Happy holidays, Caps people. The Capitals are in New York today to beat the Rangers on Madison Square Garden ice. Our own Pat Holden will be in attendance. Last time an RMNB human was at MSG, this happened. Today must go better, but the Caps are gonna have to right their 5v5 ship for that to happen.
Enjoy both of the hours of sunlight you’ll have before puck drop at 7 PM. Tune into CSN with us, won’t you?
| Team | Record | Possession | PDO | Power Play | Penalty Kill |
| Washington Capitals | 23-6-2 | 51.4% | 101.6 | 25.0% | 84.1% |
| New York Rangers | 19-11-0 | 47.3% | 103.0 | 21.7% | 83.0% |
Projected Lineup
No morning skate. Let’s just guess. Here goes:
Ovechkin – Backstrom – Oshie
Johansson – Kuznetsov – Williams
Chimera – Beagle – Wilson
Laich – Latta – Burakovsky
Schmidt – Carlson
Alzner – Niskanen
Orlov – Chorney
Holtby
And Miles to Go Before I Sleep
Here’s a poem for tomorrow’s winter solstice. From Robert Frost:
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
I like this poem because it’s beautiful, but I also love it because it implies so much about about how we read things. There are many ways of seeing, and very few of them are big-w Wrong. That goes for poetry, that goes for Star Wars, that goes for hockey analysis, that goes for internet-based discussions about the painfully slow but all-important process of empowering more people.
Storylines
- The Caps are the best.
- But they know they have to stop relying on Braden Holtby so much. Pat wrote about this extensively in the snapshot.
- That selfsame snapshot contains this graph, which I made because you needed to see it.
- Matt Niskanen killed a man on Friday night. See it here. RIP man, but it is, after all, a hockey game.
- That whole Tampa Bay game is worth revisiting. Here’s Chris’s thrilling recap and Amanda’s lovely photos and Ian’s coverage of a new classic Ovechkin goal.
- Alex Ovechkin left practice early yesterday, but don’t panic.
- The Pittsburgh Penguins are basically where the Caps were two years ago. I recommend you follow Pensblog for their heart-rending coverage of the mess. I think we’ll all be surprised how quickly they turn it around, but Jim Rutherford has to go. Now.
- Read this Bryant Gumbel interview now. Not strictly hockey-related, but I think there are some important parallels.
Best Thing on the Internet Today
This video captures the best and worst about humanity. An abandoned dog in a cardboard box in the middle of nowhere. The same dog a few minutes later, nestled safely in a shirt, on his way to a happy new home.
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