Might as well just give it to ‘em now, right?

The good people on the Hockey sub-reddit did the legwork on this one. They tracked down all the articles from the last few days predicting which teams will win each season. The results are… unkind to our Capitals.

58 hockey journalists hazarded a guess about the Boston Bruins-Washington Capitals match-up. You can view the original data here, but check out our visualizations (cheesy pie charts) behind the jump.

Just 10.2% of the hockey pundits collected predict the Caps to win the quarter final round.

Of the pundits who specified the number of games, most decided it’d be a near sweep for the Bruins. No one predicted a Caps victory in fewer than seven games.

Your boy Dan Steinberg at DC Sports Bog covered this same ground a few days ago as well. The Caps are the underdoggiest of all underdogs and for good reason: their fundamentals are weak. Boston has the edge in goaltending, puck possession, and special teams.

But if you’re looking for some cold comfort, here’s some from an unlikely source: eternal raincloud Neil Greenberg says that the Caps’ winning regular-season record against the Bruins has some predictive value. So all we gotta do is get a couple hat tricks out of some 5’10″ French Canadians and we’re set.

Crash the net.

Your boy Dan Steinberg found some old posters celebrating Dale Hunter’s 1993 return to the Caps after a 21-game suspension. Now that Dale is the team’s head coach, we’ve recreated those 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 dozen of these bad boys out (on recycled paper, obvs) to pass out to everyone you see in Chinatown. Let’s make some noise tonight and make Huntsy feel welcome.

DOWNLOAD THE DALE SIGN
Pdf (213kb)

Crash the net.

RMNB mention in D2 of The Washington Post’s Sports Section.

The Machinist is where RMNB takes a look back at the week that was.

First off, big ups to Dan Steinberg for coining our new tagline: The world’s foremost authority on Holtbyisms.

Most Popular Articles of the Week

1. Capitals Superfan Goat Gets Hitched
   The loudest unamplified voice at Verizon Center leaves bachelorhood behind in style.
2. Varly Rehabs in Hershey, Gives First English TV Interview
   Varly is so proud of his hard-earned language skills; he’ll send this tape back to his family in Russia.
3. RMNB Presents a Sneak Peak of Alex Ovechkin: The GR8
   Alex Ovechkin’s new DVD features 200x more shirtlessness, and the faintest whiff of man musk.

Articles You Might Have Missed

1. A Caps Fan in Buffalo Territory
   Stephanie Carosa finagled her way into a closed practice last week. Here are the pictures.
2. Why Caps Fans Need Tålamod With Marcus Johansson
   Not exactly flush with options for a second-line center, Neil suggests patience in developing MJ90.
3. Breaking Down The Capitals Line Combinations
   Neil Greenberg revels in the triumph of Alex Semin and bargains for more Boyd Gordon.
4. Reader Reports: Alex Ovechkin Signs DVDs at Sterling Best Buy
   The article that has inspired literally tens of people to buy Avoid Responsibility t-shirts.
5. Prospect Watch: Cody Eakin Scores OTGWG on His Own Bobblehead Night
   Would be worth it even if it was just the Cody Eakin bobblehead photo.

Game Recaps

1. Sabres 3, Capitals 2 (OT) – “All penalties are four minutes. It’s a new rule. Did you not get the memo?”
2. Capitals 6, Thrashers 4 – “an out-of-control garbage truck full of terminally ill kittens”
3. Caps 4, Sabres 2 – “Matt Bradley soars on the wings of griffins and plucks dragon teeth for sport.”

You can also read all about how the can of 12.5% ABV caffeinated whoop arse the Hershey Bears opened up on the Senators and the Crunch, but you have probably already bookmarked Sweetest Hockey on Earth, right?

(via the DC Sports Bog)

More to come later. Holy crap!@!1!!@!@!#@@#

I. A Shirtless Brooks Laich

While I was doing some writing tonight, I noticed a Twitter Conversation with some of my younger followers. What were they talking about? The most good looking Capitals of course! And who came up? This guy:

Now you may say, Russian Machine, you’re just putting that up for cheap links. You damn right we are. It’s not like we’re the first ones to do it.

II. A Terrible Sergei Fedorov Fight

Maybe Feds missed the memo, but Christmas time is the season of giving. Not the season of trying to punch the head off an opponent Rock-Em-Sock-Em-Robots Style. The 40 year old Fedorov, who moved from our Nation’s Capitals to the KHL this past summer, got into a fight with 23 year old Roman Derlyuk to avenge a dirty hit on his younger brother, Fedor.

I don’t know if I’m the only one here thinking this, but is just watching this tape surreal? Why? Well it’s not because Federov’s fighting persay, it’s just because he chose playing in this league over playing with the Capitals one more year. It just looks so B-League. Fellow Russians out there, is there something we’re missing (minus the money)?

RussianHockeyFans.com also awesomely translated an interview of Roman Derlyuk and asked him what it was like to fight one of his childhood heroes:

“Fedorov is a great player, I remember watching him play when I was a kid. I’d even call myself his fan. And if someone told me that I’d ever fight Fedorov I would… I would… never believe. It just happened that he went after me, one of his punches reached my head and I… Of course I’d never start a fight against such player as Sergei Fedorov… never,” said Derlyuk to Alyona Shilova of vhockey.ru after the game.

III. Redskins Putrid Performance Forces NBC Anchors To Make Idle Chatter About The Capitals. Awkward!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!@#$@#$

(Picture via @Gunaxin) In attention-the-capitals-have-never-gotten-ever news, Dan Synder’s Washington Redskins are so bad that Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth actually tried talking about the Washington Capitals on air. Did it go well? You be the judge:

dcsportsbog: Al Michaels: “You know what I saw today (around town)? Alex Ovechkin’s jersey.”
dcsportsbog: Michaels: “I think people right now in this town would rather talk about the Capitals than kvetch about the Redskins.”
wbhenry2010: “The Redskins can’t put the puck in the net.” – Cris Collinsworth

Wow! A few responses we liked on Twitter were:

ChrisMottram: So, Al and Cris are shocked that DC fans are rooting for their local successful sports franchise over the one that’s currently shit?
hotpinkhope: Collinsworth, I knew your were an idiot, couldn’t you have tried to make it less obvious that you could care less about hockey?
awesome_anna: @lucybrown9 Are you seriously saying the Olson twins are WORSE than Crosby? LIES!

Oops! Got sidetracked on that Crosby one.

IV. Wale At Every Washington Sporting Event Ever

(Credit to Homer McFanBoy For Video) Yes, even Roger Mason Jr. Wale was at the Redskins game. … Okay, sorry thought it was important to share. Every other blogger talks about him so I thought I should too!

V. Capitals Young Guns Elved

Lastly, I just saw this on Punch In The Face and couldn’t stop laughing. The smug look on Semin’s face as he does the “mashed potatoe” gets me everytime. Oh man.

Also, this is the post that keeps on giving as it also supplies us with Mike Knuble in a Dress, a snowball fight between Team Crosby vs. Team Ovechkin, and Quintin Laing wishing you a Happy Festivus. God, I love the internet.