Eric Fergus McKinzie Erickson
@ Dupont Circle
Q:If your dog was a celebrity, who would it be?
A:"Lindsay Lohan. My dog is popular for no good reason. "
In BOSTON EARLIER this season, Washington Capital Alex Ovechkin was wheeling through the offensive zone when he lost control, drove a shoulder into the boards and collapsed. But the crowd, anxiously awaiting signs of movement, didn't hold their breath long — he soon stood up and stormed down the tunnel, healthy enough to whip his helmet to the floor, aggravated by the collision.
That's what Ovechkin does: He gets up and keeps playing. He's missed only three games in his four 82-game NHL seasons. It's an impressive stat directly connected to another: Ovechkin has dished out 204 hits this year, sixth most in the league — and he's often on the receiving end too.
So, how does he escape injuries while acting like a battering ram? "He is one of probably the top three that I have ever trained in terms of physical, god-given ability," which helps, proclaims Capitals strength coach Mark Nemish. Nemish, the owner/director of Dynamic Sports Performance in Ashburn, Va., began working with the Nashville Predators in 1998 before joining the Capitals in 2007.
Continue Reading "How He Rules the Rink: Capital Alex Ovechkin" »
IT WASN'T THAT long ago that the Washington Wizards were on the verge of something great and the Washington Capitals were on the cusp of what must have felt like Siberia.
Things change quickly, don't they? Now it is the Capitals who are the team to see at Verizon Center, and the Wizards will soon have to adopt the old Bullets' marketing strategy of promoting the other team.
While there is still room to grow — Alex Ovechkin's snub from the All-Star Game shows Caps fans can be a bit more aggressive — the city seems to be catching on. There have already been more sellouts this season than there were all of last year.
A three-game losing streak was a big deal this week. In recent years, it was common.
It looks like the Capitals are on the same fast track the Pittsburgh Penguins were on in reaching the Stanley Cup finals three years after Sidney Crosby joined the squad.
Ovechkin is the star, but Washington has plenty of good, young players around him such as Nicklas Backstrom, Mike Green and Alexander Semin.
Wednesday's win over Pittsburgh seems a bit more important than a typical victory. For one, it ended the recent slide and Ovechkin's scoring slump. But also, the symbolism of beating the Penguins should not be overlooked.
Pittsburgh is falling behind this year while Washington is making progress.
Dare we dream of a Stanley Cup? It's certainly within reach.
Photo by Toni L. Sandys/TWP
JUST AS SPORTS ILLUSTRATED had an obvious choice in Michael Phelps as its sportsman of the year, any D.C.-area sportswriter has but one true option for the local equivalent.
Combine a scoring champion, league MVP and dynamic personality and you get the area's brightest star, Alex Ovechkin.
Already a superstar, Ovechkin has lived up to his promise as one of hockey's all-time greats in 2008 in leading the Capitals from last place to the postseason.
The numbers are gaudy: 65 goals and 47 assists last season and an NHL-best 25 points this past November. On a fan level, there is no one you'd rather see play,
Clinton Portis runs a distant second for his best year in Washington. He took a leadership role after Sean Taylor's death in 2007 and helped the Redskins make an improbable push to the playoffs.
He's followed that up with a gutsy season in which he's the NFL's second leading rusher while battling several nagging injuries. All that's missing is a bad back for carrying the Redskins the first half of the year.
As impressive as Portis has been, though, he's still not in the same league as Ovechkin, who was the first local athlete to win an MVP award since Joe Theismann did in 1983.
That's not to be overlooked — and the best part is that he's going to be here for a lot longer.
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
IN THE PAST three years, the face of the Washington Capitals has changed from a grizzled goalie to a superstar Russian who’s missing a tooth.
And it was inevitable that a young team with a bright future and new identity would be forced to move forward.
Yet that doesn’t lessen the sorrow of last week’s announcement that Olaf Kolzig will be looking for employment elsewhere next season.
The 2000 Vezina Trophy winner and the only goalie to lead the Capitals to the Stanley Cup finals found himself on the bench as Washington returned to the postseason this year.
Cristobal Huet, acquired at the trade deadline, earned his place as a starter by winning the team’s final seven regular season games to reach the playoffs.
It is the smart decision to keep Huet to build around a young team anchored by Alex Ovechkin.
But watching Olie the goalie on another team will be really odd.
Kolzig was drafted way back in 1989 — when Bart was still the main character of ”The Simpsons„ — and has played in a whopping 711 games for the Caps and achieved 301 wins.
Most impressively, Kolzig survived the purge of 2004 when Washington began its rebuilding process.
He saw some of the best and worst times in the team’s history.
We wish Kolzig a fond farewell, knowing his departure is probably best for both sides.
Photo by Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post
ANOTHER SEASON ENDED in disappointment for the Washington Capitals on Tuesday, but this time the locker room laments were not about the pains of rebuilding, but about barely missed chances, refereeing and other small things that separate winning from losing at the highest level. There was a quiet confidence in the room. The Caps were eliminated, but they also had arrived.
"Fourteen of our players had never played in the Stanley Cup playoffs, and now we've got a series under our belt. We've got a Game 7 overtime under our belt," center Brooks Laich said. "I think that's going to bode well for us in the future. Right now we're disappointed, but I think it'll be a great learning experience."
The Caps' sterling record under coach Bruce Boudreau and the glut of young talent at his disposal left many at Verizon Center looking forward to next year rather than back at a difficult first-round series. Owner Ted Leonsis declared once again that "we have a plan that's working" and that seven games against Philadelphia "was like getting their MBA in a summer program, where they aged dramatically."
YOU MAY NOT SEE HIM, but you'll certainly hear him.
When the Capitals come back to Verizon Center on Saturday, Sam Wolk will be there with his horn. He has season tickets, and has spent almost every game this season — and for the last eight seasons — in section 415, blowing his horn to the tune of "Let's go Caps!"
Wolk's wife, Sherri Muzzuco, introduced him to hockey and the two of them have been season ticket holders since 1999. The original horn, which Wolk started bringing that season, was crushed by Penguins fans in 2000, and this season, Wolk wrapped his new horn in a red scarf to match the Caps new colors.
"Sometimes you need to get the house rocking. If we kill a penalty, I'll blow it. I always blow it right after a goal's scored," says Wolk, who adds that he won't blow it when the Caps are on special teams. "Then I'll do it when there's a lull and I feel like we need to do it."
Wolk was in the stands for the Caps' run to the Stanley Cup in 1998, and he said watching Peter Bondra made him a Caps fan. But he says Alex Ovechkin is more fun to watch and the arena is louder now than he's ever seen it.
Continue Reading "Noise Maker: Caps Fans Reach Fever Pitch" »
HOLDING COURT FRIDAY NIGHT night inside the Capitals' locker room, Ted Leonsis bypassed a toast in favor of a boast.
Any why not? His team — which only months ago was on its way to a third straight terrible season with few fans to show for it — had just won its first playoff game in five years in front of a sold-out crowd sporting mohawks and red jerseys.
"We've built something really special here, and it's going to stay for a long, long time," said the Capitals' owner, who was also wearing one of his team's red jerseys.
Just before the 2004 lockout, Leonsis and General Manager George McPhee took a wrecking ball to a solid team that would never have been good enough to win the Stanley Cup and started over.
Continue Reading "Swengali: Caps Have Built Something Great" »
THE EUPHORIA OF THE CAPITALS' stirring third-period comeback in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference quarterfinals vanished as abruptly as an open-ice hit on Sunday as the Philadelphia Flyers offered several young Capitals players a crash-course in playoff hockey.
"I don't think we were as good as we can be, but I thought Philadelphia made us look pretty bad. ... Hopefully, it was a cheap lesson, but we'll see," Caps coach Bruce Boudreau said. "Philadelphia outplayed us, outworked us and out-won the battles on us. We now know we've got to pay a bigger price if we want to succeed."
The Caps' first defeat in more than three weeks evened the best-of-seven series at 1-1, with the third game Tuesday night in Philly.
To get back on track the Caps will have to figure out how to free Alex Ovechkin, Alexander Semin, Mike Green and the rest of their playoff debutantes from the relentless pursuit that left them befuddled on Sunday. Ovechkin said playoff hockey was "faster" and "more physical" than regular season competition and it showed, as the NHL's leading scorer had little room to maneuver and his line, centered by rookie Nicklas Backstrom, was unable to keep the puck.
Continue Reading "Sports Talk: Youngsters Get Abrupt Wake-Up Call" »
Express' Christopher Porter had a fever dream while at a Washington Capitals game; the story told hereafter is part fanciful jest, aided by the "oaky afterbirth" of Paul Mason.
IT WASN'T THE SMOOTH JAZZ BAND that greeted the suddenly mellow-romantic hockey fans who entered the Verizon Center on Sunday that made the Capitals lose to the Flyers. (Did Bobby Clark get to pick the outside-the-arena music? Note to Ted: Darkest Hour might be a better choice to fire up beer-chugging puckheads.)
And it wasn't the Caps' turnovers, lost face-offs and bad line changes, or the Flyers' stifling play and consistent bodychecks, that tied the playoffs series one game apiece before Tuesday's tilt in Philly.
Express alone can exclusively reveal the real reason the Capitals were defeated. The damning camera-phone-snapped evidence is after the jump:
WASHINGTON, D.C., DOESN'T have a great rep for supporting heavy metal; it's more of a go-go, punk, hip-hop and indie rock kinda town.
And football-and-basketball-loving D.C. seems to always get a bad rep for its hockey fandom (or lack thereof).
But with the Washington Capitals having the greatest player on the planet in Alexander Ovechkin, winning the Southeast Division last week and heading to the playoffs for the first time since 2003, the Verizon Center has seemed more like the center of Hockeytown, not Chinatown.
Meanwhile, the increasingly popular thrash-death-metal band Darkest Hour is comprised of D.C. residents who not only bang their heads on stages from here to Europe and beyond, they also love to smash the glass at the hockey rink.
"Hockey and heavy metal, to me, are just like peanut butter and chocolate," said guitarist and ex-youth puck player Mike Schleibaum.
It's a match made in underdog, arena-rocking heaven.
Fired up by the Capitals' run toward the postseason — which starts Friday at Verizon Center against the Philadelphia Flyers — Darkest Hour went into the studio and recorded a new arena anthem to pump the crowd and the players. "Let's Go Caps!" can be heard and downloaded from a special MySpace page Darkest Hour set up at myspace.com/letsgocapsmusic.
Express spoke to Schleibaum about his band's new fight song, his favorite sports anthems, hockey fandom and what sort of party Darkest Hour will throw when (not if) the Caps win the Cup.
Continue Reading "Playoff Anthem: Darkest Hour's 'Let's Go Caps!'" »
Addison Road
