I’ll be out of town on business this week, so Craig and Doug from the always-perfect PuckBuddys site will be taking over game recap duties. Through Friday’s game against the Devils, they’ll be sharing their take on the game that was.

I’m sorry that I’ll miss the first full week of Caps hockey in over half a year, but I’m delighted to have them take over the reins while I’m gone. Please go check out the PuckBuddys site, which is full of good writing even if you’re a breeder, and be nice to them while I’m away. Seriously, don’t embarrass me in front of the guests.

Effective immediately, all original content on RussianMachineNeverBreaks.com and its related sites is covered by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. This means you can share, copy, and remix anything we create — so long as it’s done with attribution and not for commerce. This license applies to our writing, our illustrations, our videos, and photos by our team.  It’s a lot of content (2000+ posts), so go crazy.

Here’s a short video explaining Creative Commons licenses.

RMNB is using the Creative Commons license so that we can contribute to the same free culture that has helped us grow and succeed as makers of things. We want to encourage and empower you to take what we’ve created and make new and interesting things out of it as well.

We’ve been planning this change since last spring, but it is a bit more timely now. Last week, hacktivist Aaron Swartz, took his own life. Swartz was a kid genius who helped write the initial spec for RSS 1.0 (a technology for syndicating content over the Internet that I guarantee you have used even if you didn’t know it) and then wrote code underpinning Creative Commons itself. He made court documents in the public domain available without per-page fees and gave tons of resources to web developers and the public domain. He was a tireless advocate for open culture, a critic of draconian Internet legislation like SOPA, a reading nut, and a lot more. He was a real pioneer, possessing an authentic genius made even rare because it was paired with actual moral righteousness.

The world is so much dumber and meaner without Swartz. We hope that releasing our content under the license that he helped create is some minor contribution to the momentum of  his life’s work.

Unless it’s otherwise stated in a post or superseded by a more specific license, you can assume the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license applies to all original RMNB content– text, images, video, interactive. It does not apply to other people’s photos or other media from outside sources, obviously. The license deed appears in the footer of our site along with a link to the Creative Commons site, but if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Thanks for reading. Now go make things!

R.I.P. The Gray Thing 2009-2013

Happy hockey day. Peeking at RMNB today, you might notice we’ve made some changes. The new RMNB has a new main navigation along with a new design. It’s a little more toned down than the old design– with less Ovi and more focus on the things that you actually do on our site. See all our social stuff along the top, there? Ain’t it spiffy?

If you can’t see it or if it looks a little weird, clear your cache. You can hit CTRL + F5 if you’re on a PC. If you’ve got a Mac, just throw it in the trash and get a new one. You can probably afford it.

This is just the first step in a series of site improvements that we’ve been planning for a while. We’ll be doing a full redesign sometime in the near future. For now, we’ve got a bunch of new pages on the site, which you can check out by clicking around that pretty top nav. We’ve also put all our original content under a Creative Commons license, which you can read about later. When we started RMNB a few years ago, we didn’t expect anything like this level of success. We’re gonna keep working to make RMNB a rewarding experience for you guys.

Let us know your thoughts! Thanks!

2012 is just about done, and although we’ve covered about 40 fewer hockey games than we wanted, we’re now delighted to take a look back at the year that was. We’ve ranked our top 10 stories based on traffic so that you can a) wax nostalgic on the days when we actually watched hockey, and b) get the inside scoop on what stories are popular and what stories bomb. Follow me past the jump for the countdown.

10. Brooks Laich Wears a Flaming Jersey and Helmet

As the leading scorer for the Kloten Flyers, Brooks Laich was obligated to wear this be-flamed helmet and jersey. Brooks somehow made the getup work for him, but he looks good in everything. We used to occasion to lobby the NHL and NHLPA to include a flaming uniform clause in the new CBA.

9. Tim Thomas Apologizes to Nick Backstrom for Blocker Punch

Sovereign Citizen and part-time goalie Tim Thomas was a bit too conspicuous during the spring’s Bruins-Capitals playoff series. Part of that was our fault (as we’ll see later in this list), but part of it was his own doing. During one game, Thomas used his blocker to punch recovering concussion-patient Nick Backstrom in the head. That action usually comes with an automatic game misconduct, but Thomas remained a free man. Say what you will about TT, but he’s an honorable dude, as he apologized to Backstrom in person after game 7.

8. Jason Chimera’s Year in Review

RMNB secret weapon Ana Hansen knocked it out of the park with her year-end review series. If you asked me, I’d have guessed Alex Semin’s review would have been the breakaway winner of pageviews, but Google Analytics tells me it was this one: Jason Chimera’s recap. I think you can chalk it up to his playoff beard, which reader Bryant Thomas termed his “doom broom.”

7. Matt Hendricks Paralyzes Tim Thomas in the Shootout

Lovable oaf Timothy Thomas makes his second appearance on the list at number 7. This time, the former Vezina and Conn Smythe winner distinguished himself by getting paralyzed by Matt Hendricks’ shootout skills. That’s right: Matt “The Wagon” Hendricks pulled his signature move, which by the end of March goalies really should have seen coming, and froze Thomas in his skates. Thomas swatted the puck away and skated off to the benches, where he promptly fell flat on his face.

6. Alex Semin Fails to Prank Nick Backstrom

All credit goes to @Caps_Girl for this achievement in sports photography, which reads a bit like a Mutual of Omaha film about a savannah lion hunting an antelope, except in this case the savannah lion is a clumsy goofball named Alex Semin. All joking aside, this was a great piece of storytelling from @Caps_Girl, augmented ever so slightly by RMNB’s signature captioning.

5. Alex Semin Injures Himself with His Own Gold Medal

Back-to-back Sasha Semin stories, and exactly no one is surprised. This story is so perfectly Semin-esque, it should be required reading for every Hurricanes fan. Alex Semin wins a gold medal at World’s, puts the medal on over his jersey, then tries to take his jersey off. The medal smacks him in the forehead, drawing blood to the delight of pretty much everyone. I seriously wonder if Carolina fans truly know what they’re in for.

4. Tim Thomas vs Barack Obama (Masks)

We had planning this one for months in hopes that a) the Capitals would play the Bruins in the playoffs, and b) the Capitals would actually make the playoffs. Ian constructed a series of masks to taunt Tim Thomas, and I ripped some stats off of Rasmussen to prove that the goalie’s decline in 2012 correlated with President Obama’s approval ratings. A bunch of other blogs contributed signs as well, and they were a huge hit. Even PTI got in on the action. Of course, the Caps lost that game, but won the series. And at least we all had a damn good story to tell. Thanks for the memories, Timmy!

3. Maria Kirilenko Wins Bronze Medal, Alex Ovechkin Geeks Out

The non-RMNB press has made a lot of noise in recent years about Alex Ovechkin’s alleged bad attitude. While none of us are in the locker room to confirm that, we’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that it’s a made-up story. As evidence, check out this story from August, where Ovi cheers on his girlfriend, tennis superstar Maria Kirilenko, on her path to Olympic bronze. The guy is giddy like a … well … he’s just giddy like Ovi, dammit.

2. George McPhee’s Facebook Wall at the Trade Deadline

Coming in at number two is my favorite story of the year. I was out of town on business during the trade deadline, so Ian and Ana ran amok, churning out this dementedly fun mock Facebook timeline (née wall) to document George McPhee’s rather quiet day. I count something like 25 separate jokes in the article, an achievement made even more staggering given how depressing that day was to everyone else. Bravo, sir and madam.

1. Michal Neuvirth Speaks Out About Holtby and Semin (Part I, Part II)

I don’t know much about iSport, the Czech website that interviewed Washington goalie Michal Neuvirth in the offseason, but they certainly know how to get a good interview. They got Neuvy to speak frankly about his competition in Braden Holtby, nudging Tomas Vokoun towards the Penguins, what kind of leader Alex Ovechkin is, whether or not Alex Semin cares, where the bodies are buried, various nuclear codes, the secret of Jon Snow’s parentage, and more. Remember how fun it was when people thought our translation was crummy and then I had to pay a company 700 bucks to vindicate us? Oh, good times.  (Unrelated: please please please buy a t-shirt.)

Quick tally:

• 1 Alex Ovechkin story
• 2 Alex Semin stories
• 3 Tim Thomas stories

Thanks, Tim!

Joking aside: how weird is it that half of our top 10 stories come from after the season and during the lockout? I think that’s a testament to both the terrific community that has popped up in our corner of the world and also Ian’s hard work hunting down compelling stories despite the soul-crushing annihilation of the lockout.

Let’s assume for a moment that 2013 brings with it– along with peace on earth and goodwill towards men– some actual freaking hockey. Imagine then what kind of good stuff is ahead for us.

Thank you for reading Russian Machine Never Breaks in 2012, and I hope you’ll stick around for all that is to come in the new year.

RMNB’s new “Hahaha Ice” T-Shirts can be purchased here.

While we dedicate a lot of our time to RMNB, our team slaves away at full-time jobs just like you. Peter is an information architect, I’m a web designer/email marketer, and Fedor is a full-time student in Moscow and a journalist for VOA. Then there’s Igor.

Four score and seven years ago… okay, maybe not that long – but long enough that Scott Stevens was still a Capital and the Soviet Union was still a thing, Igor– fresh out of college– left St. Petersburg and the crumbling empire for America. Within a couple of months after getting off the proverbial boat, Igor landed his first job: an engineering position at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Over 22 years at Goddard, Igor has worked on some pretty important space missions. He worked on a science instrument for the Spitzer Space Telescope, an orbiter similar to Hubble which takes infrared photos of the universe. He also was part of the design team for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, a satellite that collects data of the moon.

And two Fridays ago, one of Igor’s projects got global attention for a finding many thought was impossible decades ago.

Mercury is like, really really close to the sun. (GIF via Wikipedia)

Despite being our solar system’s innermost planet, Mercury’s poles are cold (like your feelings towards Sidney Crosby) because they never tilt towards the sun. Mercury’s thin atmosphere also can’t contain or insulate heat. Evidence for deposits of ice at both poles has been building since the early 1990s, when radar studies first spotted areas that looked very bright at radar wavelengths. These bright regions suggested something reflective lay on top of or very near the surface of the planet’s poles. Could it really be ice or maybe a box of Alex Ovechkin’s old face-shields? NASA set out to answer the question.

“Twenty years ago, radar astronomers made the startling proposal that there is abundant water ice at the poles of our solar system’s innermost planet,” Sean Solomon, the principal investigator for MESSENGER (short for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging), told NASA. “But alternative explanations of the radar observations have since been suggested, and the MESSENGER team set a high priority on settling this question with orbital observations.”

In 2002, the Mercury MESSENGER mission began. Before the orbiter was launched, a handful of scientific instruments needed to be created and built into the satellite: a fancy camera, a couple of spectrometers, a magnetometer, a radar, and a laser altimeter. The altimeter (MLA stands for Mercury Laser Altimeter) is the instrument that Goddard was asked to build. Igor and one of his colleagues of 20 years were given the assignment.

“A laser altimeter is a relatively simple instrument,” Igor, apparently not bragging, explained to me. “Its core is basically a laser and a time-interval measurement unit, which is a fancy term for a stopwatch. The laser fires a very short pulse of light at the surface of a planet, and when it goes out the clock starts running. The light travels for a period of time, reaches the surface, bounces off of it, and eventually gets back to the spacecraft – and that’s when we stop the stopwatch.”

Igor continued: “Take that time, multiply by the speed of light, divide by 2 since it’s a round trip – and voila! You have the distance from the spacecraft to the surface of the planet. And if your stopwatch is accurate to a fraction of a nanosecond (or one billionth of a second for those who are scared of fancy Greek words), you just measured that distance down to a couple of inches. Lather, rinse, and repeat a few hundred million times as the spacecraft is flying in a polar orbit – and you’ve got a nice topographic map of the planet.”

In addition, what NASA would be looking for once MESSENGER reached Mercury were nice, sharp, and strong pulses back. That meant they hit something very reflective, like a mirror, or in the case of Mercury, where it is very unlikely there are any mirrors, an ice patch!

An artist’s rendering of Mercury MESSENGER. (Photo via Wikipedia)

So Igor and his colleague designed, built, tested, and delivered that fancy stopwatch (officially known as the Range Measurement Unit) to Messenger 10 years ago (seen below). On August 3, 2004, the 1,070 pound spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, aboard a Delta II rocket. The spacecraft flew by Earth once and Venus twice before reaching Mercury in January of 2008. After three fly-by’s, taking three years to accomplish, MESSENGER successfully entered Mercury’s orbit on March 18, 2011. It sent its first photo back to earth 11 days later.

After a year of MESSENGER collecting and transmitting photos, maps, and data of Mercury back to Earth, NASA discovered ice on the planet’s north pole on November 30th. Igor’s fancy space stopwatch, which he described as one of the hardest things he’s ever built at NASA, was a success.

This might explain why that day, when I noticed a Russian language interview of Nicklas Backstrom ripe to be translated, Igor unexpectedly declined. “I just had a few beers in my meetings. I’ll explain later,” he said.

The Backstrom translation never happened, because in the words of Alex Ovechkin,”hahahaha ice.” Congratulations, Igor.

The Range Measurement Unit Igor helped build.

Additional reading on MESSENGER

Altimeter Built at Goddard Helped Identify Ice on Mercury
NASA Finds New Evidence of Ice on Mercury
New Data Show Mercury Almost Certainly Has Buried Ice at Its North Pole

This is not a hockey story.

Last week RMNB published a two-part translation of an interview Michal Neuvirth gave to the Czech site iSport. Our articles contained translated, controversial quotes about Braden Holtby, Alex Semin, Alex Ovechkin, and Dale Hunter.

The story was picked up by Puck Daddy and The Washington Post, among others. Some of the articles that used our quotes excluded important passages where Neuvirth praised Holtby and Ovechkin, leading to a popular characterization of the interview that I don’t think matched what we published. On the other hand, an article for Sportsnet.ca by Chris Nichols copied our entire translation.

Before long, our translation came under scrutiny. To respond to questions from our audience, I wrote and published a note on our translation process and how much room for interpretation there is in that process, but we did not retract or correct our post. Social media and our own commenters wondered aloud if our articles had mistranslated the original article or if something had been “lost in translation.”

Then Caps senior writer Mike Vogel gave Neuvirth the opportunity to clarify his statements in a video interview:

Vogel: In the translation of that interview coming back to English, you think some things got lost.

Neuvirth: There was some misunderstanding. They changed my meaning a lot. I was talking about the boys in a good way. They translate to the way they want it. I feel like they got nothing to write about right now.

It’s unclear to me if the pronoun they describes RMNB or iSport. Neither Neuvirth or Vogel mention our site by name in the interview.

Neuvirth’s interview made the rounds, boosted by articles on NHL.com and Sportsnet.ca, and our translation seemingly fell into disrepute.

On Thursday, CSN’s Chuck Gormley published an article titled “Neuvirth consider Europe, receives apology” (In naming my source and linking to it, I have given CSN-Washington more consideration than they gave us when they republished our work without attribution). Here’s the relevant passage from Gormley’s article:

Neuvirth said Thursday he was in “big shock” when he saw the translated interview and has since received an apology from editors of the website.

“They told me they made their mistake and they called me and called my agent and apologized, so it’s good,” Neuvirth said.

“Czech sounds totally different. They translated the way they wanted. Like I said, they felt like they got nothing to write about and they wanted it to be more interesting.”

Again, it’s not clear if Neuvirth is talking about RMNB or iSport here. I asked Gormley to clarify the first sentence of this passage, but he did not respond before publication. The Capitals organization has assured me that Neuvirth was referring to the editors of iSport, not Russian Machine Never Breaks.

I’ll be clear: RMNB’s translation of the Neuvirth interview is accurate. We stand by the articles we publish. And while I spoke to Neuvirth’s agent last week about the translation, I did not apologize for it.

The original Czech article, whose editors apologized for it, may have misquoted Neuvirth, but our articles are faithful translations of that original piece.

We have no motive to manufacture quotes or deliberately mistranslate. We are not a part of a publishing network, we do not profit from pageviews, we do not serve advertisements, and we do not earn a living from this site. While to folks like Adrian Dater that may disqualify us from the title of journalist, we’re strangely okay with it. The last time I loaded the original article, iSport served up a 300 x 480 ad for men’s underwear. Cui bono.

We are not incompetent. We twice-verified our translation before publishing, and then we checked it again after our that translation was questioned. No substantive disputes to our translation were ever offered, yet NHL.com and Sportsnet.ca parroted the unfounded conclusion that our work was flawed regardlesss. NHL.com’s Mike Battaglino chose to call us a “fan blog” rather than use our site’s name, which I interpret as a pejorative– to undermine our work, question our motives, and distance sites like RMNB from accredited media.

But our translations were accurate, and our processes ethical. Meanwhile, NHL.com’s Battaglino and Sportsnet.ca’s unnamed mystery author were unstirred by the their own internal hypocrisy alarms when blithely repeating the unsubstantiated claim that our translation was wrong. Neither article mentioned Russian Machine by name.

Unlike the outlets that criticized us, we put in the effort to verify our work before we published it. When more criticisms appeared, we verified again. Finally, I contracted the firm TransPerfect to translate the article. The translator was not given our translation and has no background in hockey. Below I provide key passages from the interview as translated by RMNB and TransPerfect, side by side. At the bottom of this article, I have re-posted their entire unedited translation.

Side-by-Side Comparison

The translations are nearly identical.

Both translations put Braden Holtby’s name in parentheses after the phrase weakest competition. While it may not have been Neuvirth’s intention for the weak competition to describe Holtby, the original article explicitly published it that way– confirmed by two translations. No fault should lie in a translation for accurately communicating its source.

Statements about Holtby, Semin, and Hunter translate the same in both documents, aside for some idiomatic (that’s for sure vs. that’s true) and grammatical (he doesn’t want to vs. he just does not get motivated) differences; none of which change the meaning of the source. The original article, for which the editors have apparently apologized, may not have been accurate in the first place.

Again: RMNB’s translation stands up to independent verification. Any qualms one may have with our translation should instead be directed at the editors of the original article. Our articles are accurate, and there is no seed of doubt here.

Our work reached and surpassed journalistic standards that some of our critics could not meet. Their attempts to marginalize us by omitting our name (and by extension our deserved attribution) or dismiss us as amateurs amount to nothing but feckless bullying. It’s the big media lashing out against small because they feel threatened. It’s the paid professionals picking on volunteers because they can.

But none of those paid professionals checked the facts. None of them contacted us about the process of the translation. Instead, they refused to verify the claims they so dutifully stenographed, and they slighted the hard work put forth by bloggers like Karolina Martinková of hockey-on.blogspot.cz. Karolina is owed an apology.

RMNB serves its readers and no one else. We take seriously our responsibility to them, and the standards we commit ourselves to will honor that responsibility– regardless if we’re publishing a translated interview or a five-part series celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Mighty Ducks (we’re totally doing that next month).

Full Text of the TransPerfect Translation

Neuvirth, Capitals goalie: I told Voky to take it in Pittsburgh

Michal Neuvirth wants to become number one in Washington this year. And he is not afraid of the last year play-off miracle Braden Holtby

INTERVIEW | Don’t mistake his self-confidence for cockiness. The goalie, Michal Neuvirth, is just not afraid of talking about things the way they are. He knows that the last season during which he was supposed to rock with his countryman Tomas Vokoun did not turn out too well. But he has no doubts that this time the Washington Capitals crease will be exclusively his. “In all the years I have been here I have the weakest competition,” he claims about the last play-off miracle Holtby.

Before he flew back to the US, he got to run a lot. Except because of stomach problems it was somewhat different than was actually needed within summer training. Even during the visit to his grandma, Michal Neuvirth had to watch his feasting… “Luckily I managed to have the classic Czech dishes beforehand; without them I would not be able to survive the summer,” admits the 24-year-old goaltender.

Has the stomach virus severely affected your training?

“I have definitely lost some time, after all I did nothing for a week and even afterwards I felt somewhat weaker. But I still have a month before the training camp, I have plenty of time. Moreover I have already left for America and I was already on the ice on Thursday. I left for the US this early already last year and it helped me; I had a good camp and was well prepared. I have a fitness trainer here and more players arrive every week. Also I don’t have a good place to practice in the Czech Republic; summer is more difficult for a goaltender.”

Soon you may not have a place to play. Are you interested in the looming NHL lockout?

“To tell the truth I don’t follow all these negotiations too closely. But I firmly believe that the season will start as planned and everything will be settled. I don’t have a plan B for now in case there is no league, but I know that I am still a Sparta player, so I would probably return home.”

When would you start dealing with plan B?

“We can practice in Washington until the fifteenth of September when the existing collective agreement expires. If a new agreement is not signed I will have to quickly find a team which I could join. I would certainly figure it out in a few days, because I would want to play and not just wait until the NHL starts. We would jump on it with my agent and I would be willing to get on a plane immediately and go to Europe, no problem.”

When the league starts you will be fighting for the position of Capitals’ starting goalie. In past years you were not able to hold this position permanently. What are your prospects this time?

“It is true that until now I have never been considered an undisputed number one. After all I have played just over a hundred games in the NHL, which is really nothing. I’m starting the season with the goal of playing some forty/fifty games again and I am quite certain that this year I have the weakest competition I’ve ever had on my team (a 22-year-old Braden Holtby). I will try to be number one already this year. Finally!”

They say in America that you have always been a bridesmaid in Washington crease and not the bride. That it is always your colleague who is number one, no matter who it is. How do you see it?

“But it is necessary to look at who was there with me. First it was the Russian Varlamov who was always given priority because he was the first round pick and started playing in the NHL earlier. It was difficult to get ahead of him. Ultimately I got to play much more than he did in the season before last. Last year I had Voky (Tomas Vokoun) by my side and I prepared myself in advance that he will probably get more chances to play. I arrived at the camp prepared, but eventually the season turned out to be what it was… I put it behind me and I am starting this one determined to fight for my spot again. This will be my turning-point year; it will determine my career.”

But the last season was disappointing. Together with Tomas Vokoun, as the Czech tandem, you were supposed to make the push for Stanley Cup and instead neither of you played at the play-offs…

“Well, this was the worst possible outcome. But as the saying goes, something good always comes from something bad and that’s how I take it. At least I had great fun with Voky. I got to know him as a human being, I watched him getting ready, how he trains, what he does before the game and this really helped me a lot. We really became quite close, we are still in touch. My girlfriend and I visited him for a couple of days in Florida when the season ended. We became very good friends.”

This I understand. But what about the hockey side? We had ups and downs, then we both got injured and Braden Holtby, a youngster from the farm, took over completely.

“We were both really sad. We were angry that neither of us is playing during play-offs, no doubt about it. But that’s life. Things like that happen in sports and all we can do is to completely forget about the last season. Voky will play at Pittsburgh and I in Washington.”

You just mentioned that you have the weakest competition in Holtby you’ve ever had. According to the last play-offs it does seem that way. He was awesome, don’t you think so?

“He sure is a great goalie, no doubt. But I can’t compare him with Voky or Varlamov, that’s what I meant. Compared to these two he played nothing in the NHL, I simply consider him to be the weakest goalie of them all. I am definitely not saying that he is bad, not at all. I actually like his style. But he is the worst of them, that’s it.”

Aren’t you worried about how perfect he was in the play-offs? That he would get a better chance?

“I am not worried. I think that a year ago I played in the play-offs the same as he did this time. They always say that the second season is the turning point, so I am curious how he will do…”

I wonder, what is your relationship with Holtby outside of hockey? Do you get along?

“Sure, he is also a friend, absolutely. I always try to have a good relationship with the other goalie, I never want to cause problems. We have a good relationship with Holtby. We spent two years at the farm. He was my number two there when we won Calder Cup twice. We have known each other for a long time, over four years. We are not close friends who would go out to dinner but our lockers are next to each other and we always chat. But we don’t go out together.”

Your recent seasons have been affected by injuries, mainly muscular. Do you do anything to avoid them?

“Absolutely. This is something I concentrate on in the summer. I try to strengthen the areas that were hurting after a demanding part of the season. But last year it was different, I felt well prepared the whole time and then a player fell on me when I was in a split. You can practice all you want but you can’t avoid getting injured in such situations.”
Michal Neuvirth just got a goal from Matt Moulson, celebrating on the left is his team player Islander John Tavares

Back to Vokoun. How do you view his departure to Pittsburgh?

“I was one of those who told him to go to Pittsburgh. I know he had many offers from Russia, but I told him not to go there. Just when I was visiting, a few teams contacted him and I recommended to him to go to Pittsburgh. He has a big chance to win the Stanley Cup there. Besides, Fleury (the no. 1 goalie) was told that he would be playing less, because he wasn’t that great in the play-offs as well. Anyway, what is written in the summer does not mean much; anything can happen during the season. That’s why I am glad that Voky signed with Pittsburgh, I think that was the best thing he could do. I am sure that his wife and other guys were involved in his decision, but maybe my opinion helped him as well.”

Vokoun wasn’t the only one who left Washington, it was also the Russian forward Alexander Semin, quite a controversial player. Some people claim that it will help the club, others say it won’t. What do you think?

“I am somewhere in between. I see Semin’s departure as a big loss for the team, but then again I think it may do some good. His work ethic wasn’t the best. Maybe now when Ovi (Alexander Ovechkin) will be without Semin, he could put more into hockey. Maybe that was also what the management intended.”

Your former colleague, Matt Bradley, said something similar about Semin and his work ethic and then he publicly apologized…

“But in my opinion this is nothing that isn’t public knowledge. If Semin wanted he could have been the best player in the world, but he just does not get motivated every day. And that’s wrong.”

When he finds out what you said, you may expect a hit on the head with the stick next time you play Carolina, don’t you think so?

(smiling) “Yes, that could happen, we play Carolina quite often.”

You also mentioned Ovechkin. Why isn’t he such a killer he was three/four years ago?

“He definitely isn’t what he used to be, that true. And if we as a team want to have a chance at the Stanley Cup, we need Ovi to be the best. We all expect it from him; as a captain he has to be a true leader. But it’s hard, as a player he has achieved everything, he was on the very top and then one can only fall down. I just hope that Ovi won’t continue falling; that he stops and maybe will try to get back on the top again. In terms of his attitude and locker room manners he is still the same. Even when he is not doing well, he is still in a good mood and celebrates with others. He is a real team player. He will stay like that forever.”

Another change in Capitals is the coach. Adam Oates, former forward and local celebrity, became the head coach. Are you as excited as the fans are about him?

“I haven’t met him in person yet but we talked on the phone and I felt good about it. He certainly is a big legend of Washington hockey, plus he was an assistant coach in New Jersey, against which I always played well, so I think that he has positive impression of me. It’s a new beginning with a new coach and I am happy for Oates. Also because Dale Hunter didn’t stay.”

Your teammate Roman Hamrlik wasn’t too happy about him either. What didn’t you like about him?

“Simply because Holtby was number one under him in the play-offs. Anyway, he never really made friends with him. He had a good relationship with Bruce (former coach Boudreau) and with the farm coach Bob Woods, but not with Hunter. I don’t know, he simply didn’t communicate with us goalies, in my opinion he also criticized us for nothing. From my standpoint, it is good that he left.”

Year after year Washington is one of the Stanley Cup hopefuls but for you it means that you are missing the chances to show off in the national team. You haven’t played in the seniors and Sochi Olympic games are approaching. Do you think about this?

“Absolutely. I was sorry, especially this year, that I couldn’t go to the world championship because we had an agreement with Mr. Hadamczik that I will come as soon as we are out of the play-offs. But we moved on, so nothing happened. It is difficult to get to the championship from NHL when you make it to the second round. I am now focusing on my club season, but it still holds that whenever I become available in the future and the national team is interested, I will immediately get on a plane and go.”

For example, we translated Neuvirth as saying the following:

I am really sure that I have the weakest competition (Braden Holtby) I’ve ever had.

But choosing competition as an apposition for Braden Holtby is subjective. Neuvirth might have intended for competition to mean competition-as-a-thing, not as a person. Given that interpretation, Neuvirth may simply have been saying this season is the best opportunity he’s ever had to earn the number-one goalie spot.

The underlying meaning of the two statements is nearly the same, but the tone is dramatically different.

The context of the article might support that interpetation too. Later in the interview, Neuvirth responds to a question about Holtby by first saying that he is a great goalie, albeit one with less experience than Varlamov and Vokoun. Using the alternate translation above and taking into account his later comment about Holtby, Neuvirth’s statements are not so incendiary.

This same interpretative gap can apply to other parts of the interview as well. Where Neuvirth describes himself as “angry” at not starting in the playoffs, the words down or unhappy might also have been used.

The vagaries of language are challenging, and there are many possibilities to lose the intent and tone of the original statement on its path from conversation to original article to translation. We hope our readers can grant a healthy amount of leniency to Neuvirth and our translators.

It’s August 8th! Today is the day where we tweet like a caffeine-addled adolescent with only a passing understanding of English syntax and a strange affinity for the close parenthesis key.

It’s #TweetLikeOviDay! So go ahead and peruse Alex Ovechkin‘s timeline for some style guide tips. Personally, I recommend flourishes of repeated vowels “bronzeeeeeee!” and not using a space between your sentences. From what I’m told, the close paren “)” key means you’re smiling, so do with that what you will. Have fun!

Best!!!!hahahahahahaaaah)))))

Does this photo bum anyone else out?

Hey everybody, it’s that time again. The season is long over. So too are the playoffs and the finals, free agency season and development camp. Stretching out before us is the red waste we call August, the month where so hockey is unimportant you’d think you’re on Long Island.

Our Caps have signed their free agents. They’ve said goodbye to one coach and hired another coach– along with two assistants that make it feel like we time-warped back to ’98. A couple prospects have signed their entry-level contracts, and the Caps have renewed their vows with Hershey (a huge relief to us and SHoE). Elsewhere in the league, that drama with Parise, Nash, Weber, and Staal has played itself out. Almost all of our questions have been answered.

Almost.

It’s okay to post this picture anytime between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

We still don’t know what will become of free agents Alex Semin and Mike Knuble. John Carlson has yet to sign a new contract as a restricted free agent (we’re confident that’ll happen soon). Shane Doan‘s uncertain status in Phoenix is unnerving GMs across the league, and who knows what moves will shake out after that decision. Trades are always possible.

And above all else there is collective bargaining. The NHL’s owners and labor have until the middle of September to agree to a deal or risk a lockout. No hockey this fall would mean no stupid jokes from us and no Joe Beninati JPEGs for you. That’s unacceptable.

We’ll cover those stories — and whatever mischief A.O. gets up to– as they develop, but basically we at RMNB will be spooling down for a month. Yeah, we’re hitting up the beach and grouting our bathrooms– but we are not abandoning you or this site. Just the opposite.  We’ve got a TON of stuff coming up. Here’s a taste:

• Site redesign. You can pretty much say goodbye to the Big Gray Thing, ’cause that’s going away. We’re giving the site a big makeover, including nifty new navigation and lots of pretty gadgets for you to click on while you’re supposed to be working.
• Creative Commons. Starting this Fall we will be releasing all our original content under a Creative Commons non-commercial, shake-alike license, which means you can remix it and repurpose it however you want. We’ll have more info on that later.
• Comments. We quietly upgraded our comments system to DISQUS this year, and it’s totally awesome; you don’t have to refresh the page to see new comments anymore. Plus we support images again, so go crazy with your photoshop. Best part is we can now nuke abusive comments from space. Take heed, entire Internet-connected population of Boston.
• Tons of new pages. Most of which I can’t tell you about now, but we’ll have some housekeeping stuff like real About Us and Authors pages, plus some convenient links to the best of RMNB through the years.
• Top Secret Project #1. Ian will not allow me to tell you about his baby, but it’s adorable and it’s funny and it’s a good resource that you will want to bookmark for future reference.
• Top Secret Project #2. Rachel and I have been working on a labor of love, something sort of novel in the hockey world that should make a few waves and even more laughs.

Sorry to be vague, but that’s just a taste of our Master Plan. We’ve got a lot of other cool ideas for next season, provided that there is a next season to have.  We’ve got some big ideas for our Twitter, we’re gonna put some exclusive stuff on Facebook, and maybe we’ll post some non-panda pictures on our Pinterest as soon as we figure out how Pinterest works.

I know this is all one big tease, but the point is this: COOL STUFF IS A-COMIN’.

For now, we’ll keep you posted on the big stories. This is indeed the hockey dead zone, but we’re not going anywhere– just the opposite. So while we’re doing work under the hood, I’d like to invite you to take over RMNB.

What do you want to read about over the next month?

What do you want to take a look back at?

What are you looking forward to?

And what do you want out of the next version of RMNB?

On behalf of everybody here, we appreciate your feedback. Thanks. Crash the net.

Ian and I have made a new bet. We’re gonna share the details with you because a) it’s timely considering Knuble is a scratch again, and b) last time I didn’t pay up so this is like leverage.

The Bet: Peter bets Ian that Mike Knuble will last longer with the Caps than Dale Hunter.

The Stakes: $22 (USD) and one (1) lunch at Chick-fil-A.

The actual text of the bet is after the jump. I really think Ian is going down this time.

Thoughts? Side bets? Odds adjustments?