NicklasBackstrom

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.

Continue Reading

Tagged with:
 

MattHendricks

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.”

Continue Reading

Tagged with:
 

ovi-skates-in-game6

Photo credit: Bruce Bennett

I appreciate the gesture, but I’d really rather not have my team’s $10-million superstar throwing his body in front of ballistic vulcanized rubber.RMNB game 6 recap

Washington’s one surviving newspaper beat writer, Katie Carrera, dropped this bomb on Thursday afternoon:

Alex Ovechkin played the final two games of the Capitals’ first-round series against New York with a hairline fracture in his left foot, according to a league source with direct knowledge of the winger’s injury.

Ovechkin reportedly sustained the injury blocking shots during the first period of game six. We wrote about it at the time.

Continue Reading

Tagged with:
 

MikeRibeiroGame5

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 street. (Photo credit: Chris Gordon)

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.”

Continue Reading

Tagged with:
 

AlexOvechkinPresser

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.”

Continue Reading

Tagged with:
 

ovechkin-laughs-rap-music

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.

Continue Reading

Tagged with:
 

KuznetsovWorlds

Photo credit: Sport-Express

While the Washington Capitals season ended painfully last night after a 5-0 game seven loss to the New York Rangers, Alex Ovechkin will continue playing hockey. The Capitals revealed before his final press conference of the season that Ovi has been invited to Finland to join his comrades on the Russian National team competing in the 2013 World Championships. He will be flying over this afternoon.

“This morning they just called me and asked if I’m healthy and ready to go,” Ovi told reporters at Kettler Capitals Iceplex. “I said ‘Yeah, I’m ready to go.’ I’m still wanting to play. I don’t want to take off, I don’t want to watch games. I want to play hockey.”

“I’m in good shape,” he added. “Mentally I think I’m ready.”

Continue Reading

perreault

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.

Continue Reading

Tagged with:
 

taylor-swift-dc-red

Photo by one of my old BFF’s back in the day, Jessica Rice

File under things I didn’t expect to write about: during Taylor Swift‘s Red Tour 2013 show last night at Verizon Center (that did not create any Yanni-esque scheduling trouble trouble trouble), the 23-year-old pop singer gave the Washington Capitals a little shout out.

According to @Mic_Nas89, Swift said, “You ask yourself why is there so much red? Well one reason is because the Capitals are in the playoffs.”

And then she sang this.

Continue Reading

19-Year-Old Tom Wilson’s Wild Friday Night

TomWilson

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.”

Continue Reading

Tagged with: