Photo credit: Nick Wass

Editor’s note: To get you properly revved up for the season, each member of the RMNB crew will take a longing look back at some of our favorite goals from days gone by. You can call it nostalgia or cheap summer content, but it’s really a reminder: WINTER IS COMING.

I’m the young one, so allow me to use recent history.

It was April of 2009. With the Capitals making the playoffs for the second year in a row, I decided to give this hockey thing a shot. Up until then, baseball had always been my sport.

After enjoying a couple games on TV, I got tickets to Game 2 of Eastern Conference Quarterfinals against the Rangers. 60 minutes of play later, I was hooked. Really hooked. The Caps were shut out 1-0, but the excitement, the speed, the gritty beauty of game had me. So I got tickets again. This time: Game 7, 7PM April 28.

New York opened the scoring five minutes into the game. I don’t remember who scored, but I do know how to google. It was Nik Atropov. Nearly 10 minutes later, Alex Semin knotted the game at one when his wrist shot deflected off the defenseman’s stick. The score would remain that way for another 39 minutes and 27 seconds.

Then someone decided to break the stalemate. It wasn’t Alex Ovechkin or Nicklas Backstrom –stars that even an idiot like me knew all about back then — but a 39-year-old Russian playing out the final games of his storied NHL career.

Sergei Fedorov.

The roar of sheer joy that encompassed Verizon Center was unlike anything I had experienced before. It never let up.

It was heaven. It was hockey.

Hockey returns to DC in 22 days!