[Ed note: Hockey Hemingway Jason Rogers is back for you to love and adore. Talk to him via the Tweetaz at @HeyJayJRogers. Any and all credit goes to the PuckBuddys.]
Andy Warhol Says*: Everywhere you look, you see Pittsburgh fans. In Andy’s view, “…it’s all so beautiful.” Of course, he was hopped up on horse tranqs.
But this is Pittsburgh. And at the first insinuation of bandwagon chasing, they all claim family ties to the city. First of all, you cannot all be from there. It is just not a big enough city for every Yuengling-guzzling bar rat to crawl back to. And even if they did all somehow come from Pittsburgh, you know why they’re here now? Because they got the hell out of Pittsburgh as soon as they could. There’s even a website devoted to the phenomenon. And so with the sacred camaraderie of refugees from a land not worth returning to, the Penguins wander about the NHL landscape. On Tuesday the Capitals take the fight to them, and you can bet they’ve had their road Whites mustard-proofed.
The Morning Skate:
Besides giving you an occasion to air out your novelty #87 custom Capitals jersey with the name CRSBYSX, this game will be a barometer for the rest of the Caps’ season. [Nerd Alert!] Are the Penguins relatively on fire? Yes. Are the Capitals relatively on Hoth? You betcha. But the Caps need to win about 75% of their remaining games to make the playoffs, and like those valiant infantrymen of the Rebel Alliance, the Caps can’t expect every battle to be against hapless storm troopers or to get help from the Wampa-like Erskine.
Anyone can beat up on Florida. Hell, even the Supreme Court did it in 2000.(Look it up, noobs!) But Washington will have to beat the good teams, too. If the Caps want to be counted among the best eight teams in the conference come May, they’ll have to blaze a winning trail through cities like Pittsburgh, Montreal, and Boston. That trail will then be cordoned off and burned to prevent cross-contamination.
Secondly, the Caps could use a gut check to find out how bad they want it. Like mayonnaise left in the sun, the Capitals have a problem with consistency. Let’s start from the net out. Like a talented escort with low self-esteem, Braden Holtby can do remarkable things with this hands and legs, but lets in a lot of softies too. He keeps them in a lot games they don’t deserve, but has a bad habit of spotting opponents an easy goal or two in otherwise winnable games.
Holtby makes a lot of saves he shouldn’t, but not enough that he should. Add that to the streaky-deeky of crucial role players like Marcus Johansson and Mathieu Perreault and the Capitals’ odds of making the playoffs start to look like a random number generator. A random number generator that only cycles between “SLIM” and “NIL.” [Fake Ed Note: Slim just left town.] There are guys that contribute night-in and night-out, guys like Mike Ribeiro, Troy “Manimal” Brouwer and –yes—Alex Ovechkin. But with such a dearth of true talent, the Capitals need the rest of their roster to overachieve. Now is when we start to see how long this team really wants to keep playing.
And with that dazzling analysis complete, we now turn to the segment UNESCO designated a World Heritage site:
Liable to Libel: A Baker’s Dozen Lies About Today’s Opponent:
The Puck Drop:
So that about does it. Puck drop is 7:30 in the Steel City. See you there, and Go Caps.
*Ed note: We really don’t really think Holtby is that remarkable with his hand and legs…or if we do, we’ll just not discuss it.
*”Don’t pay attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.” — Andy Warhol.
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