Puttin' me to shame with his first game review. Brilliant.

What a game though.

dear lord, i think i'm in love. awesome review - you just may make up for what i'm sure will be another wonderful Caps season....

nice review - but I think the Caps usually play pretty well in western Canada despite all the travel - quite possibly because half of them are originally from there? Olie grew up in Nanaimo, B.C. (a short ferry ride from Vancouver). Maybe it's being able to legally pull tubes in the hotel room that frees the hockey genius.

Politboro-

I'm not positive on this, but I think I remember seeing bubble hockey at Georgetown Billiards.

ummm .. does this guy know hockey??? this review stunk

"This is highly illogical. We're talking about a team picked by most hockey publications to finish last overall beating a team with decent odds of winning the Stanley Cup."

Because we all know that hockey is played on paper and that the media decides who wins. Great review, I'm sure your teacher will give you a B- on it.

He is awful.

He has not followed the Caps last year or this apparently.

We play good and we lose by a narrow margin.

Our record is not bad with many games going into OT.

What a goober he is.

This was obviously written by a bitter 10 year old, c- english student, who happens to be an Avs fan. Horrible review.

okay, i get it. the dcist is trying to get a real hockey fan and a caps fan to write for the blog.

When no one shows interest, they send in a ringer to smear poopoo across his keyboard, draw the ire of caps fans and maybe get someone who knows more about the game than what he/she reads in the post to help out.

might work. either way, here's praying this sexy donkey checks in to betty ford.

If you think 5-2 is a blowout, you're wrong. The fact that one of those goals went into an empty net makes it even less of a blowout. And how big did their lead get after the goal 29 secs in? Oh yea, the Caps scored the next goal.

This writer Eli is a friggin idiot. He doesnt know crap about hockey except for what "the experts say". If youre gonna write something, make sure you know about what it is you are writing about. Hopefully we wont have to hear you for the next 28 days or so. The only thing you were right about was your opening statement, apparently you are on drugs....STUPID!

Hmmmm, I see - there's some book some place which tells you exactly what constitutes this vague term "blowout" and 5-2 does not constitute such a situation even though, when watching the game, it clearly felt like a blowout. There's no room for subjective opinion. Clearly, I was wrong and you are superior in your knowledge of all things hockey, Malaka!

Also, you all sure are providing some great positive feedback. I know I absolutely want to write for DCist on this and other subjects because I really like the idea of being trashed by this group! Jeez!

This is the first article I've read on this website.

And it's so bad, it will be the last time I ever visit this website.

I don't know if this is satire or not, however it is simply stupid. I can't seem to find another word that works for it. I'm going to laugh when we are not only not blown out in the next three games, but I say probably win at least one or them and push the other two to the end.

I never knew that coaches pulled their goalies in the last few mins of a game in a blowout. Seriously, if the Caps weren't in that game, then Kolzig would have played until the end. But since they were only 2 down, they pulled him, and then the NYR got the en goal. And since I was actually at MSG that night, I probably had more of a sense of the game than you did from your couch. Anything else?

This might be the dumbest article...ever. Avs have a decent chance to win the Cup this year. Uhm...no. Theere are at least 6 teams in the West better than they are and the Avs are on their way down as Sakic gets older and they lost Tanguay. Svatos and a few other youngsters look good, but you know nothing if you think they are that much better than the Caps.

The Caps didn't have their best defensive game but Kolzig has a great games despite a few softies. I am excited because this team plays hard and has been in every game this season.

Yea, because coaches routinely pull their goalie for an extra attacker in a blowout. They were down 2 in the closing minutes. That is far from a blowout, even in soccer. They only lost by 3 because there was no goalie in net for the final score. So a 4-2 game is a blowout? I guess I'll just turn off the tv/leave the arena when the goal difference is 2 because it's impossible to come back from.

Chris - why the hate?

Hi Caphcky!

Thanks to those who have defended my honor. And thanks especially to those who have defended the truth. Certainly the Caps haven't been blown out yet this year! And certainly they've improved over this point last year, when they had no team defense, and looke like they might spend the whole season alternating Win, Loss, Loss, Win, Loss, Loss... It's great to see so many new readers over here, and some familiar handles I've read hundreds of even friendlier posts from on the Caps' official messageboard.

In all of these comments, I found three distinct criticisms of my story: first, that I've overestimated Colorado, and that Colorado are getting by because Joe Sakic is a GOD, which was a little off; second, that I said Vancouver bought Roberto Luongo, which was an ill-conceived attempt at nitpicking, or possibly a literalist joke/dadaist comment on the type of criticism I'm receiving (if so, I love it, but it took me a while); and that I use negativity as a form of humor, as though I'm more interested in picking up the slack Tony Kornheiser has left by diminishing the frequency of his column in the Post than in trying to be another Dave Fay in a market that already has the only Dave Fay I know, which is exactly right, and which I think better serves the current needs of this publication, the fans at large, and the team itself.

I'm going to try to address the second and third of these criticisms. Timmy addressed the first criticism quite well, by pointing out that Joe Sakic is no longer a one-man offense. I'd like to add that Sakic is unlikely to be mistaken for Dave Poulin, Kelly Miller, or even a poor man's Matt Bradley in his own zone. If I wanted to be really pessimistic, I'd say that Andrew Brunette has grown almost as important to Colorado as the man once (kinda, not really, and at the time it would have been a good deal anyway) traded for Hunter, but I think both of these ancient Caps-gripes are sour grapes (with appologies to Don Cherry), and what makes the 'Lanche likely to squeak into the playoffs is a combination of team-speed, effective forechecking, offensive depth, the confidence that comes from playing for a (less-and-less) recent winner and a goaltending situation that, if it stabilizes after that BLOWOUT in Montreal, could be pretty good. That said, I agree that they're over-rated by the majority of hockey experts, and will be due for a rebuild any year now. I could've written a story about how two teams of roughly equal ability played a game that had its moments each way until a couple of surprise moves tilted it to the Caps. That story would've been boring and obnoxious to anyone who hasn't been watching the Caps' rebuild, thereby causing most of DCist's regular readers to tune me out, and it would've ignored the real story, which is that the Caps are underdogs in the eyes of the league, and that if Green and Semin continue their improvement, Kolzig's confidence stays high and Zubrus misses less than twenty games to injury, they're going to be in the hunt at the trade-deadline.

So, on to the second point: Dr. Crentist, while I agree that factual errors should be avoided, so should willfull misunderstandings and unnecessary abbreviations for terms that aren't going to be repeated (to avoid sounding pretentious, if not downright nasty). "Bought" (or any other form of the verb, "to buy") is frequently used in North-American English as an expression for acquiring something by any means. This may be a contraction of the cliche, "beg, borrow or steal." For an example of this usage, "in spite of a number of promising candidates, the Canucks have been unable to buy decent playoff goaltending to replace Kirk McLean, but this past summer that seems to have changed, when they shelled out a superstar power-forward in Todd Bertuzzi and a capable starting goalie in Alex Auld for a player who was going to hold out rather than play in Florida anyway, and then unblinkingly offered their unproven restricted-free-agent acquisition a contract that makes Gretzky feel distincly middle-class in an effort to do just that--buy the league's best goaltender." If I had said "signed," that might have been an error, because it would have impled that they had signed Luongo as a free agent from another team, even though they did, technically sign him to an absurd contract. By saying bought, I'm confident that I accurately represented the situation. In fact, even in its literal sense, "bought" is the right word, since money was one of Luongo's stumbling blocks in negotiating with Florida, leading to his fabled arbitration hearing last summer. Maybe Krajicek (the twenty-three year old throw-in defenseman on that deal) is going to be a guy the Canucks can build around, Maybe Allen (the twenty-five year old throw-in defenseman the other way) was too old, and maybe Vancouver's legion of pacifist hockey fans hadn't forgiven Bertuzzi for his attack on Moore, and maybe they were going to take the night off from protesting Canadian involvement in Iraq to pickett GM Place tonight, but I have my doubts, and I think this could turn into the Canucks' equivalent of that first Jagr deal if Luongo doesn't quickly steal a few rounds in the postseason--but without the "Sivek and Lupaschuk are never heard from again and Beech comes back as a throw-in on another deal anyway" silver lining.

And yes, some of you have correctly identified a satirical note in my writing, wherein I hoped to play up the irony between the way the game is played on paper and the way it's played on the ice, and celebrate the way that the Caps have quietly built a decent team without any writers outside DC noticing. This was intended to amuse and delight the more hockey-literate among my readers, without coming off as overconfident homerism to those who missed the memo. To those that saw the humor, and commented as much, I'd like to say, you rock! To those who didn't like it, well, I'll keep trying, and I welcome your criticism as I seek that delicate balance between humor that's accessible to non-fans and new fans, and humor that's meaningful and bittersweet to experts and insiders, and try to balance that with an occasional and unavoidable lapse into news coverage of actual events. As with anything involving the Caps, there's going to be irony and there are going to be a lot of ambiguities. When Craig Laughlin announced in passing during the Tampa game that Rico Fata says Skating is the most important part of hockey, it was funny on so many levels to me as a fan, but to my friend who doesn't watch hockey, it was informative, useful information, presented in a professional way that helped her understand the game and get to know one of the players, and without a hint of all the irony it contained. Now, I love Rico Fata, but if I ever make a statement that droll and loaded, and sound so casual, I will consider myself a successful writer. So if you're ever wondering whether I'm being funny or whether I'm being serious, the answers are usually yes, but please don't assume my statements are ambiguous due to an ignorance of the issues underneath them, or you'll miss all the fun. But seriously, for those of you that had to ask, I doubt you clicked the link on "stickhandling."

I hope you all will be back at DCist, as I think it's a terrific website that provides a pithy and eloquent rundown of our area's news and culture in a format that's great for reading during quick breaks at work, between subjects of homework, or even between periods of a game. Some of the coolest people I know plan their weekends off the DCist calendar, and pick concerts to go to based on the reviews up here, so I'm excited to volunteer my services to this community of terrific writers, and to try to bring intelligent hockey coverage to a perfect venue that has traditionally had no hockey coverage. I hope to help bring the joy and pain of hockey to the hipster masses, and I also hope to provide the best hockey writing in Washington, and lure my fellow Caps fans over to a place where they may discover things to do around town even when the Caps have the night off. Toward these goals, I invite all of you to keep these love-letters pouring in.

Forever NARCF,

Eli

This guy was obviously on the ball. We already have one dave fay, why do we need another. I'm glad this didn't cost me anything to read.

The author of this article is a moron, unfamiliar with hockey, yet blissful in his ignorance. Never read this rag before, never will again. Waste of time and space.

The reaction of the fans to this article is confusing. The article is clearly a humorous approach by a fan to the Caps win -- sort of like 'look at us, a below-average team, actually winning.' I guess that kind subtle humor is lost on these very literal fans.

I feel certain the fans who have commented to the negative on this article also think they know more about hockey then Joe Benenati, one of the regular hockey commentators on Comcast Sportsnet, but he, too, expressed surprise at both the Caps win against the Avs when it happened and, the other night, at how well the Caps did during this trip out West (they're only trip West this season, sadly).

The Avs are a Cup favorite? The Avs were cup favorites 3 years ago. This year they have serious question marks a)in goal b)forward depth.

The Avs are also not known as a faster team then the Caps. They have better puck moving d-men which might result in a better transition game, but the Avs are definitely not considered to be that much faster of a team then the Caps.

And about the Caps being one of the worst teams in the league...Buccigross on ESPN.com recently said they will fight for the 8th playoff spot.