Want a preview of what the Caps' locker room could look like in the next few years? Check out this footage from right after the Russians captured the gold, complete with bad Russian music and worse Russian singing from our very own #8.
Showing posts with label IIHF World Championships. Show all posts
Showing posts with label IIHF World Championships. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Party On, Alex
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Russians Are Golden
There's been hockey aplenty this weekend, with international play colliding with NHL conference finals in an all-out battle for hockey supremacy and the attention of hockey fans everywhere.
Without a doubt, though, the most exciting (and least painful, unless you're Canadian) of these games was today's World Championship gold medal game. It was the ultimate game, a clash of the titans, two undefeated teams meeting to continue a historic rivalry, Russia vs. Canada. After falling behind by two goals twice, Russia stormed back to win in dramatic fashion thanks to Ilya Kovalchuk's overtime goal - his second of the game and the tournament.
And for Caps fans, it was certainly a proud moment to see some of our very own receiving their gold medals. In fact, it's hard to see pictures of Ovechkin, Semin and Fedorov, clutching the trophy and bringing it to their lips...and not picture a different trophy in its place.
The three of them made up the formidable "Capital Punishment" line, and every shift they lived up to their name. Today was no exception - at many times they appeared to be the best line on the ice, matching Canada's top line shift after shift, and Semin's two goals kept Russia in the game early on when it looked like the Canadians would run away with the gold.
Ovechkin was dominant as expected but he wasn't alone. In fact in just nine games, the trio of Russian Caps combined for 17 goals and 20 assists, and were an astounding +32. All three finished in the top 10 in tournament scoring, joining their teammate Mike Green - whose 12 points made him the top scoring defenseman in the tournament, by the way.
Should Fedorov decide to sign on with the Caps for another year it seems the possibilities are endless. We saw how well Ovechkin and Backstrom played. We saw how well Backstrom and Semin played. And Fedorov is able to center them both, on separate lines or together. It's called depth, folks, and it would be nothing short of a coup to have Fedorov join Backstrom and Nylander down the middle.
Just another thing for GMGM to mull over in the coming months...because he won't have enough on his plate.
The World Championships showed us just how promising this Caps team is; eight different Capitals represented their countries in the tournament, and six made it to the medal rounds with their respective countries. Four of them finished in the top ten scorers. Five of them received medals.
And so today as the Worlds wrap up we join in the celebration.Congratulations to Backstrom and Sweden, congratulations to Sami Lepisto and Finland, congratulations to Green and Canada for their superb play throughout the tournament. And of course, congratulations to Team Russia - gold medal winners, World Champions, and proud Caps!
Thursday, May 10, 2007
The Madness Returns
Whew. Long time gone, eh? Sorry about that - aside from the constant annoyance of life getting in the way, I've somehow, somewhere down the road, temporarily lost my will to rant. Maybe seeing the twin geriatrics in Detroit take down yet another team that I like just pushed me over the edge, I don't know.
The urge to babble on about everything and nothing at all will return, though, of that I am certain - until then, I'm sure everyone is just itching to know who won Round Two of the First Annual Blogger Playoff Pool, right?
Drum roll please....
Big week for Sherry, her Senators are in the Conference Finals and now this. As I'm sure you all know by now, Sherry gets to select three of our pool participants who will then be charged with the task of writing a pro-Ottawa post.
This round's victims losers selected few are:
Heather B. (Buffalo)
Bleu Blanc et Rouge (Montreal)
Christy Hammond (Detroit)
We'll keep an eye out for those oh-so-humbling posts, kids - good luck!
As for the rest of you, there's still plenty of time to accumulate those points - two more rounds to go, lots of bonus points tossed into the mix, anything can happen. Don't believe me? 10 points separate first place from thirteenth place. 20 points separate first from twenty-ninth. It's anyone's game.
Well, maybe not anyone's. (Sorry, Jordi, but while saying Paris Hilton would get scored on the most in the second round was probably technically accurate, for our purposes I can't count it.)
For those of you who like spreadsheets and charts and stuff, the standings through two rounds are listed here:
Eastern Conference Finals madness gets underway tonight in Buffalo, 7:00 pm. Keeping my fingers crossed that I can leave the office and the job that is slowly sucking away my life long before then, I'll be watching. No excuses, people - Grey's Anatomy is available online, The Office and Scrubs can be recorded or downloaded, the Nats are taking time out of their suckitude for a not really deserved night off, basketball playoffs are...well, basketball playoffs...
Drop the puck, let's go!
[By the way for anyone who is following along, Team USA was eliminated from the World Championships today by Finland...in a shootout. Of course.]
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Ovie Out, Sabres In
The word coming out of the World Championships today is that Ovechkin was ejected and later handed a one-game suspension for what was being termed a hit from behind in the game against the Swiss team.
I saw the replay of the game and was initially surprised that the hit in question was given such a strong punishment. It was a relatively innocent play - Ovie steps out of the box just as the Swiss player skates by with the puck, head down. Ovechkin lays him out with a hard shoulder check that knocks the other player down and shakes him up a bit.
But I didn't see the malicious intent, the hitting from behind, anything noteworthy other than the fact that it was around the head.
As I think about it a bit more, though, it's a good call and consistent with the standard set to this point at the World Championships. Just a few days ago, Shea Weber was suspended for an elbow to the head of a German player, now this. The IIHF is setting a standard that the NHL would do well to mimick - cracking down on hits to the head, regardless of intent or whether the player's head is down, seems like a good idea to me.
And luckily for Ovie and the Russian team, his suspension falls on a relatively meaningless game against Sweden, as Russia has already qualified for the next round.
For continuing coverage on the World Championships, check the widget above...
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The last two games of the Rangers-Sabres series have been surprisingly entertaining, but if you're a Sabres fan I'd be concerned. (And I'm not saying that because I want to see them crash and burn...I don't, I swear!)
There's no reason Buffalo should have taken 6 games to finish off the Rags, especially not after the phenomenal regular season they had. So many times during this series they looked simply average, allowing New York to dictate the play far too often. That's not to say they didn't have their share of breathtaking moments - with that much talent it wasn't going to stay idle for the entire series. Still, they made the Rangers look much better than they actually were, and that's not a good sign.
Regardless, the Sabres move on to take on the Senators in the Eastern Conference Finals.
But fisticuffs aside, this should be a playoff series for the ages - with all the speed and skill on both of these rosters combined with the heated division rivalry, this series could be the perfect example of what the playoffs are all about. And it should come as no surprise that the two Eastern Conference finalists come out of the Northeast, one of the tightest divisions in the league this season. Ottawa holds a slight edge in the season series, winning 5 of 8 games, but this looks to be an evenly matched series that should go 7.
Unless I'm wrong.
Wouldn't be the first time.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
OFB Invades Russia
Check out OnFrozenBlog's ongoing coverage above as they travel to and report from the World Championships in Russia.
Fellas, we bow down to your blogging greatness!
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Team USA, aka the Caps
This headline is eerily familiar: US Defense Exposed in Close Loss.
Where have you heard this before?
"But there are a lot of things we can build on. Our competitiveness in the third period. Our willingness to battle back was encouraging. It's a testament to the character of the players in our dressing room...[a]s young as this team is, we have a lot of leadership."What about this quote from captain Chris Clark?
"This could be a building block, a stepping stone to better things."Or even something similar to this?
Jaroslav Bednar scored the winning goal after the...defense failed to clear the puck out of its goal area.How about the fact that the oldest defenseman on the US team's roster is Brian Pothier, who just turned 30 years old. The oldest forward is Chris Clark, at the geriatric age of 31. The oldest player in general? John Grahame, nearing the old folks home at 32. In fact, only 6 players on the entire team were born in the 1970s, and no one earlier than 1975. That's a young team, folks. When your "veteran presence" was barely out of training pants during the bicentennial, that's a young team.
Anyone else see the striking resemblance to the Caps? Granted, their young'uns are still more seasoned then some of the sprouts patrolling the Capitals' blue line this past season, but still...creepy.
Friday, April 27, 2007
From Russia to Toronto
- Thanks to the live streaming efforts of wcsn.com, I caught part of Team USA's first game at the World Championships in Moscow - and before you ask, yes, I was at work, and no, I probably wasn't supposed to be watching hockey while at work. Happy?
The US looks like they're off to a good start. Now, to be fair, comparing the Austrian national team to the US, Canadian, Russian or Czech teams is like comparing my high school orchestra to the National Symphony. Still it was an interesting game from what I saw, capped off by a goal by our captain and theirs, Chris Clark.
As we speak I have just started watching Russia vs. Denmark - and before you ask, yes, I'm still at work, and no, I still probably shouldn't be watching hockey while at work. I'm at least doing work at the same time, so I think that counts. Anyways, it's 4-1...oops, wait, make that 5-1, just about 6 minutes into the 2nd period. Thank you, Andrei Markov. Ovechkin just finished a shift where he was hitting every one in sight, and the Russian fans are doing the wave.
6-1. This is going to get ugly. Of course, if Austria's team is equivalent to my high school orchestra, Denmark's is a group of two year olds with kazoos. And thanks to some early playoff exits, the Russian team is brimming with talent and looks very scary. Seriously. I think the Danish goalie is crying.
I'm just continuously amazed at the technological advances that help crazy hockey fans (oops, 7-1...) like me watch hockey live from Russia. It's just amazing that techn-OVECHKIN! 8-1! (sans the blue visor, by the way...)
Anyways, that...um...what was I saying?
Oh, right. Technology. It's a great thing.
You know what's really amazing? I am able to get live, fairly clear, buffer-free footage of a tournament happening halfway around the world...yet for some reason I can't get Center Ice online to work consistently. I couldn't get the Ottawa-New Jersey game last night, and that was just happening up I-95.
Crazy, crazy world.
- So I'm taking a very brief recess from my Penguin-hate and diverting it north, just for a moment...and for no apparent reason. Don't worry, we'll get back to the random acts of violence against all things Penguin-esque soon enough, and my ongoing look at teams we hate will continue later. There's just a lot of love to go around, y'know?
To anyone reading this who happens to be a Toronto Maple Leafs fan...look away now. Everyone else, enjoy!
Special thanks to my favorite Canadian expatriates, Chris and Sarah, who have earned the title of super junior reporters in the field for their hard work uncovering random stories and videos. Thanks guys!
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Semin a Spectator
I'm sure everyone has heard by now that Alexander Semin has been cut from the Russian squad at this year's IIHF World Championships for failure to report to training camp on time. In fact, Mike Vogel has a great rundown today of all the details.
I think we can all agree that Semin probably should have just booked his flight to meet the Russian team's schedule. But we all know that Semin has had his share of travel, er...issues. Back in 2003-04 he missed the team plane (how do you miss the team plane??) from New York to Pittsburgh and was scratched for the final game. So there's a history there - maybe Ovechkin should give Semin the Rolex he won for being the #1 star this season...
BUT here's the thing - according to Vogel, Russian coach Sergei Nemchinov called Semin Sunday to remind him he needed to arrive at 4:00 pm the next day. When Semin informed Nemchinov that his flight didn't arrive until 7:30 pm, the coach told him to get an earlier flight. I thought that seemed odd...I mean, there can't be that many flights from DC to Moscow, right? Depending on when Nemchinov contacted Semin, what are the odds he could have even changed his flight at that point?
I decided to serve as Sasha's imaginary travel agent and do a little investigating.
- The average flight from DC to Moscow is about 13-14 hours, although depending on how many transfers you have and how much time is left between them, the trip can take up to 20 hours.
- It took Semin a little less than an hour to get on the road from the airport - therefore we can assume that to make the 4:00 deadline he would need to land before 3:00; 18 flights would get him there before then, all of which leave before 7:00 pm the day before.
- Changes to international flights need to take place at least 4 hours in advance to insure adequate time for security checkpoints.
- Last minute fares from DC to Moscow increase by up to $1000 over fares booked at least two weeks in advance.
- On any given Sunday there are between 50 and 60 flights from Dulles International Airport to Moscow. I'm sure the equivalent number is available from BWI, as well as Reagan National (although you'd have to add a transfer at an international airport).
Conclusion?
Uh...yeah. He should have just gotten his rear in gear and booked an earlier flight to begin with.
*SIGH* Sasha, Sasha, Sasha. Have fun watching the game from the stands, kiddo.
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