 |
Jay Mohr, star of something, hosted the NHL Awards in Las Vegas tonight. We watched with bated breath as three beloved players vied for recognition from the league’s notables. Alex Ovechkin was up for the Lindsay (née Pearson) and the Hart, Mike Green for the Norris, and Jose Theodore for the Masterton. Beyond the winners and loser, there’s some mighty important breaking news announced tonight, and we’ll tackle it all past the jump.
Mike Green needs help (Rick Stewart/Getty Images).
This week, the Caps free agent picture became clearer as the organization announced they will not be renewing the contracts of defenseman Joe Corvo and forwards Brendan Morrison and Scott Walker, and Tarik El-Bashir reported that José Theodore’s tenure with the Washington Capitals may be over.
All this leads to more speculation as to what the roster will look like next year. ESPN and the writers of Puck Prospectus have addressed the offseason needs for all 30 NHL teams and surprised no one by stating that the Caps need a shutdown guy on defense.
The Bruins signed defenseman Dennis Seidenberg to a four-year contract extension, taking off a likely target unrestricted free agent acquisition during the offseason and leaving only a few top four shutdown defensemen left in the UFA pool.
The Caps need as close to a sure thing as you can get. They can’t afford to let age (Sergei Gonchar) or injuries (Paul Martin, Willie Mitchell, and Mark Eaton) detract from the production of their top four defensemen during next year’s inevitable Cup run.
With Tarik El-Bashir reporting “the team does not, in fact, plan to pursue the Ottawa blue liner [Volchenkov],” that leaves just two defensemen that can fill a Top 4 spot. And more specifically, the top pairing with Mike Green:
Friend-and-family-of-the-blog Brandon Oland of the Carroll County Times recently chatted with me about the Caps’ season. We talked about Ovie’s slump, my enduring love for Jose Theodore, the pathos of Mike Green, and more. Thank you, Brandon, for talking hockey with me one more time!
Commentary: Capitals critiqued [Carroll County Times]
Semyon Varlamov takes over for Jose Theodore (Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
In his last appearance in net, Jose Theodore allowed two goals on two shots and was subsequently given the hook. Russian boy wonder Semyon Varlamov stepped up and did an acceptable job (.863) in a game fraught with defensive missteps. But now that the Washington Capitals have traveled to the Canadiens’ home territory of Montreal, who should start in net?
Let's forget tonight happened. Deal? (Photo by Mitchell Layton, Top Photo by Greg Fiume)
The time for analysis is through. This was the wrong kind of game to open the post-season especially after last year’s bitter ending. Playoff hockey isn’t cherry-picking at the blue line, waiting for an opponent to break down. Playoff hockey isn’t going 1-on-3 when your last name isn’t Ovechkin or Backstrom. Playoff hockey isn’t getting fancy and putting the puck through a defenseman’s legs.
Playoff hockey is going hard to the net. Playoff hockey is making your own bounces. Playoff hockey is ugly goals. There was not near enough of that tonight. Period. The Caps deserved to lose 3-2 in overtime, and they now trail Montreal 1-0 in the series.
Thursday will mark the fifth time the Montreal Canadiens and Washington Capitals face off this season. The Internets are awash with intelligent analyses and strong opinions, and we were feeling left out. So we got the RMNB team together and pounded a bunch of latte macchiatos with guarana infusions.
All we could come up with is five smart points that will characterize the series and then a handful of jokes. Pity us and read on.
Via Tarik El-Bashir, Bruce Boudreau has confirmed what we all freakin’ knew: Jose Theodore is our man.
Jose has a .911% save percentage this season, and sterling numbers across the board since early January. Jose is a former winner of the Vezina and Hart Trophies, and has simply marvelous facial hair. Many (i.e. – me) consider Theo the main architect of the Caps’ historic winning streak. Fun fact: He also has two assists this year.
Obviously, Jose has a history with Montreal — which is a good thing, because this Stanley Cup Playoffs thing was running a little low on drama.
We’ve dwindled down to the final five games of the season, but despite the doldrums, the Capitals showed up to play tonight. Even if most of the viewing audience was busied with the NCAA basketball tournament, this rare meeting of the Washington Capitals and the Columbus Blue Jackets was solid hockey. Columbus came out extremely hard, seemingly ignorant of the fact that the team was gutted at the trade deadline, their head coach has been fired, key players are hurt and the team is 12 points out of the 8th and final playoff spot.
The “Blazers” as Joe Beninatii constantly referred to them as, had odd man rushes all night long, but failed to convert almost every time because of solid goaltending from Jose Theodore or generally poor execution. Columbus’ wealth of penalties seemed to doom any chance for them to reach a crucial early lead. And despite the Capitals giving up a third period tally – which forced Bruce Boudreau to call a timeout and have an expletive-filled dress down of the team – the Blue Jackets could not force Overtime. Thus leading to the Capitals making history.
We here at RMNB are creative. Peter Hassett is an incredibly gifted musician (here’s one of my favorite songs), Fedor stays up and watches Caps Games live in Moscow at 3am even when he has school a few hours later, Neil is a master of the English language, Stevie K. has a weird fascination with numbers and I’m marginally unterrible at what I do. The point being we love, love, love creativity.
So naturally, when Taylor P. sent us an email with all of her beautiful Capital Player artwork attached, we had to put it up. Check out the rest of her work below the jump and make sure to let her know what you think in the comments. Here, we’ll start you off: “Wow, Taylor you’re awesome.”
