Reader Max Duchaine (of Penguins in memoriam and History will be Red fame) created this video, inspired by the Winter is Coming promotion we’ve been running for the last couple months. The video does a good job recapping the not-quite-healed wounds from May and then what happened over the summer, as well as getting us amped for tonight.

Good work, Max.

Crash the net.

Photo credit: Toni L. Sandys of the Washington Post

Editor’s note: To get you properly revved up for the season, each member of the RMNB crew will take a longing look back at some of our favorite goals from days gone by. You can call it nostalgia or cheap summer content, but it’s really a reminder: WINTER IS COMING.

Seeing a Steve Konowalchuk hat trick live with my dad and brother made me fall in love with hockey. Joe Juneau’s jamshot past Dominik Hasek made me wildly jump up and down as a teenager. But Alex Ovechkin’s first career playoff tally is my all-time favorite NHL goal.

Here’s why.

Way back at the beginning of the 2007-08 season, being a Caps fan wasn’t such a fun thing. Sure, the team had young prospects in Alex Ovechkin and Alex Semin. But the organization was coming off three dreadful seasons in which they finished dead-freaking-last in the powerhouse Southeast Division. Mix in a lockout, watching GMGM trade away all of my favorite players from childhood (Bondra, Oates, Gonchar, etc.) and– just in general– the Jaromir Jagr experiment, and it had been a really awful ten years since the Caps made their first trip to the Stanley Cup Finals.

’07-08 didn’t start off much better. In fact, things got worse. Way worse. In those early months, the team looked completely lost, winning six of their first 21 games. The rebuilding Capitals were actually the worst team in hockey. I had my doubts in Ted Leonsis’s plan.

On Thanksgiving Day, Coach Glen Hanlon was mercilessly fired, and Hershey’s Bruce Boudreau was called up to turn things around. And turn things around he did.

The Capitals overcame injuries to key players like Michael Nylander and Brian Pothier during the year, and won 11 of their final 12 regular season games to edge the Carolina Hurricanes for the Southeast Division title AND the final playoff spot in the East. Mike Green led all NHL defensemen with 18 goals. Alex Ovechkin, who was serenaded by the Verizon Center crowd with M-V-P chants at the end of the year, scored 65 jaw-dropping goals.

I was at about 25 of those home games that year as a fan and the Capitals were truly the NHL’s Cinderella story. I had never experienced one of my favorite teams having the best player in the league. I never thought in a million years that the Capitals would recover and make the playoffs. Verizon Center also became the place to be. As the year went on, the building got louder and louder. It almost seemed like every night you were going to a rock concert or some kind of awesome party where everyone there was your long-lost friend. When tickets went on sale for the first round, I nabbed two upper bowl seats to Game 1 where the Capitals took on the Philadelphia Flyers. I was really excited…

But then things kinda went wrong. The team looked off in the first forty minutes. Most of the players, such as Nicklas Backstrom, had never even experienced an NHL playoff game before. “I was so nervous when I had the puck the first two periods,” said Ovechkin after the game.

The Capitals were staring at a 4-2 deficit coming out for the third period. Things looked awfully bleak. But just like every game towards the end of that year, the Capitals flat-out willed themselves to victory.

Mike Green scored a Bobby Orr-eque goal two minutes into the third. 4-3. Five minutes later, MG52 blasted a rocketship home, this time on the power play past a helpless Mathieu Biron. The tally also resulted in this iconic photograph, too. 4-4.

And then after ten tense minutes of play with the score tied, Alex Ovechkin did his thing:

All I remember from the goal was jumping up and down frantically and bear-hugging my friend Roebuck. I high-fived the two gentlemen in the row below me. They were two friends from Scotland (they were wearing kilts) visiting DC for the weekend, taking in their first ever hockey game. Then someone from the row above fell on top of me, knocking me leg first onto the concrete. It resulted in the worst bruise I’ve ever had. I hugged that guy.

“It is amazing in sports how great moments follow great players,” Caps coach Bruce Boudreau said to reporters after the game. “They just seem to be in the right place at the right time. If you are a star baseball player, it seems like you are coming to bat with the runner on second base. Those are things that happen.

“For his first playoff game, he finished it off OK.”

There are a lot of notable things that happen in life, all of which you try to remember. Not all of those moments stay with you though. However, I remember this night as vividly as if it were yesterday. And after some reflection, it probably wasn’t because of the goal or those Scottish guys. It was because of the context surrounding it. My favorite team was really good. I believed deep down in my heart that my favorite team could overcome any and all odds. My favorite team could and – at the time I believed – WOULD finally win a Stanley Cup. Also, after many years of the Verizon Center being empty, people were coming out in droves to support the team. Boy, those those were really good feelings.

Since that year, I’ve been eager to see what this team will do next. I believe in Ovechkin. I believe in this collection of core players.

So with Opening Night one day away, I keep thinking this:

Maybe this is the year.

Editor’s note: To get you properly revved up for the season, each member of the RMNB crew will take a longing look back at some of our favorite goals from days gone by. You can call it nostalgia or cheap summer content, but it’s really a reminder: WINTER IS COMING.

I wasn’t always a huge hockey fan. My family were Hartford Whalers season-ticket holders, and they took me to an event down at the old Civic Center when I was 4. I would have gone skating but the goal siren frightened me away. I refused to skate and spent the rest of the night sitting on the bench with my hands on my ears. When I finally saw a game at age 12, I was an instant convert.

So: January 1st, 2011. The Winter Classic. Maybe the biggest game of the regular season and my first away from Home Sweet Verizon Center and in Pittsburgh, home of our nemeses. I wanted the win badly.

I was scared of having to spend the game sitting next to a loud, obnoxious, ugly yellow towel-waving, handlebar-mustached, Heinz mustard-stained Penguins fan with a Jagr mullet and a miner hat. The kind of fan that nightmares are made of. When we reached Heinz Field, there was a sea of people, a whole ocean of hockey fans dressed in white and black and gold and [powder] blue.  And red! So much wonderful, brilliant Capitals red. My jaw dropped at that glistening sheet of ice. I was just so happy to be there. My stomach growled for the taste of roast penguin. Game on!! Thankfully, I didn’t have to site next to a Pens fan. I was surrounded by Caps fans (and one quite nice Pens fan and his young son).

After twenty minutes,John Erskine had an excellent fight, but it wasn’t enough; we wanted goals! Early in the second period, we got one but it was from the wrong team. Usually when the Caps go down a goal first, I get this pit in the bottom of my stomach, but that did not happen. I knew something good was coming soon.

And then came the Caps power play. In a blur there was a pile of bodies, a poke of a stick, and a small black dot in the back of the Penguins net. Knuble scored! Net crashed, game tied.

I didn’t expect what happened next: Marc-Andre Fleury misplayed the puck, right into the hands of Eric Fehr. I was standing in celebration, my Winter Classic-themed “Russian Machine” sign waving, red poncho flapping around. The grin that was on my faced was there to stay. Even with twenty minutes of hockey left to play, somewhere deep down I knew: This game was ours. We were going to win.

Eric Fehr added to his game-winner with this lovely clincher:

Shortly after the halfway point, Fehr takes a pass from Jason Chimera, and doesn’t look back. On a beautiful breakaway, he flips the puck top-shelf over Fleury. It’s one of those hockey moments I can still see when I close my eyes.  Boom.

When that final buzzer sounded, I must have jumped ten feet into the air. Our section rang loud with the cheers of “LET’S GO CAPS!” We beat the Penguins in front of 70,000 people on their home turf in the pouring rain.

When I got back to the bus, I saw my friend Pierre, who had been sitting in another section, waiting outside. I ran up and gave him the biggest hug. Someone on our bus was blasting “Beat Dat Beat” and fist-pumping. The ride home was one big party (until we all fell asleep).

It was one of the best nights ever.

Nine and a half months later, I still have memories of January 1st fresh in my head. They will probably remain that way forever. But those two points are gone now. A new year, a fresh slate. And while the Caps will not be playing in the Winter Classic again for a while, I hope that this year we get to play on an even bigger stage.  I cannot wait for hockey.

Photo credit: Michael Connor/The Washington Times

Editor’s note: To get you properly revved up for the season, each member of the RMNB crew will take a longing look back at some of our favorite goals from days gone by. You can call it nostalgia or cheap summer content, but it’s really a reminder: WINTER IS COMING.

The date was April 24th, 2009. The Washington Capitals had taken up their old tradition of digging a hole for themselves. The count was three-to-one, and the New York Rangers were looking to wrap this series up on the road.

So here’s the scene: John Tortorella is still dry, Sean Avery is wearing some D&G three-piece instead of his hockey sweater, and the Rags are on the power play. Your boy Boyd Gordon gets the puck behind Varly and sends it around the boards. It takes a weird bounce to get past the blue line– with Matt Bradley in close pursuit…

Brads gets a soft touch to escape Chris Drury and enters the Rangers zone like a man possessed. With just three deft touches and a burst of speed, Bradley confounds Henrik Lundqvist to score one gorgeous shorthanded goal.

Watch with me:

Pretty stuff. Turns out that was Matt Bradley’s first ever postseason goal. And it was a pretty tally too, the kind you’d expect from a “skill” guy, not a grinder like Matt.

But now that I think about it, expectations never seemed to matter much to Matt Bradley. He’s the guy who stepped in on the big fight, the guy who kept the rink maintenance guys well practiced in their bloodborne pathogen procedures, and he’s the guy who saved the team when they really needed it.

The Rangers didn’t really stand a chance after Brads knocked the wind out of them with that shorty, but elegance was never his thing so he followed it up with this crazy sharp angle to make it 2-0:

The game ended 4-0, and the Caps took the series in 7. I didn’t remember who scored the other two goals because I was in some kind of ecstatic blackout state, but J.P. reminds me that it was the Sashas. That was also the infamous water bottle game for John Tortorella, where he and one particularly militant member of the Caps red army lobbed liquid munitions back and forth. Here’s a Zapruder-like video of the incident (my apologies for the Gary Glitter song). Good times.

With Matt Bradley now a member of the Florida Formercaps and his recent comments about Alex Semin’s care index eating up all the pixels, this might seem a bittersweet memory to some people. Not to me. I see that pivotal goal and the criticism in the same way: this is a player doing what no one else could to make his (former) team better. It’s precious and rare and kind of awesome.

Personally, I look towards this season with excitement. Yeah, Brads is gone. But who’s gonna take his place? Who’s gonna fight and bleed and grind and hustle? Who’s got the grit to do what no one else will? Who’s gonna blow everyone’s mind with a well-timed miracle play? And who’s gonna do it with a mile-wide grin like the one Matt has up top?

Let’s find out on October 8th.

Photo credit: Nick Wass

Editor’s note: To get you properly revved up for the season, each member of the RMNB crew will take a longing look back at some of our favorite goals from days gone by. You can call it nostalgia or cheap summer content, but it’s really a reminder: WINTER IS COMING.

I’m the young one, so allow me to use recent history.

It was April of 2009. With the Capitals making the playoffs for the second year in a row, I decided to give this hockey thing a shot. Up until then, baseball had always been my sport.

After enjoying a couple games on TV, I got tickets to Game 2 of Eastern Conference Quarterfinals against the Rangers. 60 minutes of play later, I was hooked. Really hooked. The Caps were shut out 1-0, but the excitement, the speed, the gritty beauty of game had me. So I got tickets again. This time: Game 7, 7PM April 28.

New York opened the scoring five minutes into the game. I don’t remember who scored, but I do know how to google. It was Nik Atropov. Nearly 10 minutes later, Alex Semin knotted the game at one when his wrist shot deflected off the defenseman’s stick. The score would remain that way for another 39 minutes and 27 seconds.

Then someone decided to break the stalemate. It wasn’t Alex Ovechkin or Nicklas Backstrom –stars that even an idiot like me knew all about back then — but a 39-year-old Russian playing out the final games of his storied NHL career.

Sergei Fedorov.

The roar of sheer joy that encompassed Verizon Center was unlike anything I had experienced before. It never let up.

It was heaven. It was hockey.

Hockey returns to DC in 22 days!