Sports stars appear in local commercials all the time, but this D.C. area Capital One ad featuring Alex Ovechkin and Donovan McNabb seems a little derivative — A local ad where the athletes each deliver one line horribly, causing you to wonder why they didn’t just hire actors for one one-thousandth the cost and have the commercial be much less ridiculous? That is OUR turf, dammit.
(via Puck Daddy)
Thanks, Internet – I don’t think I could’ve put it better myself:
Montreal beat Washington 4-1 last night despite being outshot 54-22 to stave off elimination for a second straight game and force an unexpected Game 7 this Wednesday night, prompting Caps GM George McPhee to exclaim, “Another [EXPLETIVE] Game 7.”
While I still can’t imagine the Caps are gonna blow the series, especially given how badly they dominated Game 6, that shouldn’t stop us from ripping on them in the form of topical Ace Ventura themed Photoshops:
Fleury let in everything. Pens’ power play couldn’t get a late goal. Ovechkin scored an extreme team-effort empty net goal with a billionth of a second left. Goligoski sucks. Fedotenko sucks. I could’ve written this recap yesterday.
Whatever — just end this inconsistent, half-assed shitshow, bring on the Senators, and either magically start caring in the playoffs or get knocked out so we can start enjoying the warm weather.
Man, that Jose Theodore is some regular season goalie, isn’t he? He turned in another stellar regular season performance last night to earn the Capitals another crucial 2 regular season points. A lot of people had questions about whether or not Theodore would ever be a truly elite goaltender in the regular season (when it matters), and he is proving those doubters wrong with his clutch regular season play. No doubt about it: The Caps are definitely set in goal for a very long regular season run.
Yeah, sure, I’m a little bitter. Sure, I had my first “remote throw across the room” in front of our new third roommate (welcome to the club, buddy! I take things too seriously!), but honestly, I’m so frickin’ numb to seeing the Capitals score against the Pens at this point that any time they let a shot go, it either goes in and I make a “Whatever” W with my hands, or it somehow doesn’t go in and I party for three hours (I do this on every shot).
Could there have been ANYTHING more certain than the Pens blowing that 2-1 lead in the third? I considered renting a supersonic Lear Jet from a Lear Jet rental agency (those exist right?) and hurrying to Vegas faster than the speed of sound during the second intermission in the hopes that I might possibly get to a casino in time to put my life savings on the Pens blowing that third period lead. Damn — if I’d managed to get that $460 on the Pens blowing that lead, with the 1-to-80,000,000,000 odds of it happening, I would have like, $460 and a fraction of a cent right now! Eh, hindsight’s always twenty-twenty.
Complaining along…
Thursday after the NHL Trade Deadline: The day every hockey site on the internet issues their Deadline “Winners and Losers” or “Deadline Report Cards,” always qualifying the lists with the standard admission “We won’t really know who the real winners are for months or years to come…” but proceeding with the gimmicky analysis nonetheless.
It’s true that some of the trades can’t be definitively analyzed the day after they occur, and the majority of the trades are too inconsequential to even merit either team being dubbed a “winner” or “loser”, but who wants to read a level-headed, non-kneejerk, middle-of-the-road writeup about a bunch of third-line wingers getting traded for draft picks? The answer is that no one [effing] does.
That’s why, instead of backing down from a Deadline Winners/Losers column, I’m taking an even more extreme step and naming my Trade Deadline GOLDEN GODS and WORTHLESS PIECES OF CRAP, i.e., teams that will definitely win the Cup because of their deadline pickups versus teams that will plunge into a ten-year pall of defeat because of their actions at the deadline. NO IN-BETWEENS. Let’s get started.
GOLDEN GODS:
Phoenix – Added F Wojtek Wolski, F Lee Stempniak, D Mathieu Schneider, D Derek Morris, F Alexandre Picard, G Miika Wiikman, F Petteri Nokelainen
So many dudes!!! Wojtek Wolski is a top-tier talent with 30-goal potential who needs a change of scenery, and Derek Morris and Mathieu Schneider are required to get dealt at every trade deadline, so they should bring some solid having-been-traded experience to the Coyotes’ blue line! Phoenix is our first GOLDEN GOD and is now the favorite for the Stanley Cup.
Pittsburgh – Added F Alexei Ponikarovsky, D Jordan Leopold
Awwwww yeahhhhh Alexei Ponikarovsky’s name has been said a lot the last few weeks and now the Pens got him and also they got Jordan Leopold so OUTTA THE WAY conference this team is a DEADLINE GOLDEN GOD and are now the favorite for the Stanley Cup!!!
Anaheim – Added D Lubomir Visnovsky, D Aaron Ward, G Joey MacDonald, G Curtis McElhinney
Lubomir Visnovsky is a legit veteran power play specialist who can take the reigns from Scott Niedermayer when he retires, and Aaron Ward is veteran veteran veteran Cup! Two more goalies and moving Vesa Toskala’s contract? The stuff of GOLDEN GODS. Anaheim has just won the Stanley Cup.
Let’s start an unsubstantiated trade rumor! How about…
Caps Get: G Tomas Vokoun
Panthers Get: F Tomas Fleischmann, First Round Pick, and G Jose Theodore
Eh? Make any sense?
The Capitals get the legit goalie they need for a Cup run this year and for the 2010-11 season (and beyond, if they sign him to an extension), giving up one of their many talented forwards and a first round pick they don’t need.
The Panthers get a 25-year-old winger with 30-goal potential, plus a first round pick, for a goalie they only have under control for one more season (and if precedent means anything, who will almost assuredly not re-sign with Florida when he’s unrestricted).
Moving Jose Theodore as part of the deal would allow the Capitals to stay under the cap, plus he’s a free agent in the offseason, so Florida can let him go and will have in essence cleared the $6.3 mil they would’ve owed Vokoun in 2010-11, and they can re-sign the RFA Fleschmann for around $3 mil a year with ease.
Vokoun certainly will have his fair share of suitors this trade deadline, but almost every other contending team would have to send salary back to Florida to make the deal work (as would the Caps, but Florida would only have to pay Theodore for a month and can let him go in the offseason), and the other Eastern Conference contender most desperate for a goalie, Philly, doesn’t have a first round pick in the next draft, and they wouldn’t part with Claude Giroux, James Van Riemsdyk, or Jeff Carter for a year and a month of a $6 mil goalie.
Plus the proposed trade would involve swapping a Tomas for a Tomas, which is awesome. That clinches it: This will definitely happen.
I seem to recall making lunch Saturday afternoon, sitting in front of my television around 2 o’clock, searching the viewing guide for “Penguins vs. Canadiens”, clicking to that channel, and the next thing I remember…it was 6:00 and I was on the ground, doused in sweat, and staring up at the ceiling. Then Sunday I tried it again around noon and the same thing happened. It’s almost like…my brain is trying to not let me remember what happened?
I have two possible theories for what occurred:
1) I was molested.
2) Through inexcusably clueless defense and pedestrian goaltending, the Pens continued to allow goals at a soul-crushing rate for two more games, losing excruciating games to the far inferior Montreal Canadiens and the annoying-as-balls Washington Capitals, thus ruining my weekend in a manner my brain would prefer to intentionally black out.
You guys – I think I was molested.
Definitely gonna set my alarm for 12M to make sure I catch this one. Better keep an eye out for Peter Bondra:
It’s Sunday, right?
I rarely get strong inclinations one way or the other before a Pens game about how it’s gonna turn out, but with the way the Pens’ D has been playing and with Brent Johnson in net against a red-hot Capitals offense, the outcome of this game was painfully foreseeable. I predicted 5-2 Capitals, and was actually surprised by the briefly-competitive 6-3 result.
The Pens’ D has been chuck-the-remote bad for a couple months now and continues to trivialize the Pens’ problems on the power play, in net, and Malkin’s mediocrity (all of which have at least shown signs of possible nearby improvement). If the Pens continue playing defense the way they have been, none of these other shortcomings will matter — the Pens will continue to be a glorified Lightning, incapable of stringing together a dominant win streak and entering the playoffs as eminently vulnerable. Fortunately, I don’t think this will be the case leading up to the playoffs, but for now, it’s a painful, me-swearing-at-the-screen reality.
I’ve been a Kris Letang supporter since long before the Ryan Whitney trade, but lately, Letang’s been my go-to Penguins scapegoat; he’s been directly responsible for about a goal a game over the past month, and not just as a result of him being out of position or failing to cover someone, but in increasingly creative, pathetic ways. Against the Capitals last night, Letang got caught pinching in the Caps’ zone below the goal line while it was 5-on-5 and a tie game, lost the puck, and left Nick Johnson — a winger playing in his first ever NHL game — back on D to cover Tomas Fleischmann, resulting in an instant Fleischmann breakaway and goal. Since any further comment on this action would result in at least a dozen F-words from me, I’ll just end the paragraph now.
Elvis Has Left 