Sorry, Puck Buddys fans. The dudes skipped town last night and didn’t even leave a phone number. They could be in Marrakesh raising an army horde of bonsai kittens or playing Stratego with Sherpas in Tibet. We. Just. Do. Not. Know.

So yeah, the Capitals won that bout with the Penguins, but was that not one of the weirdest meetings between the two you’ve ever seen? Neither team seemed too interested in the whole “shooting” mechanic of hockey, and Matt Cooke didn’t even curl his evil mustache or malevolently pet his shaved cat once. With that humble 1-0 win, the first half of the Capitals’ season ended. It was a mess of a type we have not seen since Glen Hanlon’s reign.

But there are 41 pristine games ahead of us, starting with… [checks schedule] aw dammit! Tampa Bay Lightning woeugfbwieugwe

Tampa Bay Lightning Fun Facts

• We expected the Bolts to give the Caps a little chase for the SE lead. Instead, the Bolts are in 4th place– 8 points behind the also-struggling-but-not-nearly-so-bad Capitals. They’re atrocious on the road with a 6-15-3 record.
• Victor Hedman is the Dave Steckel of the Tampa Bay Lightning. His boarding hit on Sidney Crosby on January somethingth of 2011 ended Crosby’s season and beyond. Hedman is now nursing a concussion that he caused by boarding himself. It’s like raaaaaain on your wedding day.
• Tampa’s best player by a mile is still Steven Stamkos, who is rocking a league-best 29 goals. He’s head and shoulders above the rest of his team.
• Martin St. Louis is my giant of Lannister. 10 goals and 23 assists for a guy we make fun of a lot, but who is actually a terrific hockey player that we wish were wearing Caps red.
• But he’s not, so he’s short and weird.
• We don’t even have grudging respect for Steve Downie, whose continued employment in the NHL is embarrassing.
• Friday night will be just the Capitals’ second meeting with this Southeast Division rival. The first match was in early October, a shootout win. Alan May called the Caps “thick and proud” that night. What an odd fellow he is.
• Starting on Friday, the Caps and Bolts will meet 4 more times this season, 3 times in Tampa Bay. Have you ever been to Tampa? It’s like taking a shower in reverse. You come in clean, and then within 5 minutes you smell like you’ve been playing handball in a sauna.

Here’s the best part: You remember Dwayne “The Stain” Roloson? He was the old guy in the cage who stopped 123 of 133 shots (a modest .925 save percentage) to end the Caps’ post-season campaign. At the age of 42, Rolo appears to have hit the wall. In 21 games, he’s rocking an .880 Sv% and a GAA of 3.76. He is killing this team. Please please please let him be in net on Friday.

Evil coach Guy Boucher is not happy with his team’s work ethic of late. Check out what he told the Tampa Bay Times:

It’s like Alcoholics Anonymous. Until you say that you’re an alcoholic you can’t make the steps. Players maybe felt a sense of entitlement, so it’s good it’s internalized. Before they were being told but it wasn’t internalized. Now they realize where they are.

Weird. Contrast/compare with this infamous Bruce Boudreau’s quote, spoken about a similarly sucky squad:

If I have to teach them how to be tough … well then I don’t know how to do that.

Man, now I’m all sad again.

Okay, all better.

There are a couple good Lightning peeps on the Twitters that we got to know during the playoffs. If you’re looking for their side of the story, follow these guys:

• Raw Charge, an SB Nation blog
• Damian Cristodero, long-time coverage for the Tampa Bay Times newspaper
• Erik Elrendsson, beat reporter for the Tampa Tribune newspaper

The puck drops at 7 PM on CSN+. Yeah: Plus. Apparently the four remaining Wizards fans who miraculously survived the mass suicide called dibs on CSN proper.

The work week is over. Kick off your shoes, crack open a tallboy, and then rove through the city like a pack of wild dogs scavenging for a TV that actually gets CSN+.

Crash the net.

Guy Boucher plots to kill 007 (Photo credit: Scott Cunningham/Getty Image)

Craig Brownstein of PuckBuddys writes for Russian Machine. You shall follow them on Twitter.

Banging out preview for Monday night’s game against the Bolts required us to go through some repressed playoff memories. Bear with us for some much needed catharsis; we’re still fragile.

Late last April, we embarked on a grand tour of European capitals just as Game 5 with the filthy Rangers was wrapping up. We were glued to the Blackberry as our readied for take off. Just before wheels up, word came through that the Caps bested the Rags, 3-1. We began our adventure by causing quite the raucous in the first class cabin with fanboy squeals, high-fives, and RED streaks of Russian curses– guaranteeing a date with aviation authorities upon landing across the Atlantic.

We did a blazingly fast tour of Amsterdam and then four days in Paris. We entrusted the care of PuckBuddys with two close friends, Big Dave and Michele, who managed the zoo and posted on the first game of the Tampa series. That loss didn’t much dampen our enthusiasm since we were riding high in Paris, taking in the sights: The Arc, Le Tour Eiffel, Pere Lachaise, and a metric ton of cassoulet. April in Paris, indeed (Hi Ella!).

We got back to DC and back to business– playoff business. The next three games went no better for our Caps. We were so traumatized by the Bolts’ dominating play that even the Bin Laden take-down didn’t cheer us up. The Caps best hope to beat Tampa Bay would’ve required Seal Team 6 on the two top lines. The season ended and like many Caps fans, we were numb.

(Photo credit: no one takes credit for this photo)

But eventually we shook it off. Like the off-season, Saturday’s game with the Canes found us at Nellie’s full of hope.  We may have gotten carried away with the hope-y thing when one of our revelers hoisted a bucket of beer over his head as if it were Lord Stanley’s chalice. “We want the Cup!” he roared.  We left the bar with a bounce in our step and the taste of blood in our mouths: First, we want Tampa.

Steven Stamkos

The Bolts arrive at the Booth after a dominating win over the Canes in their season opener, but they followed that up by getting thrashed by the champion Boston Bruins 4-1. When we look at the Lightning roster we can’t help but feel repulsed by two familiar faces: noted miscreant Steve Downie and repeat offender Victor “The Headhunter” Hedman. Perhaps the only Bolt we like is 21 year-old blond beauty, forward Steven Stamkos. Why do we like Stamkos, you ask? We like him because he likes to pose shirtless a lot. [Note: Pretty soon you’ll stop asking]. We’ll hold our fire on Tampa’s Tom Pyatt, because when we talk Pyatt brothers, we’re all about Taylor Pyatt of the Coyotes. We’ll gush plenty about that doll baby ahead of the Phoenix game on November 21 (if we still have a job here by then).

Twin peaks villain

But it’s a duo of Bolts players we’ve have the most fun with: the diminutive Assistant Captain, Martin St. Louis, and his towering Quebecois teammate, Captain Vincent Lecavalier. We do our best over-the-top, French-Canadian accents (which sound neither French nor Canadian), and shout, “San-lou-EEE” and Le-Cavalee-YAY.”  And we follow that up with a round of throaty and all-too-stereotypical braying, “HAW, HAW, HAW!!!”

It’s all in good fun; we really like the Canadians. Their names sound like Twin Peaks villains. We also have fun with the Bolts bench boss, the very handsome and very scary, Guy “Scarface” Boucher. When we introduced the Bolts coach to our hocke- noob PuckBuddys audience, we issued this reminder on pronunciation: “Bou-CHE rhymes with Dou-CHE.”

Dwayne Roloson

We can’t preview the Bolts without a look at their number-one goalie. And when we say look, we mean a look at the historical record, the Pleistocene record. We aren’t sure exactly how old Dwayne “Actuarial-tables-say-I-won’t-survive-the-season” Roloson actually is. His true age will be determined when the carbon-dating analysis results get back from the lab, hopefully in time for our second match-up on January 13.

Until then, it’s work-work-work and a busy week ahead. We’ve got a Pens preview to draft, a trip with Slapshot to the manicurist for his annual talon sharpening, and a quick run to the jeweler for some emergency repair work. Don’t ask about that chore — suffice it to say that someone got their chain yanked Saturday night and we’ll leave it at that.