Everything is right in the world. Let’s put behind us the Olympic tournament, the three-game slide, and the trade chaos. For the next few paragraphs, let us just enjoy the Washington Capitals’ solid 3-1 win over Ryan Miller and the Buffalo Sabres. It wasn’t a barnburner or anything, but after the last few weeks we can appreciate a win that is not coincident with hypertension.
By Peter Hassett 13 years ago
[Editor’s note: Russian Machine Never Breaks is proud to announce the addition of Neil Greenberg to the fold. You might remember Neil from his excellent statistical analysis over at 5ive Hole, which he will continue to maintain. Please join us in welcoming Neil. Play nice.]
The trade deadline came and went, and while the Caps made some changes, a lot stayed the same. Most importantly: Hershey was virtually untouched. And it is probably because of this that the Caps didn’t make the “big move” most of the fans thought they would.
By 13 years ago
Hockey fans everywhere now turn their lonely eyes to the General Managers. Nearly every club in the NHL wants to make some kind of move, and the Washington Capitals are no exception. Who’s packing a bag? Who’s coming to DC? Let’s take a look!
Who's got two thumbs and an incoming rant directed at him? THIS GUY
Sportswriter and TV personality Michael Wilbon shared this opinion about Alex Ovechkin:
[He] is bordering on out of control. He’d do well to get himself under enough control to concentrate soley on leading his team to victory because that’s all Crosby seems fixed on.
This is hokum. Duh. But let’s pretend for a moment that Wilbon is right (he’s not), and figure out how he reached this decision.
Alexander Ovechkin’s recent crimes
If you’re able to discern a pattern here, you are wiser than I. Rather, I’d submit that the following: Michael Wilbon and other sports writers demonize Ovechkin and lionize Crosby because it is in their explicit interest to do so.
By Peter Hassett 13 years ago
The Hershey Bears concluded a brutal stretch of four games in five mornings/nights today, as they took on the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins at 1:00 p.m. The game, originally scheduled for 3PM, was bumped up two hours early to accommodate the Gold Medal Game between the United States and Canada.
In his first start since returning from the Russian National Team in the Olympics (and eating McDonald’s everyday), Semyon Varlamov played splendidly against the Baby Pens stopping 30 shots and thwarting three consecutive opportunities in the shootout as the Bears prevailed 2-1. After falling behind 2-0 in the shootout, clutch goals by Keith Aucoin, Alex Giroux and the previous night’s hero (more on that later) Mathieu Perreault allowed Hershey to win the shootout 3-2. Kyle Wilson scored Hershey’s lone goal of the game during regulation, despite the Bears peppering Baby Pens goalie Brad Thiessen with 33 shots. The win was Hershey’s 46th on the season.
Bruce Boudreau and Bears President Doug Yingst take in the 9-2 Beatdown (All Photos by Kyle M.)
Saturday night with Bruce Boudreau in attendence for a pregame book signing, the Hershey Bears pushed their incredible AHL Record home winning streak to 21 with a resounding 9-2 victory over the New York Islanders farm team, the Bridgeport Sound Tigers. Hershey jumped out to a 5-1 first period lead on the heels of a first period hat trick by everyone’s favorite miniature-sized-center Mathieu Perreault.
Perreault ended the night with an incredible four goals, including one on a penalty shot in the second period. Other crazy stats accumulated during the night? Prepare yourself:
Here are some reflections of the Canada and Russia game in the words of players, coaches and famous analysts back home in Russia. All quotes were translated by Fedor Fedin and pulled from interviews by “Soviet Sport,” “Sport-Express,” & “Sports Day By Day.”
Vyacheslav Bykov, Russian Head Coach:
“You can’t “order” the result. It’s a sport. We were in a situation where we met one of the best teams in the world in the quarterfinal and couldn’t win. What will be the consequence? I don’t know. I think, our successors will give a balanced grade for this. I don’t think that the decision to start Nabokov was a mistake. All the players of the Canadian team put very big pressure on us and we had to get out together. With Zhenya. [Ed. Note – Zhenya – short form of Evgeny]. […]
All teams had the same conditions and I think that now it doesn’t make any sense if we blame tournament system. It’s hard to say, did additional game against Germany help the Canadian team? Anyways, I have never seen a team who ran 60 minutes without a break. Everyone wanted to see the Crosby / Ovechkin duel. Everyone made a hullabaloo about it, but the match is the game between teams. We tried different lines but the pressure by the four Canadian lines were much higher than ours”.
By 13 years ago
Edward Fraser (left) of The Hockey News. Not a GR8 fan.
In a blog post for The Hockey News, Edward Fraser lays into Alexander Oveckin, following his recent incident with some dude with a camera:
. . . it’s [a] very disturbing turn to apparently physically assault an onlooker, no matter whether the camera-person was a fan or member of the media and no matter how he was provoked.
Fascinating stuff. You see, if an organization like RMNB (hi, Mom!) says something as asinine as, “clearly he’s become beaten down by the burden of being a superstar,” you can be sure that we’re blowing smoke up your hiney. But The Hockey News is supposed to be a respected journalistic institution. Maybe we should just give the guy with the perm and ugly necktie over there the same measure of empathy that the creepy person with the camera did not afford A.O.
What do you think of Ovechkin’s alleged simple assault, Edward Fraser’s screed, and RMNB’s lack of journalistic integrity? Please share below.
By Peter Hassett 13 years ago
Alex Ovechkin and his friends have left Vancouver by now, and surely that’s a good thing. For the greatest conglomeration of hockey talent we may ever see, Team Russia played like amateurs. The 2010 Men’s Olympic hockey tournament was a disaster for the Russians, and that comes as a surprise to many of us. But why did the Russian Machine break? (Did you really think we’d let that go?)
By Peter Hassett 13 years ago
A long time ago, before last night’s embarrassing loss to the Canadian Olympic Team and before last year’s crushing Game 7 loss to the Penguins, Alex Ovechkin was a happy, carefree individual who craved attention. He’d practically do any interview asked of him and was always happy to promote himself and the Capitals to no end. It’s safe to say that Ovechkin’s expressive play over the years has even captured the hearts of a once moribund sports town and turned Washington DC into a genuine Hockeytown.
But with peaks must come valleys. And the 2010 Vancouver Olympics was a deep chasm of awful for the Russian Machine – minus one legendary moment. What did Vancouver do though? It illustrated what can happen to a 24 year old when he carries a burden too heavy for even his broad shoulders to hold.
[Ed Note: First, RMNB taught you how to correctly pronounce the names of some of Russia’s Best Hockey Players. Second, RMNB taught you how to support the Russian National Team in Vancouver with Authentic Russian Fan Chants and Cheers. Tonight, In Russian Lessons Part III, we’re here to teach you who the most popular, active hockey players in Russia are.
With NHL Games starting at 3am or later in Russia and the KHL starting to find more and more traction, we were interested who Russians talked about and followed the most. Would it be an NHL Player? Would it be a KHL Player? We felt this post was necessary because the media coverage in Washington makes a lot of people assume Alex Ovechkin is the most revered sportsman in the country. He has a huge following – to the point where he’s been on Game Shows and in Music Videos – but you’ll be surprised by what we found today. They’re all yours Fedor.]
Okay, I bet if you had to pick one person to be the most popular hockey player in Russia, you’d pick Alex Ovechkin. This is a great guess, but it’s not 100% true. Let’s check what hockey players Russian users search for the most using the Russian Search Engine “Yandex.” It is the most used Search Engine (51% of search market) in our country.
