Look Ma! No Hands!

Any time the Caps can go into Philadelphia and leave with two points, you can color me a happy camper. Or green. I would be okay with being colored green. It's a nice color.

While you're coloring things, go ahead and pull out your red crayon red, as in "red hot". Don't look now, but Alex Ovechkin has eight points in his last four games. That's a lot of points. He also seems to have regained whatever elusive quality it is that made him so much fun to watch last year. He is finally back to the point where it seems that every night he does something that makes me slap my forehead and drop my jaw in disbelief. Tonight, his beautiful pirouette goal was just another instance of just such an occurance.

The most entertaining part of the evening for me, though, was Chris Clark's dogged insistance on using his hand instead of his stick. First, there was the excellent breakout pass to spring Ovechkin for what would have been an excellent scoring chance, then there was the washed out goal. Neither time was there even any question as to whether or not it would be called back. All things considered, though, it's better than his old plan of trying to advance the puck using his mouth.

On a completely unrelated note, it struck me, as I was watching this game, that I can't remember the last time I threw a sock at my television screen in response to something Steve Eminger did on the ice. This can only mean good things for Steve. Though to be fair, I haven't had much occasion for sock throwing at all in the past six games.

Now it's on to rivalry week, with Monday night's marquee matchup between Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Washington Capitals, followeed by Round II of the heavyweight bout that is Atlanta vs. Washington next Friday. (I'm hoping to get some other bloggers together to watch this game as a group. Check back here for details. Or to watch me fail miserably at trying to be organized. 'Tis not generally my thing.)

(EDITOR'S NOTE: I would like to extend my apologies to my internet connection, which I unfairly accused of being a bandwagon Caps fan, only allowing me to get online after Caps wins. As it turns out, it is actually completely useless either way. In fact, it will be a miracle if I ever manage to get this post up. So, you know, screw you Verizon.)

Recaps From People That Matter:
-A View From The Cheap Seats
-On Frozen Blog
-The Peerless Prognosticator
-Puckhead's Thoughts
-Ovechkin-Kolzig '08