Written by DCist contributor Eli Resnick.

Apparently, we are all on drugs. There is no other simple explanation for the collective hallucination that has overtaken all three people paying attention to the Washington Capitals’ game late last night against the Colorado Avalanche. No, the rink didn’t fall off its mountain, and no, Ray Bourque did not appear to the crowd in an Avs uniform, hipcheck Ovechkin and score a hat-trick.

Instead, something much stranger seemed to happen. The Caps won.

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. This is a game that’s supposed to be over before it starts, with Colorado taking fifty shots to the Caps’ thirty, Washington taking twice as many penalties as they try to keep up with a much faster Colorado club, and the heroics of geriatric goaltender Olaf “Godzilla” Kolzig keeping the game from becoming a complete blowout.

What actually happened was that Colorado did take forty-eight shots to the Caps’ thirty and Washington did take more than twice as many penalties as they tried to keep up with a much faster Colorado club. However, the heroics of Kolzig kept Colorado from ever holding a lead as the Caps spun and skated like frantic little plastic table-hockey men controlled by a frantic drunk guy who knows he’s playing the master, but prefers to go down flailing.