Afraid He Might Knee Them, NHL Only Suspends Ovechkin For Two Games

Washington Post:

The NHL has suspended Alex Ovechkin two games for his knee-on-knee hit on Carolina’s Tim Gleason on Monday night…

The suspension, which is without pay, is the first of Ovechkin’s career and means he’ll miss Thursday’s game against Florida and Saturday’s game in Philadelphia. He will forfeit $98,844.16 of his salary for the two games.

“I regret that this has happened,” Ovechkin said in a statement. “I’m glad that Tim wasn’t injured because I never ever want to see anyone get hurt. I am disappointed to miss these games and I can’t wait to get back on the ice next week to help my team.”

He added, “And by ‘help,’ I mean, continue playing the exact same way, taking runs at dudes non-stop and dealing with a meaningless two-game suspension for every three potentially injury-inducing cheap shots I dish out. I mean, Gonchar missed two playoff games after I kneed him, and that was only one of the three hits, so I’m really coming out in the black here. The more I think about it, I’d be crazy not to continue doing the exact same crap.”

It’s probably a fair punishment, given that Gleason wasn’t injured and that the suspension had to be assessed independently of the unrelated, non-suspended hits on Gonchar last year and Kaleta last week, but it’s hard to argue that Ovechkin is deserving of a light punishment because it’s his first suspension, even though that’s semantically true. Plus taking two games to rest his injured knee is probably a smart move for him and the Capitals anyway, so, whatever. Way to send a message, NHL.

Penguins 5, Rangers 2: Rupp Outduels Gaborik In Showdown Of Star Free Agent Pickups

I woke up in the middle of the night Sunday with a startling, half-awake realization: This offseason, instead of trading multiple dudes to the Rangers to acquire Scott Gomez’s suffocating contract, why didn’t the Canadiens just trade no one and sign Marian Gaborik? I know there’s some injury concern there, but geez, the dude’s 10 times the threat Scott Gomez has ever been, Gomez’s contract is just as massive, you keep Chris Higgins this way, and you end up with a dude who’s already scored more goals in 25 games this season than Gomez has in every season of his career except one.

Yep — half-awake Me is a better GM than Bob Gainey. Man is that dude fired after this season…

Anyway…the Pens remained impressive last night, beating the Rangers on the road with Henrik Lundqvist back in goal, despite a continued power play malaise and repeated inability to cover Gaborik with seven guys at all times. We knew it going in, but how clearly is Gaborik the only remotely threatening player on this Ranger team? Who else would you even think about covering in a playoff series against the Rangers? Like, Vinny Prospal? I feel like he should be the captain and star player on an expansion team somewhere; he’ll be on the Las Vegas ThundercrushDogs for their 2012 season opener, once Phoenix moves.

It’s Official: Alex Ovechkin Is A Pathological Kneer

Remember the Eastern Conference Semifinals last year when Alexander Ovechkin kneed Sergei Gonchar, got a two-minute tripping penalty even though Gonchar was injured, missed two games and never appeared 100% the rest of the Playoffs, and nearly every announcer — Pittsburgh and Washington alike, and even the highly biased author of this blog — argued that Ovechkin probably had the hit lined up, stuck his leg out as a last-second thoughtless reaction, and had no intention of actually kneeing Gonchar and injuring him?

Guess what? We were wrong. Turns out, Ovechkin actually is a big fan of the knee-to-knee hit, and he pulled off another stellar one last night on Carolina’s Tim Gleason, earning himself a 5-minute major penalty and his SECOND game misconduct in three games, and karmically injuring himself in the process:

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s three suspension-worthy hits by Ovechkin in a span of less than 30 games, going back to last year’s playoffs. It’s now not even debatable anymore: Alex Ovechkin is, by any possible definition, a deliberate cheap-shot artist. We all knew his reputation for taking wild charges at defensemen after they dish outlet passes and are off-balance so they fall down and announcers talk about how hard he plays, but those can at least usually be defended as message-sending collisions, if irrelevant to the play, and the actual hits themselves usually aren’t illegal (because the NHL stopped calling Charging some 12 years ago).

Ravens 20, Steelers 17 (OT): Pittsburgh Loses Without Polamalu, Roethlisberger, Kemoeatu, Goligoski, And Kunitz

I again didn’t feel like writing about the Steeler game this week, partly because I was out of town, partly cause I found the outcome simultaneously inevitable and bland, but I guess if I’m writing a blog about Pittsburgh sports I can’t just pout any time the Steelers lose, so here’s a quick recap. Then I’ll resume sucking my thumb and sneaking back into my crawlspace. You bunch of meanies.

Against the Bengals and Chiefs, I honestly never even entertained the thought that the Steelers might end up losing the games until the final minutes of each; much of this was straight-up naive arrogance on my part, but also, the Steelers appeared to be in control of both games, and given their extensive history of pulling off “what were you worried about?” fourth-quarter go-ahead drives at will last season, I’ve just grown spoiled with the idea that the Steelers are just going to prevail no matter what, just as the bloodied, limping Bruce Willis is always going to have the last laugh in any Die Hard movie.

Unfortunately, the past three weeks have been a different kind of Die Hard movie: A really boring one with and irritating ending. This has nothing to do with Die Hard, I’m just pissed about the game and attempted to write something more colorful than just “I’m pissed,” but ended up just regressing back to literally writing “I’m pissed.” And I am pissed.

I joked before the Ravens game that because the Ravens hadn’t been pulling their standard B.S. Ravens luck this season — they’ve actually lost several games on highly unlucky missed field goals and some lame penalty calls — that they had to have been saving up for one giant helping of Ravens luck against the Steelers. And wouldn’t you know it, Ben Roethlisberger finds out at the eleventh hour he can’t play, Charlie Batch is out for 6 weeks, and Dennis Dixon is starting his first NFL game on the road in Baltimore, has only two days to prepare, and the Steelers are missing Troy Polamalu, Chris Kemoeatu, and of course Aaron Smith, and the 2 1/2 Ravens point spread took an unsurprising leap to 7 1/2.

Random thoughts:

Pittsburgh Still Slightly More A Steelers Town Than A Boy Scouts Town

Found this amusing — the Top 5 Most Emailed Stories on Post-Gazette.com today:

Step One towards growing your relevancy, Boy Scouts: Deciding to do so on a day when the Steelers didn’t play.

Chiefs 27, Steelers 24 (OT): 27 Points To The Chiefs? 27 Points To The Chiefs.

I don’t really want to talk about yesterday’s Chiefs game, I’ve already complained myself hoarse over the phone and through texting (yes, even my fingers are hoarse. That’s how much that game blew.)

Just to give you an overall idea of what I would have complained about had I actually felt like putting in the effort, here’s the first slide in my “Why That Game Blew” Powerpoint presentation:

This concludes our analysis for the day. Here’s a funny video of a possessed singing fish:

Ducks Fans Fight Over Scott Niedermayer’s Stick

I wrote the other day that the Anaheim Ducks are in total disarray right now.

I was wrong.

NOW they’re in total disarray:

Senators 6, Penguins 2: Were Fleury And The Power Play Also Injured?

The Pens got killed last night, but what were we to expect? The whole team’s injured. Oh wait, Malkin, Gonchar, Talbot, and Eaton all ended up playing? Oh. So they just sucked. Alright, I can accept that.

The Pens got outplayed last night from the millisecond after Jordan Staal poked in a Pascal Dupuis feed to make it 1-0 up until the final buzzer. They somehow only got outshot 31-27, but it felt a lot worse, their powerplay was painfully bad (they finished 1 for 5 but the 1 was in the last couple minutes when they were already down 6-1), Fleury played his worst game of the season, allowing several goals from angles that protractors aren’t capable of measuring, and the team carried a general lack of urgency that doomed them from the moment they fell behind 2-1.

Also, complaining about the Penguins (or any team) not shooting the puck enough is hockey’s Kneejerk Fan 101, but the Penguins reeeeally didn’t want to shoot the puck last night (except Dupuis, and if he’s the only one firing the puck, you are the worst team in the NHL). The telltale sign that the Pens aren’t shooting the puck, usually, is when they have a game where Crosby, Malkin, Staal, and Gonchar all keep trying to thread passes to other players in worse shooting positions than themselves, and this kept happening again and again; it’s bad enough that the people Malkin passes to will be, by definition, crappier finishers than him, but it’s even worse when it’s a risky pass and it’s to a dude who isn’t even in a better position to score than the person passing. Hopefully, the scoreboard at the end of the night will be enough of a cartoony slap across the faces of the Pens’ stars to wake them back up for Saturday night.

Other thoughts:

– Daniel Alfredsson looked as good last night as I’ve seen him in the last three seasons. He’s always been right on that fence between “Consistently Good Player” and “Superstar,” but last night he played like the latter.

– The Senators fans loudly booed every single penalty call against the team. Christ, Ottawa, you can relax — you’re not frickin’ Montreal, you’re allowed to derive pleasure from live hockey events.

– If there’s one positive to take out of the Senators game, at least the Penguins never traded anyone for Jonathan Cheechoo. Man, that dude has nothing left — he’s fallen all the way to the status of “Random Roleplayer Who Breaks Scoreless Drought Against Penguins.” Yeesh.

– In fairness to the Pens, they were at the end of a long road trip. Meaning, the trip from Pittsburgh to Ottawa.

Place Your Bets: Who’s Getting Injured In The Pens Game Tonight?

Maxime Talbot and Sergei Gonchar are both scheduled to return for the Pens against Ottawa tonight, which can only mean one thing: Someone else is getting injured in tonight’s game. The only question is, who?

I feel like a Crosby or Fleury injury would be too on-the-nose for this season, so I don’t think Pen-karma will go quite that far, and Eaton going down to complete the cycle of injured opening night defensemen would be the easy choice, so I’m not gonna go there either.  I’m predicting it’ll be a more minor player, but with a more major injury than we’ve seen so far, just to keep things interesting / annoying.

My prediction: I’m putting $50 on Craig Adams going out 4-6 months with a lower body injury.

My friend Doug bets on a Talbot re-injury in the middle of the game tonight, which isn’t a bad prediction either — you can practically already hear Bob Errey saying “We haven’t seen Max Talbot since he went down the runway in the middle of the second period, no word on his condition yet, hopefully it’s not anything serious…”

Anyone else want to throw an injury prediction on the record? Feel free to leave ‘em in the comments.

UPDATE: Mark Eaton is “questionable” tonight. Why wouldn’t he be?

Crosby Carries Olympic Torch Through Halifax — But Could Ovechkin Have Done It Better?

Here’s Sidney Crosby carrying the Olympic Torch 300 yards through downtown Halifax, Nova Scotia before perfectly handing it off to Chris Kunitz, who still somehow missed it.

Capitals fans have taken to message boards everywhere declaring that Ovechkin easily could’ve carried the torch for 400 yards and wouldn’t have been a huge whiner about it.