Alzner, left, seen here not tweeting. (Photo credit: Chris Gordon)

The NHL lockout caused many casualties. Games, fans — all lost to the sport for years to come. No loss, however, was bigger than Karl Alzner‘s Twitter account. After some tense exchanges with fans on the site in early December, Alzner deleted his profile. It had been a wild ride. Washington’s number 27 brought pictures of his dogs and the living room they destroyed. He tweeted pictures of his dogs. And sometimes even his dogs.

“I told him to grow up,” fellow Twitter user Joel Ward (@JRandalWard42) told RMNB’s Ian Oland when asked about the disappearance. “I hope I can get some of his followers on my team.”

“People wanted answers, and I’m the type of guy that wants to give them answers,” Alzner said. “I knew I had to back off a little bit and I figured the only way to back off was getting rid of it all together. There are times I wish I still had it.”

As for whether he’d rejoin Twitter if the urge to share asinine photos ever hit him again, Alzner didn’t commit to anything.

“I guess time will tell,” he said.

Ian, working towards his Pulitzer, pressed him on the topic. Perhaps a fan campaign would get him back?

“Yeah, yeah,” said Alzner, his voice trailing off. So there you go. Alzner might rejoin Twitter. Or he might not. So, Caps fans, make your voice heard. Help restore Canadian-American relations. Save the world. Get Karl Alzner back on Twitter.

We just finished basking in the glow of our successes in the past year. Ahhhh… Yes, that was nice.

But now it’s over, and we must look ourselves in the mirror to see the billion things we have screwed up over the past year. We’ve got a huge collection of embarrassments and goof-ups that should have shamed us out of blogging altogether. But we’re shameless. You already knew that.

Worst of Russian Machine, 2011

(in no particular order)

The whole oil painting fracas

hu·bris (noun): Excessive pride or self-confidence.

The Washington Capitals play excellent hockey in the first round of the playoffs. As we readied ourselves for the Tampa Bay Lightning, we happened upon Alex Reut’s “We are the Champions” painting on eBay. Illustrating the Capitals as medieval warriors receiving the Stanley Cup, it is a magnificent work of art, but tragically mistimed. We wrote about it, raised a big media stink, and then the Caps lost four in a row and started working their tans. To be fair, Reut is a really nice guy and has auctioned his artwork for the Lokomotiv charity.

The Matt Cooke video timeline

Ian worked his fingers to the bone researching and compiling this litany of sins committed by Pittsburgh’s resident imp. It’s a great piece of writing, and it was a valuable resource for our Puck Daddy eulogy for the Pens, but it was stridently calling out an opponent. That hasn’t worked out for us lately. Matt Cooke has only 12 PIMs on the season (28 fewer than Alex Semin) and he’s on par for the best season of his career. I guess we’re glad he’s not hurting anyone, but somehow this is worse.

Again, the gray thing at the top of the page

I’m sure at one point we had an idea for what the hulking gray mammoth should do. Whatever it was, it’s now gone. The gray thing is a chore, something you gotta get through before you get to the good stuff. For one of the better looking blogs on the ‘sphere, the gray thing is our discoid lupus erythematosus scar. Just like Seal!

“Somebody Else” in our tagline

Semyon Varlamov abandoned us so that he might lose even more spectacularly in Colorado. That left us with a very temporary hole in the Washington goalie position and a much more lasting hole on our site’s tagline. You might say, “Just put Dmitry Orlov up there.” We will eventually, but we’re waiting for a certain something to happen first. And maybe next year we’ll have a Kuznetsov in there as well. And an outside chance at a Yakupov.

The “Winning” t-shirt

The Caps probably should have known better than to hitch their wagon to Charlie Sheen’s star. The drug addict who once shot his fiancée got fired from his job, began a chemically soaked social media tour, and somehow ended up as role model for the Caps’ season, which really wasn’t that winning-y after all. The team should’ve known better than to make this shirt, and we should’ve known better than to cover it. But Hot Shots was awesome.

Calling out Caps fans bad habits

Peter had good intentions when he put together this discussion of Verizon Center cheers. Wanting to see Caps fans exude spirit without an ironical burn or the taint of misogyny– there’s nothing wrong with that, right? Apparently there is, ’cause commenters came outta nowhere to call him out as the preening lib he obviously is. And although no one in the thread seemed to have a working understanding of what “politically correct” really means or the faintest awareness of the privileged perch from which they spoke, at least it was nice that they cared enough to write.

Trolling Jaromir Jagr

We hate Jagr (okay, Fedor doesn’t). For the first Flyers game, FOTB Max Duchaine made a “Moves like Jagr” video featuring that awesome Ovechkin hit. When Jagr came back to Verizon Center, we made posters, we scrawled some Czech hatespeech, and we re-skinned the entire site out of anger. The Flyers whipped the Caps’ asses, and we had to eat crow. Pride, fall, meekly revert the skin.

Alex Ovechkin’s candy bar and the Bauer deal

Like we said in the highlights post, Ovi does so much weird stuff that he’s easy to write about. But the cool stuff is when Ovechkin does something meaningless– like wear sweatpants over jeans or where a black Chewbacca costume. When Alex signs a super-lucrative endorsement deal with Bauer, does epic commercials for Reebok, or gets his face on the wrapper of a candy bar that touts how awesome he is, it casts into stark relief how un-awesome his hockey playing has been lately. Le sigh. And then there’s the “Will he hit 50 goals?” thing that Neil wrote, which is a question no one asks anymore.

Kuznetsov- and Orlov-mania

Our blog has the word “Russian” in the title, so we’re contractually obligated to write about the Caps rising stars from the land of wodka. But the sheer quantity of Russian prospect posts we serve you is absurd: “hitting is good”, Kuznetrick, 3-point night in Hershey, “I’ve made a decision”, swagger, Mark French likey, fighting vs. playing, Rosetta Stone, playoffs, AHL is hard, World Juniors, shootout goals, Maradona, Karjala Cup, gettin’ fancy, leading the KHL, Ovechkin-esque glass diving, shoot shoot shoot, wedding photos, and like a gazillion more.

Shacking up with the Puck Buddys

Our biggest offseason acquisition was a group of dudes called the Puck Buddys. They manage a terrific blog written by gay hockey fans and players. And best of all, they’re rabid Caps fans. Craig and Doug now contribute various stories to the site, but for a while they caught hell for their pregame posts. Some commenters expressed their venomous dislike for those pregamers, which really contain the same mix of hockey smarts, silly jokes, and character assassination that you can find in any RMNB post. The Puck Buddys are now members of the Russian Machine family; they’re the gay uncles whose wacky hijinx make everything exciting.

We’ve done so many more awful things, but there’s just not space. We’d love to tell you about the S-bomb we dropped on Twitter, the people who have justifiably blocked us on Twitter, or Neil’s endless parade of goalie posts. But nope; ran outta time. Aw shucks. Guess it’s back to thinking we’re awesome for you.

For all our missteps, the future is bright. We’ve got a big year ahead of us. We’re gonna do different kinds of media– tv and radio and stuff. Maybe the Caps will be in the 2013 Winter Classic and we can pick the bones off that again. There will certainly be a chase for the playoffs and hopefully a postseason run.

And of course we’ll make a huge deal about Alex Ovechkin’s next milestone. His 20th goal should come in March and dear god what has happened to this team make it stop make it stop

Grab a chair, pour a ginger ale, and put some soft jazz on the hifi. We’re about to take a leisurely ride through the world of RMNB 2011. Today we’ll be looking at the good stuff today, and the really awful stuff we’ll see on Friday.

In 2011 we published more than 470 articles that more than doubled (206%) our traffic from 2010. Our readers (i.e. you) stay longer on our site, view more articles (102.5%), leave more comments (119%), and correct our grammar more than ever before. We climbed above 5k followers on Twitter (mostly spam bots), and we are now flirting with 6k. We’ve got around 3600 people liking us on Facebook, most of whom are just trying to win the swag Ian gives away every game. We started a tumblelog, where almost 500 people follow our silly pictures and quotes and other stuff that doesn’t fit on the main site. We’re working on a pinterest page, as soon as we figure out what that is.

We started the Pick ‘Em Contest on Facebook, where someone always predicts an Ovechtrick. We’ve begun grassroots poster campaigns for Dale Hunter, Jaromir Jagr, and Jay Beagle. We sold a bunch t-shirts and then blew all the profit on giveaways and contests. We supported the increasingly fantastic art of Rachel Cohen and wistfully saw stat-meister Neil Greenberg sail off to brighter horizons. We raised more than $2,500 for charity. We learned the difference between “re-sign” and “resign.” We threw two parties at Front Page VA, where much merriment was had. We experimented with video and audio content, and got our game recaps posted right after the buzzer with only a small ton of factual errors and typos.

It’s been a very good year for the Russian Machine. We’re now the go-to place for the search terms “hello neuvy”, “alexander semin unibrow”, “holtbyisms”, and — unfathomably–  ”justin timberlake mickey mouse club.” We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Best of Russian Machine, 2011

(in no particular order)

The Ovechtrick

We did not invent the fictional 9-goal game (that was the NHL  promoting their Verizon GameCenter app), but we certainly covered the living hell out of it. There’s the original commercial, behind the scenes with CRL, one actor’s diary, the t-shirt, and our most-read article of the year– Neil Greenberg’s “Could an Ovechtrick Really Happen?”

Bruce Boudreau’s Exit

When Bench Boss Bruce Boudreau’s team went three-games down on Tampa Bay Lightning, we could smell the blood in the water. Our “Fire Bruce  Boudreau” article from back in April was a spit in the face of the growing mob. As this season fell apart, we ruminated on Boudreau’s bad rap. When the firing became an inevitability after the Buffalo disaster, we commissioned Max Duchaine to create a goodbye video, set to the tune of Sarah McLachlan’s “I Will Remember You.”

USA Warriors versus Congressional Scum

One of the Puck Buddys’ first contributions to the Machine was this series on the hockey game between the wounded warriors and the congressional team. We got a moving story from side of the Warriors (“Hockey was a life-saver for me”), the maniacal evil laughter of Chicago’s Rep. Quigley, and a somber recap of the game. It’s hard not to finish reading those stories without admiration for the (non-Congress-y) people involved and newfound perspective of our own gifts.

The Adventures of Ovi

Alex Ovechkin’s non-hockey-related hijinx are a bottomless font of web content. The mindless glee and mischief that Ovi takes with him wherever goes brightens up even the most dour offseason. This year we had the mystifyingly popular Russians-playing-soccer-with-their-shirts-off post, pictures of Ovi wearing what appears to be a suit and hat weaved out of pubic hair, and a the whole thing about wearing sweat pants OVER blue jeans. The entire summer was cataloged exhaustively in this timeline, assembled by Ian Oland.

The Capitals Guardian

The whole NHL Guardian project was idiotic, patronizing, and poorly executed. We knew from the start that Stan Lee’s invented superhero for our team would suck big time. So we made our own. Rachel Cohen (pencils) and Ian Oland (colors) did the art, and Peter did the plot. He’s an old guy with a Constitution cape and Washington Monument sword with the power to control traffic. Pure win.

Ovi Dances

Compared to the team’s current troubles, the spring of 2011 seems kind of quaint. But recall if you will a team that had lost its spark, and the effort it exerted to rekindle it. When Alex Ovechkin beat Buffalo and won the Eastern Conference first seed with an overtime goal, he danced like the exuberant dweeb we all know he is. Rachel captured it in her adorable artwork, and we’ve got gifs.

Sasha Cares

Ah, yes. No “Best Of” list is complete without Washington’s mercurial man of mystery Alex Semin. RMNB came together to craft the definitive document on Alex Semin, featuring the creation of Neil’s invented stat, The Sasha Index. When Matt Bradley questioned Semin’s commitment, we made up a bar graph of the things Semin actually does care about . Then Rachel designed a t-shirt and sewed the darn thing into existence.

Kanooblian

During our “Winter is Coming” campaign (spoiler: it’s the next bullet), we premiered an illustration by Mark Burrier that Knuble’s Knights promptly purloined via eBay. When Knuble fell to the fourth line and had ice time taken away, we put the righteous indignation hat on. Kvetching about Mike’s unfair treatment has become a game recap tradition, but so has going ape-nuts over his in-your-face goals.

Winter is Coming

Peter went overboard about Game of Thrones this year. It invaded his writing to the amusement of no one, and he demanded that House Stark’s words “Winter is Coming” become our rally cry heading into the season. So Ian created this photoshop wonder, and we each wrote our psyche-up pieces for the season. Chris wrote about the 2009 playoffs ’cause he’s a noob, Peter also wrote about the 2009 playoffs ’cause he’s creepily fixated on Matt Bradley, Rachel wrote about the Winter Classic ’cause she’s a superfan, and Ian wrote about Ovechkin’s first playoff goal ’cause he knows good SEO. Finally, Max capped it off with a superb pump-up video.

William Shannon’s Wish

Chris Gordon’s profile on 5-year-old William Shannon becoming a Capitals player for a day was–  by far– the best thing we published this year. Thanks to the Make-a-Wish Foundation, William got to suit up, skate with the team, school Varlamov on the shootout, ride in a limo, ride the zamboni, hang with the media, and a bunch of other stuff I wish I could do. William’s father Devin Shannon gave us additional scoop first-hand along with a bunch of pictures that melt the heart of even the most cynical fan.

There’s a lot more, but it doesn’t fit into a nice list. Check out our primer for the new season, Chris’ story on Caps fans getting psyched up in the preseason, the emergence of #AvsFailWatch, our eulogy for the Pittsburgh Penguins on Puck Daddy, Joe Beninati’s suits, our coverage of the “We are Louder” thing, and Holtby Night in Canada. Or, if you prefer, just browse around the /best-of/ tag for whatever. We’ll keep it updated as soon as we write something good.

2011 Scrapbook

Here’s a smattering of images to document the year. The photoshops are Ian’s, the original art is Rachel’s, the photos are Chris’s.

Our Shepard Fairey-styled Knuble protest poster.

The Caps are soft.

The disaster in Buffalo.

Steckelbombing Carrie Underwood.

Winter is Coming.

Crosby plays golf.

The Jagr protest poster. More on this tomorrow.

Hello Neuvy.

The Matt Bradley valentine!

Sheepvechkin Halloween.

Chris’ photo of Ovechkin getting pie’d on his birthday.

Chris’ photo of my girlfriend, Alex Morgan.

That wraps up our victory lap. And now you know what’s coming. Tomorrow will be the Worst of RMNB, and it will be very long. Carbo-load tonight.

Based on reports from this morning’s practice, Jay Beagle is back in action. After missing 31 games following a fight with Pittsburgh’s Arron Asham, Beagle is suiting up to play tonight versus the New York Rangers. It’ll be his first game since October 13th, just in time for HBO 24/7 too.

To celebrate Beagle’s return to active duty, here are some printable posters!

The mondo link below will download a PDF, which fits an 8.5″ x 11″ page perfectly. Download the file and print a few billion of these to pass out to everyone you see at Verizon Center. Let Jay know you’re glad he’s healthy and ready to play like the scrappy little pup he is!

DOWNLOAD THE FOUND: BEAGLE SIGN

When I’m not illustrating, I sew things! Lots of my sewing work is costuming, but I sometimes make “normal” clothing and– most recently– plushies.

After I drew the design for the Alexander Semin “Sasha Cares” t-shirt, my mother gave me an excellent idea: “Why don’t you sew a real one?”

Drafting patterns is not my specialty, so to start I managed to get my hands on a vintage Care Bears “Wish Bear” plush pattern from 1983. So glad I didn’t try to make my own pattern—The one I bought had 20 different pieces to it, each with lots of little darts and seams and details.

The pattern itself was pretty straightforward, the only differences being the color scheme, and the appliqué details on the stomach, back, and face.

The shooting star on Wish Bear’s belly was now the silhouette of a Weagle. And to make sure people knew it was Sasha, I added his number to the back. They were both sewn on by hand. The shapes were too complicated to stitch by machine. Appliquéing by hand was tedious, but worth the result.

The hardest part of the plush was getting the face right after the whole body had been constructed and stuffed, especially the eyes. It took many trials to get them to look the way I wanted to. They differ from the original drawing, since the look of the eyes on the drawing did not translate to 3D as well as they do in just a flat illustration. The eyes and nose are hand-appliquéd fabric. The rest of the details (i.e. the eyebrows, mouth, and freckle-like dots) in the face were embroidered by hand with heavy-duty perle cotton thread.

After finishing the face, I gave Sasha Bear some hair and a signature obnoxious gold chain. And voilá! Alex Semin cared so much… He became a Care Bear. Sasha Bear is made entirely of fleece, and is super soft and cuddly!! You judge for yourself.

Will I ever make another Sasha Bear? Unless the man himself asks for one, NOPE. But this was a fun project to sew and who knows? There’s a pattern for a Care Bear Sheep out there. Maybe Sasha Bear will some day get his best pal to keep him company.

A photo essay.

The Capitals booting from the Stanley Cup Playoffs in early May once again got the summer off to a premature start for the boys in red and their fearless leader. After all, peak season hadn’t even begun on the Vineyard and the lakes remained chilly in the White Mountains. But we RMNB chose not to focus on these grave hardships. No, instead we’re going to fire up the Google Machine and take a look back at Ovi’s summer, which spanned a mere 121 days. Alexander embarked on many adventures including a little shirtless soccer (and what summer is complete without that), a scandal involving his midsection that had “gate” on the end for some ridiculous reason, and commercials for Canadian candy bars, which are like regular candy bars except Canadian.

05/07/11 – Alex Ovechkin Arrives in Slovakia for the World Championships

Three days after the Bolts from the Bay swept the Capitals, the Great Eight hops on an airplane to join Team Russia at the 2011 World Championships, held in the land of Peter Bondra — Slovakia. The Ruskies will attempt to avenge their pitiful Silver Medal from the previous year. Most notably, Ovechkin emerges from the terminal in Vienna wearing his customary Dolce and Gabbana garb, sandals, and pants — over his pants. Yeah, and you thought the Large Hadron Collider was going to cause a black hole.

View the full post >>

05/10/11 – Team Russia Ditches Morning Skate and Plays Soccer

Ahead of its quarter-final matchup with their ice-hole arch-rivals Canada, Team Russia assistant coach Igor Zakharkin orders his players to abandon their team’s scheduled morning practice — and their shirts — and instead play soccer at Rapid Stadium in Bratislava. Please note for later reference in this post: Ovechkin doesn’t look fat. Some other folks, however…

View the full post >>

05/12/11 – Russia Rallies to Beat Canada, 2-1

Zakharkin’s shirtless soccer game apparently pays off as Ilya Kovalchuk scores in the final minutes of the third period, giving Russia a 2-1 victory. The win comes despite Ovechkin going scoreless for a third straight game. But no one cares about that: Russia’s better than Canada!!! (Except for the whole, you know, being a functional democracy part.)

View the full post >>

05/15/11 – Russia Loses in the Bronze Medal Game

Wuh oh! After being shutout, 3-0, by Finland two days earlier, Russia ends the tournament without a medal, losing to the Czech Republic, 7-4. In six World Championship games, the Great Eight goes point-less. He flies home to Russia the next day. The ridiculousness of his pants for this flight will remain a mystery.

View the full post >>

06/03/11 – Ovi Guest of Honor at Evgeny Kuznetsov’s Wedding

At the ripe age of 19, Caps’ mega-prospect Evgeny Kuznetsov weds his girlfriend of under a year, Nastya. Ovechkin flies to Chelyabinsk to support Kuznetsov and hangs out in Kuzya’s hometown for four days before departing for home.

View the full post >>

06/08/11 – Ovechkin Spotted at Premiere of New Russian Movie

After being surrounded by lovebirds in Chelyabinsk for almost a full week, Ovi brings a lovely lady and his father Mikhail to the movie premiere of “All Inclusive!” There are literally infinite ways to make an awkward joke here, but we’re far too civilized.

View the full post >>

06/09/11 – Beers and Hookah

Ovi gets international attention after being spotted in a Russian restaurant consuming hookah, lots of beer, and fried steaks. Sounds fun, and all for the low price of 30,000 rubles (about 1,000 bucks). Now that does seem like a lot, but Ovi also ordered a couple of salads so really it’s quite fair.

View the full post >>

06/14/11 – Ovechkin Presents 1,000,000 Rubles to Dynamo Moscow Youth Hockey Program

Alex does the charity thing on behalf of the shaving overlords at Gillette, presenting a check to Dynamo’s youth hockey program for 1,000,000 Rubles.

View the full post >>

Date: Unknown – Ovechkin In Da Moscow Clubs

In this photo from one of Moscow’s fine ear drum imploding dance clubs, the captain is shocked by how stupid it is for the woman to be wearing sunglasses indoors.

Photos via Alex Ovetjkin >>

07/04/11 – Ovi Returns to North America

The Great Eight popped in to the DC area for a jiffy around the Fourth of July, and was spotted at this establishment with John Carlson, a great American icon on his own. No word on whether Carlson slid on one knee and fist pumped in lieu of fireworks.

Around this time, Ovi filmed the (in)famous interview with Mike Vogel from Capitals and mysteriously flew off to the Great White North for a delicious commercial shoot.

View the full post >>

07/16/11 – Ovi Shows Up at Maxim Afinogenov’s Wedding

Wedding Number Two: Ovechkin makes the short 5,000 mile over sea drive to Moscow from Arlington to attend the wedding of hockey player Maxim Afinogenov and tennis player Elena Dementieva. The Russian paparazzi claim Ovi brought along a female friend, but all photograph evidence appears to have gone the way of Gaddafi.

View the full post >>

07/16/11 – Fat-Gate

Ah, torso-gate, chubby-gate, or maybe even slight-outward-curvature-gate — whatever you want to call it, this was the biggest Ovechkin news of the summer caused by slouching in a big couch that no one will remember in a year.

View the full post >>

07/24/11 – Alex Ovechkin Honored with Hat and Burka at Halftime of Russian Soccer Game

What do you get when you mix Alex Ovechkin, a traditional Dagestani burka and papakha, flip flops, and a soccer game? Yeah, we have no idea either, but it looks absolutely ridiculous.

View the full post >>

07/29/11 – Alex Ovechkin Endorses Canadian Candy Bar Mr. Big.

“Be big deal like me!”

View the full post >>

08/22/11 – First Alex Ovechkin Mr. Big Commerical Drops in Canada

This little gem dropped when Ian was vacationing on the Outer Banks, so naturally we didn’t do anything. But in a line straight out of a motivational poster, Ovechkin tells the viewer to “make impossible possible!”

View the full post >>

08/29/11 – Ovi Gets Interviewed by Pavel Lysenkov

Hey look, Ovi’s not fat!

View the full post >>

08/29/11 – Ovi in a Rap Video

Ovechkin seems to have a thing for cameos in rap music videos. Or maybe the video makers have a thing for Alex Ovechkin. Either way, can you beat lyrics with a much heartfelt meaning as this?

Alumni of Dynamo
8 on the back.
In the All-Star game all attention is on me.

In the NatTeam since 17
Scored 100 points in a season
Gold medal in Canada in ’08

I’m going to wager this rhymes better in Russian.

View the full post >>

08/31/11 – Ovechkin, Kovalchuk Lead Second Annual Charity Game in Russia

Hey look! It’s Alex Ovechkin on the ice and playing hockey. Looks pretty good, eh?

The Russian Machine managed to score four goals and also register an assist. The game ended predictably in an 11-11 tie.

Most importantly, a boatload of money was raised for charity — about 15 million rubles worth to be exact. NHL stars Evgeny Malkin and Ilya Kovalchuk also participated.

Is it October yet?

View the full post >>

09/02/11 – Ovi Signs Big Money Endorsement Deal with Nike

Late Thursday night, word surfaced that Ovi signed a sponsorship deal with Nike. Yes, the Nike that doesn’t sell anything hockey related. Clearly this is a move to corner the vitally important 25-year-old Russian millionaire whose wardrobe consists mainly of T-shirts given to him market.

View the full post >>

09/02/11 – Alex Ovechkin Flies Back to DC

Summer over.

Ian Oland contributed writing, along with fancy graphics and formatting.

Fedor Fedin contributed translating.