Results tagged “hockey>”

Senators 4, Capitals 3 (OT): If you had cobbled together a team of professional hockey players from Eastern Canada and were looking for the opportune time to play the Washington Capitals, well, it's now. The Caps dropped their third straight game to a team from either Ontario or Quebec on Monday night, losing an overtime decision in Ottawa. The Capitals allowed three unanswered goals to let a two goal lead at the second intermission slip away. Chris Clark, Brendan Morrison, and Jay Beagle had scored to seemingly break the Caps two-game skid, but it wasn't enough -- Mike Fisher was left alone in front of the net to tip in the game winner just over a minute into overtime.

The Washington Capitals scored first, but the Montreal Canadiens scored more and won 3-2 on Friday night at the Verizon Center.

Friday's highlights belonged to the Caps' defense. In a 3-1 win over the Minnesota Wild, Washington's defensemen were responsible for the majority of goals scored, while Semyon Varlamov again turned in a strong performance between the pipes. Despite the Wild having the best penalty kill percentage on the road in the NHL, the Caps' first goal of the game came from Mike Green on a power play in the second period.

Welcome back, Captain Clark – with a little help from his trusty sidekicks Alex and Semyon, of course.

Tonight the Capitals came from behind to beat the Florida Panthers 7-4. With Alex Ovechkin and Mike Green among a slew of injured players, Mike Knuble put up four points to spark the win. The total tied his personal best, from Valentine's Day, 2003. Asked what it was like to be a leader on this team, Knuble calmly dismissed the assertion. "It's just one game," he said, talking up the importance of hard work over a long season.

Sometimes, when you have as much talent as the Caps' roster, you get in your own way. Despite coming in on a six-game winning streak, facing a team that was 2-4-5, a hefty 40-28 advantage in shots, and a solid performance by Jose Theodore, the Capitals lost 4-3 in overtime on Friday.

Capitals 5, Thrashers 4: Last night's game between Washington and Atlanta was a tight affair for the first thirty minutes. It was at that point that the Caps unleased an offensive fury, the likes of which hasn't been seen since that glorious day when I mastered the unstoppable wraparound glitch in NHL '95 for Super Nintendo. Jeff Schultz, Matt Bradley, and Chris Clark all scored in one minute and 22 second span in the second period -- and Washington needed them all, holding off Atlanta's late surge to win 5-4 on the road. In a matchup of two of the league's most prominent scorers, Alex Ovechkin's team topped Ilya Kovalchuk's, although Kovalchuk scored twice and the Great Eight was held pointless for only the second time this season. Ondrej Pavelec certainly had a bad night between the pipes for the Thrashers -- not only did the Caps smoke five past him on only 14 shots before he was pulled, but Schultz's goal was on a simple clearance attempt from 85 feet away which took an incredibly fortuitous hop into the back of the net.

In a contest of teams built from the ground up by the two best general managers in Washington Capitals history, the Caps beat the Nashville Predators 3-2 last night at the Verizon Center. The two men -- former GM David Poile and current GM George McPhee -- have worked together in the past, when Poile made the best offer for his disgruntled former employee, Brendan Witt. Right now, the Capitals enjoy a 4-0 winning streak over their former boss' squad, the last three of those wins coming in overtime.

It was the Mike and Mike show goal-wise at the Phone Booth on Monday: Mike Green scored his first goal of the season, and Mike Knuble had a goal and an assist. But after those tallies staked the home team to a 2-0 lead at the end of the first period, the Caps stumbled, eventually losing in a shootout to the New Jersey Devils.

The most frustrating thing for a head coach may be when the team drops a game it should have won. Capitals boss Bruce Boudreau certainly showed some of that frustration after the Caps gave up a 3-2 lead against the Rangers with under ten minutes remaining in the third period last night.

Capitals 4, Bruins 1: It's been a rough few months for D.C. sports -- a summer of futility at Nationals Park, the Wizards' dreadful season, Georgetown missing the tournament, the Redskins losing to the Lions, and so on, and so on. Will the Capitals be the messianic force that leads us out of the dark times? If they play like they did last night in Boston all year, then they might just be such an answer to those prayers. Washington bossed the game against a pretty decent Boston hockey club last night, looking even better than the team that many thought could go all the way last season. Already up 2-0 after two periods, the Caps scored twice in the opening two minutes of the third period to put things out of reach. It was a fantastic game for the team's top offensive talent, as Alexander Ovechkin (two goals and an assist) opened his 2009-10 account with a big deposit, as did Nicklas Backstrom (three assists) and Alex Semin (two helpers). But the Caps also flexed their considerable muscle on the power play -- Brooks Laich scored twice with the man advantage -- as Boston looked undisciplined; a too many men on the ice penalty led to Laich's opening goal. All in all, it was a romping victory for a team which many are counting on to put something positive back into this town's sporting consciousness.

By Eli Resnick and Elisabeth Meinecke With another hockey season upon us – the opening faceoff in Boston is mere hours away – it's time for the DCist hockey crew to look foolish and guess what the Caps will do this year. We'll take a wide turn of the stories heading into tonight's opener, offering our prognostications on the season to be along the way.

The Pittsburgh Penguins claimed Chris Bourque off waivers today.

       

By DCist contributor Hemal Jhaveri

The Caps' roster may be leaner (six cuts Tuesday trimmed the roster down to 36) but it showed some serious muscle offensively and defensively in a 6-2 preseason win over Chicago Wednesday at the Verizon Center.

In the history of the Washington Capitals, only one goalie has carried the team to the Stanley Cup Finals. That goalie retired today, after a decade in D.C. and a brief curtain call with the Tampa Bay Lightning. Olaf Kolzig may not play in the NHL any longer, but Caps fans will always remember him as one of the most dedicated, team-focused players in Washington history.

• Mystics 79, Fever 88: The Mystics let their first playoff game of the 2009 season slip away in the fourth quarter, as the Indiana Fever -- who had the best regular season record in the Eastern Conference -- outscored Washington 32 to 21 in the final period. Leading the scoring for Washington with 18 points was Crystal Langhorne, who was named the WNBA's Most Improved Player of the Year on Thursday. The Mystics will travel to Indiana for Game 2 in the best-of-three series (Game 3, if needed, will be played in Indiana). Overall, the teams looked surprisingly well-matched -- they had the same 3 point shooting percentage, the same points in the paint (36), and committed almost the same amount of turnovers, though the Fever had a slight edge on the boards and at the line.
  
  For the people watchers, Alex Ovechkin was reportedly celebrating his 24th birthday by watching the Mystics play at the Comcast Center. Of note: Ovie is younger than almost 75% of the Mystics' roster.
• Capitals 4, Sabres 3: Speaking of Capitals, the local hockey outfit won its first exhibition game of the preseason over Buffalo. A Brian Pothier tally with a two-man advantage in overtime was enough to settle matters, but Alexandre Giroux, Mike Knuble, and Jay Beagle also scored for the Caps. Semyon Varlamov played the entire game in net and looked good through the first two periods, but then allowed three goals in the third.
• Phililes 4, Nationals 2: The Nats got five innings of solid work from Ross Detwiler (0-6), but the bats went quiet once again, only pushing across two runs against the Phils combo of starter Cole Hamels (10-9) and always volatile Brad Lidge. Hamels struck out 10, and had a perfect game going until the sixth inning.

There was no lack of big names on the ice for the start of Capitals training camp Sunday, but everyone was talking about the one guy who wasn't skating -- veteran center Tomas Fleischmann, who spent all last season with the Capitals after yo-yoing on and off their roster for the previous three. Fleishmann was diagnosed with a blood clot in his leg (a deep vein thrombosis) this summer, and is out of contact workouts until the first week of the regular season.

Rejoice, hockey fans, for the season is almost upon us. On Monday, head coach Bruce Boudreau led some of his charges out onto the ice, as Caps rookies started working off summer rust Monday during the first day of the team's rookie camp at the Kettler Capitals Iceplex. The team spent the morning working through on-ice drills and receiving pointers from the coaching staff, including head coach Bruce Boudreau.

A hockey-starved crowd filled the Kettler bleachers Saturday for the final scrimmage in the Washington Capitals' 2009 development camp for prospects. The Blue and White teams went at it for a full three periods Saturday with the White team winning, as they've done in every game this week. Of course, which teams won and lost was of less concern than the young players' individual performances -- DCist was there to dig out the good stuff.

Upon seeing that the Capitals had "signed Morrison for 1.5 million dollars," this hockey fan was delighted that Washington had locked up their reliable stay-at-home defenseman for another year. That move would take some of the pressure off the team for fellow blue-liner Milan Jurcina's pending arbitration hearing. Still, I was surprised that as reliable a source as USA Today had left the second "n" off the end of Shaone Morrisonn's last name.

In case you didn't believe us when we said yesterday that Alexander Ovechkin was becoming "the guy" in the Washington sports scene, consider this: President Obama had high praise for the Caps star in a speech he delivered at Moscow's New Economic School this morning.

After the first draft in nearly a decade where the Caps didn't make an exciting trade or a high-profile pick, it's good to see the front office back into the mix of things, adding forward Mike Knuble at the dawn of free agency this afternoon. Costing just over $5 million for two years, Knuble snugly fits into the team's payroll as a replacement for Viktor Kozlov, who will play in his native Russia this season.

Okay, maybe it's not coming up. Maybe it's not tomorrow. Maybe it's not next year. Maybe it won't happen this decade, but someday, Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals will face Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins in the playoffs again.

Tomorrow night's Caps game at Verizon Center features the four most talented hockey players on earth competing in a winner take all, game seven, series final struggle for playoff survival. We'll have the last two winners of the NHL's Hart Trophy (player most valuable to his team) playing out a rivalry that has made hockey important even to non-fans. Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby have been billed for years as the greatest talents of this generation, and this will be the first time one of them eliminates the other from the playoffs.

Rapper, producer, and D.C. Ambassador Wale made an appearance on ESPN morning-squawker First Take this week to talk hockey -- or as he calls it "professional wrestling, minus the professional wrestling" -- and heap some much-deserved praise on Caps star Alexander Ovechkin.

Going into the Caps' opening round playoff series with the Rangers, hockey writers across the country said the key matchup would be Sean Avery on Alex Ovechkin. The Rangers' Avery has made a name for himself as one of the most annoying people in hockey, if not in all of sports. The Capitals were thought overmatched, but the fans, like a seventh man with a vile temper, came through.

                    

For the last two years, Capitals fans have flocked to the Verizon Center and rocked the red. Last night, the arena was packed with hockey fans of a different breed, as Washington played host to the Frozen Four, the NCAA's Division I men's college hockey championship. Nevertheless, teams and fans are largely sporting the same colors. Boston University and Miami (Ohio) fit right in with their red school colors, though both teams were wearing their home white last night. The University of Vermont and Bemidji State, both in different shades of green, rounded out the field.

Speaking of NCAA tournaments, the Frozen Four is coming to the Verizon Center starting tonight, marking the first Division 1 NCAA Championship to be hosted here in the District of Columbia. The entire championship series is already sold out, but Craigslist is absolutely bustling with scalpers and ticket traders, so if you're hoping to go, check for deals.

The Washington Capitals have played in the Southeast Division since it was first created in 1998. It's about time they start to really care about some of the other teams in it. On Saturday night, the Carolina Hurricanes made a big play to get noticed when their captain, Rod Brind'Amour, grabbed the back of Alex Ovechkin's head and pushed the Capitals superstar, face first, into one of the metal poles holding up the glass around the rink.