Photo credit: Patrick McDermott

The day after Christmas, Nicklas Backstrom was skating in a KHL game for Dynamo Moscow. Midway through the second period of a 1-1 game, Nick took a pass in the far corner. He attempted to spin around and take the puck behind the net. Instead, Backstrom was slammed into the boards by Milan Kytnár; his face hitting the dashers. Backstrom got up, clearly shaken. He left the game after one more shift.

Given Backstrom missed 40 games last year after being concussed by Rene Bourque, this was a scary blow. Dynamo, however, insisted that his brain didn’t take the beating. It was, they said, a bruised neck. Backstrom’s agent reiterated that. But then Alex Ovechkin said something funny when asked about his teammate’s injury: “Sometimes it’s not hard hit, you just feel a little dizzy.” Dizziness, of course, does not usually go along with bruises.

Backstrom ended up seeing a neurologist, Jeffrey Kutcher, who cleared him to play. Despite the early injury fears, Backstrom had a nice season, putting up eight goals and 40 assists in 48 games. He made his teammates better too — Ovechkin only became a Hart Trophy finalist once he was reunited with Backstrom. He also did some Geico commercials. All in all, it was another solid season for Nicky.

Backstrom did, however, get off to a slow start. I asked him if his injury in Russia had anything to do with that. He seemed to be taken somewhat off guard by the question, but then insisted that it didn’t harm his play.

“Yeah, I had that injury but it didn’t affect me anything to be honest with you,” he told me.

“I felt like I was doing alright over here,” Backstrom added. “I have no excuses — I will never have them.”

Caps General Manager George McPhee was questioned Wednesday about who was playing through injuries this season. He declined to give details.

“You really admire these players because they play through some things — all the players around the league do — and they don’t need a medal to do it,” the GM said. “They play through it and they don’t need any recognition or anything. They just do it.”

The next day, word of Ovechkin’s broken foot was leaked. You know, the thing Ovi called just a bruise.

Hendy high-fives fans as he walks down the tunnel to the Capitals locker room. (Photo credit: Patrick McDermott)

Matt Hendricks is a beloved player in Washington, but by no means is he an essential one. The Caps know that, and he knows that. With his two-year, $1.65 million contract expiring on July 5, he may have played his last game as a Cap. Hendricks, though, hopes that’s not true.

“I hope I don’t get to that date in July,” he said Wednesday at Kettler Capitals Iceplex as the team cleared out their lockers. “I hope I’m back here in Washington.”

“We’ve been in the negotiating process over the course of the season,” Hendricks added. “It’s a business. It’s a big part of the business. You want to get what you feel you deserve and what you feel is right.”

Hendricks’s agent Michael Wulkan, for what it’s worth, didn’t reply to a request for comment.

The Capitals don’t have a ton of room to work with as things stand now this offseason. Washington has about $5.6 million in cap space, but they also have Mike Ribeiro, Karl Alzner, and Marcus Johansson to sign — things they’ll likely be more focused on. Grinders, too, can easily be replaced through the organization and if necessary the free agent market. And Hendricks isn’t an integral player on the ice, however fond fans and teammates are of him.

So Matt Hendricks is done in DC, right? Perhaps not. As a reporters asked one Capital after another about the 31-year-old forward, the players continued to give the same answer: it’s not just about how he plays, it’s about how he makes others play. Hendricks, they say, is vocal in the locker room. He pushes his teammates to do better and, in turn, they do. He’s always out there, at practice or in a game, whether he just got hit in the face with a puck or not.

“He’s a total package player,” his friend and fellow fourth-liner Jay Beagle said. “You need those guys on your team, those role players.”

Of course, intangibles are hard to quantify — they are after all not tangible. But if Hendricks can make the people around him give more and play better, maybe that’s worth an extra hundred grand or two a year. How George McPhee feels about that, though, is unknown.

There is another thing that might help keep Hendy around: his wild symphony of exaggerated dekes and leg lifts when five minutes of overtime isn’t enough.

“He’s got that shootout move that not many guys can do,” Beagle said. “I’ve tried it, I can’t do it.”

Ribs salutes the fans after his overtime goal in game five. (Photo credit: Patrick McDermott)

For perhaps the final time in DC, Mike Ribeiro is #swag. (Photo credit: Chris Gordon)

The Washington Capitals have been searching for a second-line center for years. Last summer, they finally got one. In a shortened season with the Caps, Mike Ribeiro was excellent — even when his team wasn’t. He anchored Washington’s power play, turning Alex Ovechkin – a guy the Caps have invested $123 million in — into a lethal threat.  He stabilized the top six. He led the league in points on the man advantage, a huge source of the team’s scoring. He will soon be a free agent. The captain wants him back, though, and so does the coach.

“The most important thing is to re-sign Ribs,” Ovechkin told Slava Malamud. “It will be tough without him.”

“You all saw how valuable he was to our team,” Adam Oates added. “Hopefully the parties will work it out because we love him.”

After Ovi heaped praise on Ribs for his work this season, I asked Ribeiro what he learned by playing with the Russian. Seeing clips of him on NHL Network, of course, is different from sending him a cross-ice pass on the power play. Until this season, Ovechkin never depended on teammates. Instead, he’d take the puck into the offensive zone and try to create the play by himself. As we saw the last two years, that stopped working. Oates got him to change that, but in March Ovechkin demanded Ribeiro give him the puck in the neutral zone. Though Ovechkin is superstar, Ribs said no. By the end of the season, Ovechkin was a Hart Trophy finalist.

“He’s still a young player who has a lot to learn about the game and how to play it,” Ribeiro told me of Ovi. “He’s a powerful player.”

“His English was better than when I saw him on TV,” he continued. “Sometimes I was like ‘What is he saying?’ I used to be like that. Guys used to laugh at me the way I speak.”

Losing Ribs would be a difficult loss for the franchise, but it may be a necessary one. The team only has about $5.6 million in cap room for next season. While they could probably get Ribeiro for that, they’d have to shake up the roster a little or consider not re-signing RFAs Karl Alzner and Marcus Johansson. Considering Ribeiro is 33 and wants a four- or five-year deal, that’s a tough sell. (Ribeiro, for what it’s worth, said he “can only get better.”)

“It’s important to be hard on the merits and soft on the people and do it right,” Caps GM George McPhee said, before adding that he doesn’t talk about specific negotiations.

Still, Ribeiro reiterated that he likes the area and is hesitant to move his family again. He also wants to win. Until two weeks ago, he had missed the postseason in five straight years. That may have been justification to get the heck out of DC in February, but now it’s a reason to stay.

“Once you make the playoffs, you want to go back,” he said. “You see the potential that we have here.”

“I don’t want to be selfish by signing too much and not being able to get other guys here or re-sign guys here,” Ribeiro added. “If I stay here I want to have a chance to win. … You cannot just re-sign me and have the same kind of team. You want to improve your team.”

Soon, the Caps and Ribeiro will have to make their choices. On July 5, the center is no longer the team’s property. From the coaches to the media, everyone at Kettler Capitals Iceplex Wednesday morning knew they may be seeing him for the final time. Then, Ribeiro emerged. He strode to the podium outside the Capitals locker room wearing a fedora, a diamond earning, and a large chain. A reporter asked him about his opulent look.

“I’m allowed to do what I want to do now,” he quipped.

We’ll see if that includes staying in Washington.

Ovechkin speaks to the media at Kettler on Tuesday. (Photo credit: Alex Brandon)

Alex Ovechkin played in 86 games between the NHL and KHL this year. Though the season was lockout-shortened, several Capitals stars were still bruised and battered. Nick Backstrom injured his neck in Russia, Brooks Laich injured his groin in Switzerland, and various others dropped off along the way. We know now Ovi was playing through some sort of injury as well.

“Of course, there were aches and pains,” he told Slava Malamud of Sport-Express in Russian after game seven Monday. “Won’t say anything about needles, but injuries are always there. There were enough hits and physical play.”

So when did this all happen? Well, Ovi didn’t play well during the latter half of Washington’s first round loss to the New York Rangers; no one on the Capitals did. Despite scoring a goal in game one and notching an assist in game two, Ovi was held off the scoresheet for the rest of the series. At times during games three and four in New York, he was invisible. He did pick up his play towards the end of the series, but by then, it was too late.

As Ian already argued, there’s reason to believe Ovi may have been hurt (or conceivably aggravated something) in game three. As Ovechkin carried the puck into the Rangers’ zone during the first period, Rangers defenseman Aaron Stralman caught Ovi awkwardly along the boards with a hip check. Ovechkin had trouble getting up and labored in his strides back to the bench.

The Great Eight, insists that this didn’t injure him.

“I was ready physically,” he said of the series, again to Slava. “It wasn’t [Stralman's hit], [the injury] actually didn’t even happen in game three.”

You have to wonder if whatever ailment Ovechkin was struggling through, changed the course of the Capitals/Rangers series after Washington took a commanding 2-0 lead after games one and two.

Anyway, this season is done now. The Capitals lost. The summer has begun. Ovi has thoughts on that too.

“The most important thing is to re-sign Ribs,” he told Malamud. “It will be tough without him. Whether Kuzya can come next season or not, I have no idea. I am not going to advise him or tell him to drop everything and run here. He has his own head on his shoulders. He isn’t a 17-year-old kid anymore.”

Thanks to Slava Malamud for sharing these quotes with us. Follow this man on Twitter.

Additional reporting by Ian Oland.

Alex Ovechkin was understandably disappointed when he met the media for the final time this season. The Caps had been eliminated from the playoffs just 15 hours earlier, the sixth career postseason defeat of Ovechkin’s career.

It wasn’t all sad though. As Chuck Gormley of CSN Washington began a question about the quality of this Caps team compared to ones in the past, an R&B song began blasting from the Kettler PA system — specifically “Ridin’ Solo” by Jason Derulo. In a surreal moment, the music kept thundering in the rink for almost a minute. Ovechkin, and most of the media, couldn’t hold a straight face. It was funny.

Jump below to listen to how the whole thing went down.

Yet again. (Photo credit: USA Today)

Alex Ovechkin sat on the bench, glaring down at the ice with his head between his hands. He looked defeated, because he was. His sixth visit to the Stanley Cup Playoffs was about to end in another disappointing loss, after another year failing to meet expectations.

After the game, Ovi stood in front the white board at the far end of the Capitals locker room and went off.

I am not saying there was a phone call from [the NHL], but someone just wanted Game 7. For the ratings; you know, the lockout, escrow, the league needs to make profit.

Ovi then backtracked a little, going from blaming the refs to the entire Washington Capitals roster, including himself.

It’s very frustrating. That’s the whole point; you have to win the games and try to win the Cup.

We have a great coaching staff, good group of guys who support each other. It doesn’t matter what happen, we not yelling at each other, nobody was pointing finger like it’s your fault we lose the game. It’s everybody’s fault. All guys are at fault. My fault, Backie’s, Ribs’s — everybody. It’s not about one person or two persons, it’s about the team. We don’t get team success in game seven and game six. It’s blame on us.

My SovSport colleague Dmitry Shumin asked Ovi to describe what happened in one word. Ovi: “[We] sh*t ourselves.” #caps

— Dmitry Chesnokov (@dchesnokov) May 14, 2013

Then there was Nick Backstrom. He spoke in a soft tone, not able to bring himself to stand up. Like Ovechkin, he’s been through this many times before. NBC Washington’s Adam Vingan asked him what he’d lessoned he learned from the series. Nicky was blunt.

Learn how to play in the playoffs, same thing as previous years. We came back in the regular season and playoffs came — not good enough. I can only talk for myself and my effort — not good enough. No excuses, just a bad effort. … It’s like deja vu. It happened before. It’s a bad feeling right now.

It was mid-March and Karl Alzner was on the Internet. Like most twentysomethings, he looked up silly videos on YouTube to kill time. He stumbled across one from early last year — it was of Peter Dill, a basketball player for Seton Hall. Dill scored a single basket in his two years playing for the school, but he did get very excited when his team scored. Alzner played the clip for Mathieu Perreault.

“The guy would just go crazy, pretend he had Thor’s Hammer and he’d be smashing the ground,” Alzner told me Saturday afternoon. “Perry, I could just see his eyes, like ‘this is awesome!’”

“We should do that after we win games,” Perreault responded.

A couple weeks later, Alex Ovechkin put the puck past Jhonas Enroth during a shootout in Buffalo, ensuring a 4-3 victory for Washington. Perry followed through on his agreement with Alzner, letting out a primal scream, pumping his fists, and shaking on the bench. CSN’s cameras zoomed in, GIFs were made, and a meme was born — all within about 20 minutes.

“I didn’t know if he was gonna do it or not — but he did,” Alzner said.

“I get excited when we win!” Perreault added. “It’s just fun.”

A few days after Perreault’s inaugural freakout, the Capitals won another game in the shootout, this time over the New York Islanders, and Matty P. reacted with a manic windmill thing. The Internet took note again. But according to Alzner, he was also going wild at the time, doing some air-archery, a nod to one of Dill’s moves at Seton Hall. No one saw, though, and Alzner gave up trying to match Perreault.

“He’s doing it good — and I haven’t been,” said Alzner.

In the final game of the regular season, Perreault brought back his original convulsing celebration after the Caps beat the Bruins in overtime. Then, when Mike Ribeiro tallied nine minutes and 24 seconds into OT on Friday, Perreault went insane for the forth time.

“He’s a funny dude, so it doesn’t surprise me one bit,” Joel Ward, Perreault’s linemate, said. “For us that’s just a normal episode for him. He’s quite the character.”

There have been parodies, t-shirts, and perpetual replays, but the player at the heart of it has been largely oblivious of the reception the celebrations have gotten. Perreault’s not on Twitter and apart from a few videos, he was unaware it’d now become synonymous with him.

“I didn’t think it was gonna be that big of deal,” Perry said. “I mean, if people like it then it’s good.”

Alzner, though, knew he had something interesting from the start.

“I’m not too surprised,” Alzner said with a wry smile when asked for his reaction to the reaction. “I’m pretty happy about it actually.”

For Perreault, the celebrations are an illustration of his progression this season. It’s silly and it’s funny, but the scene would have seemed foreign back in February. The Caps were awful. Perreault was skating on the fourth line, only getting a few minutes of ice time a night. He hated it. As Adam Oates promised, though, Perreault got his chance. Now Matty P skates on the Washington’s superb third line, part of a Capitals team that hopes to win a Cup.

When that team wins, he celebrates more than anyone.

Photo credit: Chris Gordon

It’s been a crazy weekend for Tom Wilson. Friday night, he made his NHL debut in game 5 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals. Sunday afternoon, he’ll take the ice for his second big league game, this time at the famed Madison Square Garden. It’s a lot of pressure for a guy barely out of high school. How does he handle it?

“It’s unbelievable, a dream come,” he said before his inaugural game. “I’m really excited to hopefully get a nap in and just get to it.”

That plan, it seems, worked out for the 2012 first round draft pick.

“I was pretty nervous,” he said after the game. “I was at the rink and I wasn’t that nervous. Then I got back to the hotel room, had some down time, and it kind of set in, but I was able to nap pretty well so it was good.”

S/T to friend-of-the-blog Amanda for pointing this out to me.

Photo credit: Greg Fiume

Tom Wilson is barely 19 years old. Most kids his age spend their Friday nights drinking at parties in their precious time off from contributing nothing at all to society. Yeah, you know who you are.

Wilson, though, is bettering our world — he’s a hockey player after all — and he made his NHL debut Friday night. Granted, he skated a team low 6:24, but he threw a few nice hits and pushed some Rangers around after the whistle — typical fourth line stuff. His play wasn’t particularly interesting. The game it came in, though, was. The Caps won game 5 of the Eastern Conference Quarterfinals in overtime to take a 3-2 series lead.

“It was unbelievable — chills,” Wilson told me of his debut, repeating a version of that line countless times while standing in the far corner of the Capitals locker room at Verizon Center. “It was everything I imagined; it was a dream come true.”

Wilson, as you know, didn’t conceive himself a member of the Washington’s playoff lineup until a couple days ago. He played in juniors this year, registering 58 points in 48 games with the Plymouth Whalers, before they were cut down in the third round of the postseason by Dale Hunter’s London Knights. Wilson then moved on to Hershey in the middle of their playoff run. He played two games for the Bears, scoring in one. Ian was there at the time and exclaimed, “I would not be surprised if he makes the Capitals out of training camp next season.” Four days later, he was playing for the Caps, after Hershey was eliminated and Martin Erat’s arm smashed into the ice.

“I thought he did great,” head coach Adam Oates said. “Had a few hits, which is what we ask, skated well, fit into the line. It was great to see his enthusiasm.”

The Wilson family was freaking on Friday thanks to two rites of spring — playoff hockey and senior prom. His little brother Jamie was back home in Toronto along with his mother. Wilson’s dad and his older brother Peter, though, grabbed a flight down to DC. They landed just as Wilson had to leave for Verizon Center.

“I saw them, gave them a quick hug, and jumped in the car with Oleksy to come here,” Wilson said after the game. “It was a pretty special day for me and my family.”

By Saturday morning, Peter and his father Kevin were back on a plane to Toronto.

“I hope they had a great time,” Wilson said.

Erat lies on the ice after colliding with Ovechkin and Stepan. (Photo credit: Bruce Bennett)

The Washington Capitals power play was very good this season; they scored a lot of goals on it. In the first period of game 4 on Thursday Night, though, it was very bad — so bad that the Rangers had more shorthanded chances than the Caps had shots on goal. One of those opportunities for New York was rather disastrous for Washington.

GIF by welshhockeyfan.

With about a minute and a half left in the first period, the Caps’ second power play unit took the puck up ice. Martin Erat attempted to dump the puck in, but it rattled around the endboards before falling into the lap of Derek Stepan. Racing up the ice, Stepan found himself on a partial breakaway, with Erat pressing him from behind. Alex Ovechkin made himself known as well, flying in to break up the play. Ovi clipped Stepan, getting tangled in the Ranger’s stick as he went. With Erat glued to Stephan, the three skaters violently tumbled to ice. Erat landed on his hand before sliding into Washington’s net. He stayed there, in too much pain to move.

Then the refs decided they’d make things worse for the Caps: Erat was given a soft hooking minor and Ovechkin, inexplicably, was assessed a penalty for charging. Ovi didn’t leave his feet or even really deliver a check. He just ran into the dude carrying the puck and happened to get him caught in his stick. Running into the guy with the puck is usually encouraged in the NHL.

Pierre McGuire, who is an idiot, called Ovechkin out for a headshot. But, since you are not an idiot, you can see that the point of contact was in fact Stephan’s left forearm.

Erat did not return.

Ouch. (Photo credit: Chris Gardner)