[Gameday Preview]The Caps welcome Jaromir Jagr and the Broadway Blueshirts to the MCI tonight as the hosts look to stop a season-high five-game losing streak that has largely coincided with a goal-scoring drought by Alexander Ovechkin. Tarik el-Bashir did all of his homework for Saturday on Thursday night so he could go out Friday night and party (see this article from yesterday previewing tonight's game and this article from today's paper, taken directly from the AP), but I neglected to link to this graphic yesterday which, for those of you who are better visual learners, depicts how much J.J. stunk (relatively speaking) when he was in Washington. Of course one cannot quantify locker room cancerousness (it's a word), so we'll have to go from painful memory on that one.
Unlike his cross-town cohort, Dave Fay did not get his work done ahead of time, and had to stay in last night (his mother is stern, but he'll thank her for it later) to write this piece.
In other Caps news, the team sent Jakub Klepis back to Hershey and will call up someone today, likely Graham Mink, to take his spot. Mink is second (to Eric Fehr) in scoring for the Bears and leads the team in goals with 14 goals and 7 assists in 22 games.
Daily Awards
- Hart: Mike Modano (2G, +1, game-winning shootout goal)
- Ross: Patrick Marleau (3A)
- Norris: Zdeno Chara (A, +2, 27 PIMs)
- Vezina: John Grahame (34 saves on 36 shots against in shootout W)
- Richard: Mike Modano, Jonathan Cheechoo, Dany Heatley (2G each)
- Calder: Grant Stevenson (GWG, A, +2)
- Aiken: Mika Noronen (L, 4 goals against on 11 shots in 11:26 before getting the hook)
1 comment:
Jagr, (and soon Ovechkin), suffered the fate of all potential Caps superstars: Hockey has no foothold in the demographics. It had a better imprint when played in Landover (drawing from suburban DC and the western Chesapeake Bay folks) but lost many of those fans when moving to the city.
It certainly doesn't help that the two "PTI" columnists are extremely hoops-oriented, even though Wilbon played some puck in his youth in Chi-town. Same goes for sports radio, which, aside from Al Koken, has no hockey backers.
I've since moved South where puck is very big (Tampa) and is up with football. The sports columnists write knowledgably about the game, and sports radio covers it fairly and intelligently.
Hard to imagine the Caps selling out the same day (and time) as a home Skins game. That just happened here in Tampa a week ago.
Jagr would be equally big here as he was in the 'burgh, where the fan demographic was fairly similar. But, we're happy with Vinny for now...
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