger for a while.