After the suspension, Ovi said, nope, not gonna play. No All-Star Game for me.

People are calling him a jerk and a poor sport, and far worse names, as sports commenters will.

Sorry, in the sense that I’m totally not sorry. I happen to think he’s absolutely right.

Yes, I am a lifelong Washington Capitals fan. I am not, however, a blinded Ovechkin supporter. I think his play has been lax for the hype and salary he commands, and I’m not always thrilled with his attitude. I also loved Bruce Boudreau for absolutely no reason other than that he is Bruce Boudreau, emeffers. I think his dismissal from the team was probably due in some way to Ovi’s star power, and I think it was stupid.

But I’ve watched the Michalek hit multiple times, and I don’t think it was suspension worthy.

(I have no data to confirm any of the above hit or coach-firing analysis. I could be completely wrong, but I am not in my own mind. And if you think I am, I don’t care. What do I look like, a hockey scientist? I’m just your average irrational fan.)

My Ovi-cynicism aside, it’s just clear after the past few years that he is a big-name fall guy for enforcers in the NHL. He is a fall guy for the same league that shills him endlessly as one of its superstars. This includes a mostly manufactured rivalry with Sidney Crosby, an admittedly outstanding hockey player who unfortunately can’t even play due to concussion symptoms that are 0bviously serious enough to keep him out of action for more than  a year now.

In Ovi’s interview when he discussed his decision not to play, I actually sort of believed him when he said that he was afraid this reaction to his physical play was going to follow him his whole career. He’s going to keep getting called out for the way he plays hockey — a way he plays hockey that makes him the big name, occasional magic goal player he is. Happy birthday, Gary Bettman, am I right?

So in this case, unlike many others? I say hey, Ovi, refuse to play. Check yourself, if the NHL’s going to. If Tim Tool Time Thomas can embarrass himself by refusing to visit with the president of the United States and people defend him for that? You skip the All-Star game, baby. Rest up. We need you more in the playoffs.

The Anaheim Ducks. Seriously? Okay. The Ducks (the DUCKS. From ANAHEIM.) have won a cup. The Washington Capitals, Ovi and all, have not.

I don’t want to talk about it, and I don’t especially want to talk about how I feel about a good coach being bounced when a team of highly-paid, allegedly talented hockey players made like the Ice Capades for the past seven games. And let’s not even discuss last year’s playoffs. Or the year before. However, I will share my best-worst favorite Gabby/Ovi quote from the past few days, courtesy of Tarik El-Bashir, who covers the crap out of this team for the Washington Post:

“He called me [Monday] and I didn’t feel like talking,” Boudreau said. “I answered the phone [Tuesday] and he said he really enjoyed working with me. I said, ‘You, Alex, I loved every minute of it.’ ”

As a lifer Caps fan, I would love to see the team win a Stanley Cup. And it’s nice to welcome Dale back. He was here through some lean years and when things got better. He’s a scrapper and I dig that.

But Bruce? Bruce is a cool guy. He came in at a bad time and made things better. He dealt with a roster of hyped people who ended up not producing. He clearly tried a number of approaches with no kind of momentum, especially not at playoff time. He made some fun commercials. He became a DC sports icon in much less time than it usually takes around here, in this crazy, transient city, this so-called “hockey town” that doesn’t know what it means to root down for a hockey team over time.

And as much as I’ll always want a Cup here, as much as I hope Dale Hunter is the guy to get us there? I’m still not so sure I like how it happened.

Washington Capitals GM George McPhee fired Bruce Boudreau today, following the latest ridiculous loss to the Buffalo Sabres, the latest of seven in the last 11 games. The successes of Boudreau’s four years as the coach — a Winter Classic win, highly successful regular seasons, emergence as a popular, well-known coach in a city known for the opposite — were washed away in a situation where good players just could not seem to win.

I’m looking at you, Ovechkin.

(It actually just occurred to me: if you want your coach to get fired do you suck especially hard in a game against a team like Buffalo, with nine injured players, including Ryan Miller? Do you? DO YOU?)

Conspiracy theories saved for later.

Caps veteran, former team captain, owner of the retired number 32 jersey that hangs from the Verizon Center rafters, and minor league coach Dale Hunter is on deck, coming off a winning ten-year run with the OHL’s London Knights. From what the reports say, he’s a hard worker who expects the same, and hopefully that bodes well for getting some of these guys to defend and score who haven’t seemed to be able to make that happen lately.

All problems aside, Bruce will be missed in DC, and by me. Here’s hoping he shows up somewhere where the team is ready for him. As for the Capitals, for a certain lifer fan who may be typing this right now, whatever it takes to get to the Cup is okay, and I have a good feeling about someone with a strong connection to the history of the team and a successful run as a player and a coach. Hunter will debut tomorrow night in a home game against the St. Louis Blues. I guess Ovi will still be captain, which, well, okay. Whatever.

Welcome home, Dale. Let’s get it done.

DC Sports Bog has a nice roundup of some of the finest moments of the Boudreau era.

CSN Washington has a roundup of videos from the Hunter years in Washington.

Check out the video tribute from Max Duchaine over on Russian Machine Never Breaks.

You can also follow Laurie’s Rock the Red hockey list for updates on the Washington Capitals from a bunch of people who pay very close attention. DistrictSports Caps is at the Caps’ practice facility right now and is a good bet for all-day coverage.

Tarik El-Bashir has a Hunter update and many more links to Caps coverage.

So sayeth a large group of bullies on the Neepawa Natives, a team in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League. The captain and three assistant captains of the team wanted to “rate on the ability to endure trial”, by making rookies participate in sexy dance-offs which included stripping. Because he did not score well in the dance-off, the 15-year-old boy had to undergo another ritual — which the team referred to as “Tug” — in which he was held down while a water bottle carrier, loaded with bottles and towels, was tied to his scrotum with a string.

The league hit the team with a $5000 fine and suspended the offending players (16 in all) from anywhere from 1-5 games.

However, when the water bottle incident became public, the 15 year old was forced to apologize to his teammates and was told by his coaches to “take some time off” from playing.

The victim has currently missed 7 games, 2 more games than the maximum suspension for the offenders.

How is that fair?

The Neepawa Natives coach, Bryant Perrier doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass, given his very flip and defensive comments. He refused to talk about the investigation, but said the following:

“The league’s done the investigation, the people have been interviewed, the players have been interviewed, everything’s been done,” Perrier told The Canadian Press. ”They did an investigation. You want to do a second investigation? This isn’t the O.J. Simpson trial.”

The hockey league suspended Perrier for two games, not because he took part, but because it was his responsibility to know what was happening.

“I know you want news, but people got to be careful here, because there’s lawyers being hired right in the process, so if something gets said that’s not correct, we’re just telling people, like, there’s going to be legalities in place,” Perrier said. ”If people want to dig around, they’ve got to be careful because if people start digging too much and they start making up false accusations, then it’s defamation of character.”

Maybe he will round up people who are making false accusations and tie water bottles to their scrotes.

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A) Yell that your grandma plays better hockey from her wheelchair with her guide dog.

B) Yell that they should replace said player with the team mascot for maximum effectiveness.

C) Yell that you, as a mid-level manager at a dog food supply company could play better (insert position here) than said player.

D) Throw a banana at said player, who happens to be black.

If you chose D, like the douche who threw a banana at Philadelphia Flyer Wayne Simmonds (one of the few black players in the NHL), I should like you to consider the following.

Douchey McKKK is admitting to throwing the banana, but is flummoxed at why people would think it’s racist. His lawyer adds that, if anything, Christopher Moorehouse wishes he’d chosen another fruit:

He was horrified when he saw the implications a day later as to how it had come out, and he said to me, ‘If I had an apple or an orange, I would have thrown that out onto the ice. I did not realize the significance. This is a young guy who’s guilty, if anything, of an act of stupidity.

Um. I don’t know. It might be racist because you threw a BANANA at a BLACK guy. This is not a complicated algorithm. So yes, Christopher Moorehouse. When you premeditated your offense by bringing a banana to a hockey arena to throw it at one of the few black players in the league, you can rest assured that what you are doing is, indeed, racist.

You can also cease acting shocked that everyone else thinks so, too.

At least Simmonds got the goal.

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Despite the substantial air travel of professional hockey teams, our sport has been spared from tragic traffic accidents. But only until now. This is the darkest day in the history of our sport. This is not only a Russian tragedy, the Lokomotiv roster included players and coaches from ten nations.

The staff of this website agrees, and before we recount the news, let us state our deep sadness at the loss of life, including almost the entire Lokomotiv KHL hockey club, their coaches and the plane’s crew, when their charter plane crashed just two kilometers after takeoff from Yaroslavl, Russia. Survivors were a crew member and player Alexander Galimov, who is reportedly in critical condition with burns over 80 percent of his body.

It was also (almost unbelievably) reported later in the day that the mother of Lokomotiv player Sergei Ostapchuk died of a heart attack when she heard the news.

The Russian jet was on its way to Belarus. Many reports stated that the team wanted to travel together to celebrate the start of a new KHL season.

Of course they did. Hockey is a deeply fraternal, as well as international, sport. Most true fans can tell you that this feeling transfers from the teams all over the world who play to those of us in hockey-playing countries who invest such emotion, support and pride in our local, regional and national teams.

On board were Olympic team captains and several previous NHL competitors,  journeymen and Stanley Cup winners, guys who came back to the KHL after lengthy careers in the U.S., and teenaged prospects who may have ended up our brightest stars and fan favorites (or gleefully disliked rivals) here in a year or two. NHL vets on board were Ruslan Salei, Karlis Skrastins, Karel Rachunek, Josef Vasicek, Alexander Karpovtsev, Igor Korolev and all-star Pavol Demitra.  Lokomotiv’s new head coach, Brad McCrimmon, played for the Detroit Red Wings and Philadelphia Flyers, and was captain of the Calgary Flames when they won the 1989 Stanley Cup.

Luke Decock covers the Carolina Hurricanes for the Charlotte Observer, including Vasicek when he was with the team for several years, including the 2006 Stanley Cup-winning season:

Vasicek, who died in the plane crash Wednesday that claimed his entire Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team only five days short of his 31st birthday, was unfailingly cheerful, a good guy by the standards of the game of hockey and the game of life.

When I went to Europe during the lockout, Vasicek told me to swing by Havlickuv Brod if I made it to the Czech Republic. I never got that far. I figured I’d get there eventually, and Big Joe would be waiting there when I did. I cannot comprehend that he won’t be.

When hockey loses any of its own, it somehow feels like we all lose them together. It’s that kind of sport. Maybe it’s that community spirit that can makes its rivalries so crazy and its bonds so deep.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said in a news release:

Though it occurred thousands of miles away from our home arenas, this tragedy represents a catastrophic loss to the hockey world — including the NHL family, which lost so many fathers, sons, teammates and friends who at one time excelled in our League.

Again, our deepest condolences to the families, friends and hometown fans of the Lokomotiv of the Kontinental Hockey League. What happened to your guys yesterday was a crying shame.

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Image: IIHF

The plane was transporting members of the Lokomotiv hockey team to Minsk, the capital of Belarus, where they were scheduled to play this week. Several former NHL players play for Lokomotiv, including all-star Pavol Demitra.  It’s not known yet whether Demitra was on board the plane.

Image credit: www.khl.ru

Hi. I’m Canadian. That means I’m morally obligated to love hockey, unless I want to be exiled, eh? Sadly, this love didn’t come to me until I was 13.

On October 4, 1991, I attended my first Vancouver Canucks game. That was also the San Jose Shark’s very first game – I still have my puck like the one above. My grandfather had four tickets, but they were not together. I sat with my dad for the first and second periods in the lower bowl while my brother sat with Grandpa in the upper seats; we switched for the third period.

It was unlike anything I had experienced in my life. Attending a game is not even remotely close to watching it on television. The atmosphere and excitement is electric. (Although, to be fair, I still find it somewhat difficult to follow along without the play-by-play.) The sights and sounds are overwhelming – well, at least for a 13-year old from the sticks they were.

I’ve been a Canucks fan ever since, and support the local hockey club whenever possible. I haven’t been to a Canucks game since I was 19 (14 long years ago), but I’d probably have to sell a kidney AND my liver to get good tickets now. Because of the family I’ve gotten myself into, I will also cheer for the Habs, but not when they’re playing Vancouver, obviously. And when it comes to the playoffs, if my team is practicing their golf swings, I’ll cheer for whichever Canadian teams are left.

I don’t know a lot about hockey: I just know that I love it, and that’s good enough for me.

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]]> http://www.draftdaysuit.com/2011/09/06/the-game-that-changed-my-life/feed/ 4 http://www.draftdaysuit.com/2011/09/02/hockey-and-the-lack-of-it-which-shall-surely-make-me-go-slightly-left-of-insane-or-right-of-insane-or-maybe-smack-dab-in-the-middle/ http://www.draftdaysuit.com/2011/09/02/hockey-and-the-lack-of-it-which-shall-surely-make-me-go-slightly-left-of-insane-or-right-of-insane-or-maybe-smack-dab-in-the-middle/#comments Fri, 02 Sep 2011 13:38:51 +0000 flutter http://www.draftdaysuit.com/?p=8698 I love hockey. You may have gleaned that by my utter lack of writing about anything else except for hockey. Oh, and Brett Favre. But, mostly hockey.

Right now, there is no hockey and that gives my heart a sad and makes me more than just slightly unbearable in daily conversation. So, when my husband-to-be-I-completely-hate-the-word-fiance and I bought our season tickets this year, we were stoked to hear about open house. You get to go and have pretty much free run of the arena, find your seats for the season and make an ass out of yourself in the same place your beloved team plays your favorite game.

Since we are super high- falutin’ we sit here, where noses bleed. The players can still hear me yell.

I am slightly concerned, now that I am a full-fledged season ticket holder that when I talk crap, they will totally know where to find me. Since I was wearing totally ridiculous shoes and had already tripped 7 times while finding our seats, the only logical thing seemed to go walk around on the ice….before they put ice on it.

Nothing says high quality journalism like handing your significant other the camera and hoping for the best. Here I am, blurrily in the sin bin, voicing a protest. Or, having a convulsion.

Also, yes. I wear sequins to the hockey arena. Suck it.

4th line for life, yo! Here we are riding the bench and me almost being inappropriate with my hands.

I am always impressed with line changes, how players make them look so totally effortless. So I asked him, I asked,  “hey, let’s do a line change, won’t that be fun?” To which he promptly replied, “yeah, why don’t you fall directly on your face? Won’t that be great?” Also, no. I don’t know what’s going on with my hair in that photo, it was very rude of you to ask.

Jeeves, be a fine chap and get me a scotch, would you?

On our way through the player’s tunnel and into the home locker room, we passed the immensely fancy Toyota Club lounge. Which, strikes me funny because to afford the tickets that allow you into the lounge you would have enough money to drive something a wee more high-end than a Toyota. I mean, I drive a Toyota. My happy ass is not sitting in that lounge. The inequity. It burns.

Missing Stanley.

Our trophy case. *le sigh*

Wow. My livingroom> this player’s lounge.

Now, I am almost entirely certain that there is more to the player’s lounge than these rockin’ 80′s couches and the enormous TV that isn’t pictured here. Because, this looks pretty stingy.

I should work here. Partially because I am a kick-ass massage therapist and partially because there are naked hockey asses on these tables.

Because of my profession, I was actually super excited to see this room. I literally said “oooooo” at all of those beautiful supplies. These guys are incredibly well taken care of.

Compete like a champion and STILL get swept in the first round!

Inside the workout facility, ponytail lady is stealing Coyotes water. Have some class, people! All I did was rub my ass on the recumbent bike. Let my decorum be your guide.

Keith Yandle #3. He has touched this. I may need a moment to myself.

My boyfriend hangs his stick here. Take that however you’d like.

As we exited the Coyotes locker room and facilities, we sneaked back across the iceless ice, to the visitor’s facilities. Apparently, we were not supposed to be there.

Gary B Bettman, president of EARTH denies you access to these areas. We went in anyway.

However, our rebellion was short lived as a man in a very white polo with a very stern expression gave us the stink eye until we felt self conscious. Then, our transgression adequately reprimanded, we left.

But now, I want hockey. I want it so bad I can taste it (it’s really salty). I have lost all interest in football, and all I can think of is putting on my gear and losing my voice at a game. I want the excuse to wear the cutest pom-pom hat known to man, to eat hot pretzels with loads of salt and to watch athletes who are not only physically amazing, but who play for love of the game.

Come on, hockey! Hurry up!

Belak, a Saskatchewan native, was found dead in his Toronto condominium.

Belak retired from the NHL after release from the Nashville Predators in February. The Preds had the following statement:

“The entire Nashville Predators organization and family is shocked and saddened by the sudden and untimely passing of Wade Belak. Wade was a beloved member of the organization, a terrific teammate and wonderful father and husband who will be greatly missed. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife Jennifer and children Andie and Alex. We offer our full support to them at this very difficult time.”

Belak’s cause of death has not been confirmed.

He is the third NHL player to die in this sad off-season. Former Canuck Rick Rypien died of suicide in August, and New York Rangers enforcer Derek Boogaard died of an alcohol and prescription drug overdose in May.

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Image: Eliot J. Schechter, Getty