Archive for October, 2006

Friends in High Places

October 16, 2006

Some media types from NASA-TV were at the Capitals practice at Verizon Center today. Expedition 14 Flight Engineer and Soyuz Commander Mikhail Tyurin, a Russian Cosmonaut, is quite a fan of Washington’s Alex Ovechkin. Tyurin graduated from the Moscow Aviation Institute in 1984 (the year before Ovechkin’s birth) with a degree in engineering and a [...]

Wild Night

October 13, 2006

It was far from the best hockey game I’ve ever witnessed, but getting a point in a road game against the Minnesota Wild qualifies as a Good Thing (hold the Fine Young Cannibals please and thanks) at this stage of the Washington Capitals rebuild/growth cycle. Brent Johnson was tremendous in goal and Brian Sutherby was [...]

32 Years of Caps Hockey

October 10, 2006

Cue the Flintstones’ Happy Anniversary Quartet: it was 32 years ago today, on Oct. 9, 1974 that the Washington Capitals played the first game in franchise history, a 6-3 loss to the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden.
Jim Hrycuik netted the first goal in team history; Greg Joly and Denis Dupere collected the [...]

Might As Well Jump

October 6, 2006

I spent most of my formative years in Chicago, where the local NFL team was more or less revered year round, regardless of how good or bad they were. When I arrived in these parts some years ago, I noted that area pigskin followers (read: Redskins fans) were a completely different lot. From my dealings [...]

J.J. Gets the “C” in NY

October 5, 2006

I’m watching the Caps and Rangers in pregame warm-ups right now. There is no letter on Jaromir Jagr’s sweater, not yet anyway. But he’s likely to pull on a sweater with the captain’s “C” on it before the player introductions and opening faceoff tonight.
For the Capitals, Dainius Zubrus and Brian Sutherby are sporting the alternate [...]

Opening Night

October 5, 2006

Taking the train from DC to New York yesterday, you could see the trees getting tinged with gold as we got farther north. With every mile the weather was getting more conducive to hockey. Train travel was the only mode of NHL transportation back in the days of the Original Six, and you can’t help [...]