Caps Rookies in Flyer Country

My weeklong quest to do nothing unless it involves the Caps' official start to training camp continued as today I ventured outside the beltway...way outside...all the way to Voorhees, NJ.

(I do this for you, folks.)

You can read in-depth rundowns of the game from Vogel and Tarik - all I can provide you with is the rapturous afterglow of the very first official hockey game of the season. Even the fact that the Caps lost 5-3 couldn't dampen my spirits at witnessing an honest to goodness hockey game, with players from two different teams, a packed house, line changes, goals, penalty killing...

Oy. Did I mention the penalty killing? I won't go into how many penalties there were total (mostly because I stopped counting after the first period) or how well they were killed off (which is not very well). Let's just say any question that these kids are future Caps was put to rest after this one.

It was a pretty entertaining game, though - some nice Caps goals, some ugly Flyers ones, and what I thought was a standout performance by Karl Alzner. He is just head and shoulders above where someone his age should be. He's calm and collected all the time and he has a quickness that is surprising considering the intelligent decisions he makes. Everyone played well today...he played amazingly well. Training camp is going to be very interesting.


Check out my pics and please don't mock the blurriness. It's...an artistic choice.


Or maybe it's just because they moved so damn much and I promised pictures. One or the other.