Results tagged “olafkolzig”

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.

Coming into this hockey season, Brent Johnson was even more of an afterthought than usual. After leaving Johnson in the press box to watch games and leaving him on the bench to watch practices at the end of last season in favor of Olaf Kolzig and Christobal Huet, the Caps replaced those two aging starters with former NHL MVP Jose Theodore. Johnson battled through training camp to regain his NHL backup job against a couple of highly regarded European teenagers, and figured to start 20 games in Theodore's shadow, while possibly taking up a few new hobbies and obsessively rereading Dostoyevsky's seminal Notes from the Underground.

In the 1990s, Brent Johnson was a terrific starting goalie for the St. Louis Blues. He led a good team, stopped the shots he had to stop and won more than he lost. He set a (since broken) playoff shutout record. At that time, the Capitals had a great starting goalie of their own named Olaf Kolzig. Towering over other NHL goalies of the day at 6'3", Kolzig wore the nickname Zilla with pride, even getting it painted on the back of his helmet. Two years ago, Johnson came to Washington and became Kolzig's unquestioned backup. For two years he struggled unsuccessfully to shake that tag.

Jose Theodore signed a two year, $9 million contract to play for the Capitals yesterday. Theodore brings a lot of great accomplishments and a lot of question marks to the Capitals. Last year in Colorado, he took turns losing the starting goalie job with younger disappointment Peter Budaj. Still, Theodore is the answer on paper to many of the Capitals' questions.

They may measure two inches shy of a collective 19 feet tall, but the first three Caps picks from this weekend's NHL draft stand on the shoulders of giants. With two picks in the first round and their first of two in the second, the Caps brought in players with strong connections to franchise history, tying the team's future to its past.

It's over. Last night, the Caps lost game seven in overtime to the Philadelphia Flyers. They will now face the dreaded eighteen hole golf courses of McLean, and their own personal workout regimens. Led by the season-long heroics of Alexander Ovechkin, Mike Green and Olaf Kolzig, the team came back from 14th in the East at New Years to third place in the East with home ice advantage in their first playoff series in five years.

Alexander Ovechkin has raised the NHL's record for goals by a left wing from sixty-three to sixty-five. Incidentally, Ovechkin's sixty-fifth goal of this season was a crucial game-winner--and his second key goal of the night--in the game that put the Capitals in playoff position for the first time in months.

Professional hockey players come from all over the world. They come from South Africa, Canada, Kazakhstan, Norway and there is even one from Washington, D.C. Well, okay, two come from the Washington area. Jeff Halpern from Bethesda signed with the Capitals as an undrafted free agent in the 1990s. When the Caps declined to sign him two years ago, he joined the Dallas Stars, who have him in a five-year, $10 million contract.

In the midst of trying to pull the Capitals out of last place, new coach Bruce Boudreau (2-1-1) has the challenge of finding enough playing time to let the young guys--and except for goalie Olaf Kolzig and a few free agents, they're all young guys--develop to their potential. Boudreau has already won top marks from embedded blogger Mike Vogel for letting Steve Eminger play his second game of the season. It will be interesting to...

Since trading away team leader and expert benchwarmer Brian Sutherby to save money and cure a losing streak, the Caps have chalked up two more uninspired losses to teams from subtropical climatic zones. Last night's nominal crowd at Verizon Center cheered optimistically when the Caps lobbed soft shots from the blueline into the catching glove of Atlanta's third-string goalie, Johan Hedberg. They cheered sarcastically when Capitals museum piece Olaf Kolzig stopped easy shots. Some fans...

Three of the Capitals' best five offensive players are still out with minor injuries. That's the good news. The bad news is that, after being absolutely destroyed by the Carolina Hurricanes last night, the Caps are tied with the Atlanta Thrashers for the worst record in the East at 5-9-0. Last night's loss would have been easier to explain if the Caps were missing ten, or maybe twenty of their best players. Two Hurricanes scored...

In an interview yesterday, discussing the state of goalie development in Russian hockey, Caps superstar Alexander Ovechkin optimistically announced that Caps goaltending prospect Semen Varlamov will remain in Russia this year, playing with Yaroslavl Lokomotiv. This contradicted Ovechkin's earlier optimistic prediction that Varlamov would challenge Olaf Kolzig for the starting job in Washington, which in turn contradicted Varlamov's earlier announcement that he planned to play for Lokomotiv this year. Goalies take longer to develop than...

Before last night the Florida Panthers had beaten the Capitals five straight times. In those five meetings, the Panthers were struggling to make the playoffs. Last night was Florida's first game since their elimination from playoff contention, and their lack of motivation showed from the start. The Capitals, possibly by accident, capitalized on their lackadaisical opposition to claim a meaningless victory over their fellow non-competitors. Alexander Ovechkin scored his forty-fourth goal of the season on...

With the NHL Trade Deadline approaching, the Capitals had better make up their minds pretty quickly whether they'll be buying or selling. With starting goaltender, team leader and future saint Olaf Kolzig on injured reserve for three weeks with a torn ligament in his knee, the team is undoubtedly thinking "sell", if not thinking about reaching for the cellar of the league standings and getting into the lottery to draft Angelo Esposito. However, the...

This entry was written by DCist contributor Jesse Rounds The Washington Capitals are done for the season. The team finished the last week of play by going 3-1 with wins against Florida, Tampa Bay, and Atlanta. The Capitals were expected to finish at the bottom of the NHL this season, and by finishing with the third worst record in the league, the team certainly lived up to those expectations. On the other hand the Caps...