Devils vs. Capitals, 02/29/08

It’s a cold, stormy Friday night, and we’re every which kind of annoyed at these stupid 7:00 starts, because we both wanted to take long naps this evening, and we find ourselves now awake and in front of our TV about a half an hour earlier than we wanted to be. For the Caps. If the Devils don’t play better than they did last time these two teams met, it’s not going to be pretty.

Our broadcast kicks off with a Salvador highlight extravaganza. Pookie perks up out of her rant about how abused she is by her coworkers and their passive-aggressive approach to working Saturdays to chirp, “Iron Boar!” Doc and Chico don’t call him that. We’re crushed.

Also: it’s Rupper’s 200th game as a Devil. No way.

FIRST PERIOD

20:00 We have a Salvador sighting! A savior is about to ascend! Or… something.

18:25 The Madden line spends their first shift in the Caps zone. That is more offensive-zone possession than the Devils had in their last two games combined.

17:50 Huet makes a stop on a nice rush by Patty, and Boomer sits down just as Doc is calling the play. “I guess Doc and Chico aren’t buying this ‘Hewitt’ thing,” she snarks about Tuesday’s announcement that Huet was Americanizing the pronunciation of his name.

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Devils @ Capitals, 02/24/08

Yesterday saw the Devils do the absolutely unthinkable and beat the Islanders – we never thought we’d see the day, Gentle Reader. But they put together a good first period, managed not to piss away the entire game in one lousy second period, and then dominated in the third. Can they carry this vigor over now against the Capitals? It’s really hard to imagine emerging from a back-to-back matinees weekend (against the Islanders and Caps, no less) with anything resembling joy, so… we’ll see.

Since we didn’t diarize yesterday, we’d like to take a moment to point out here that we thought Patty, Zach and Madden were utterly awesome against the Islanders. Yes, we’re stating the obvious, but we’re sure the public record was wondering where we stood on that issue.

FIRST PERIOD

Today’s goalies are Johnson and Marty. We’re not sure what we think about Marty starting his gazillionth in a row. We actually think we might be ambivalent.

19:47 We get a quick icing from the Devils, and a cut to Boudreau, who is wearing a full-on Devils-colors ensemble involving a monstrously ugly paisley tie.

18:09 The Caps look like they’re not thrilled about having lost to the Canes yesterday, and throw a pretty uptempo, feisty shift in the Devils zone. It ends in an odd-man rush led by Gio down the other way. Unsurprisingly, Gio doesn’t score.

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Devils @ Capitals, 12/10/07

Okay, so last night’s Devils-Rangers game was pretty much the nadir of what Devils hockey has to offer, so we’re anticipating that tonight can only be better. Right? Right? Okay, don’t answer that. Anyway, we’re all on board with the Devils’ plan of starting a new, better winning streak, and it all starts with Weekesie. When Doc confirms that Weekes is starting tonight, Pookie says, “Thank God. I was beginning to think Sutter had completely lost his mind.”

FIRST PERIOD

Before the puck drops, Chico tells us our starting goalies are a combined 3-21-2 against their respective opponents. Well, something’s got to give!

19:09 A big rush by Gio, Zach and Patty results in Semin’s traditional hooking penalty. Doc tells us we’ve got the same officials tonight as did the Rangers game last night. Great. Because they did such a bang-up job in that one.

17:36 The Caps finally manage to clear the puck after some pretty snappy perimeter passing and some good chances in close by the power play unit; so far the Devils have had more shots and more quality scoring chances than they did in their entire last game. This looks like a team that might be a bit pissy about how anemic they were yesterday.

16:22 Building off a successful weathering of the power play, the Caps have a hard-hitting, hard-shooting shift led by an Ovechkin fueled by what Chico calls “reckless abandonment.” Weekes ends up shutting things down on an off-the-rush shot by Fleischmann.

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Devils vs. Capitals, 12/07/07

Happy Scott Stevens night, Gentle Readers! Our game broadcast this evening is kicked off with some raving about the Patty/Zach/Gio line by Doc and Chico, who decide, after considering it for a moment, that they will continue to go with calling them “The PEG Line”. Don’t worry, Gentle Reader – we’re not going to settle for that. (Not that we have some better, more clever idea in its place, but seriously, “PEG Line”? That’s just lame.)

Needless to say, the living room at stately IPB Manor is rocking with a “Scotty Stevens!” chant right now. We kind of wish the highlight reel honoring his HOF induction wasn’t quite so hits oriented, because seriously, he was so much more than that. When the feed shows us a split-screen of Scotty’s HOF speech and a pan up and down the benches while the players watch, we can’t help but crack up. Is Patty crying? Is Patty ever not crying during this kind of thing? The fans who made it to the game in time for this unconscionably early 7:00 start time do Devils fans everywhere proud with their “Thank you Scotty” chant. Nicely done, guys.

FIRST PERIOD

19:04 Sarge pounces on a Caps turnover deep in the Washington zone and tries to feed a little pass/shot toward a charging Madden, but Olie breaks it up. We’re not sure what to make of the Devils getting the first scoring chance of the night. Aren’t they supposed to be down two or three goals before they start thinking about offense?

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Sabres at Capitals, 11/26/07

So, after a little TiVo delay necessitated by dinner (once again we are undone by a 7:00 start time), we’re settling in to watch a battle between two of our erstwhile secondary teams. We know we announced at the start of this season that we were going to be following the Sabres and Capitals as ardently as Devils fans can, but the whole point of a secondary team is for it to be fun. With the Devils sucking, we really didn’t have a lot of room in our TV schedule for even more sucky teams; tonight we meet up with them a bit awkwardly, as strangers. As we fire up the TiVo, the following conversation takes place:

IPB: Stiffly “Sabres.”
Sabres: Nodding “IPB.”
IPB: Turning to the Caps “Capitals.”
Caps: Coolly “IPB.”
Tense silence

This should be fun.

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Lightning @ Capitals, 11/10/07

It’s leg three of our day, the Game Diary Marathon ’07, and has this ever been a marathon and not a sprint. The Canadiens, Senators, Islanders and Devils have done everything in their power to make us think there’s nothing good about hockey, so let’s see if the Lightning and Caps, on TiVo delay, can make things better.

Joe B. is bringing the puns on the Caps feed, cramming about 17 groan-worthy puns into the intro. When we cut from the “previous game” highlights in the intro to a vista shot of the Verizon Center, CC says, dripping sarcasm, “Ohhh. Look at all the people.”

FIRST PERIOD

19:03 Schnookie, still feeling the sting of the Devils loss, snipes when Holmqvist makes a nice shrugging save on a point-blank shot, “Oh, so we have two goalies in this game who aren’t NHL-caliber.” CC leaps over Pookie and the entire length of stately IPB Manor’s couch to claw at Schnookie’s eyes.

17:59 Ovie wipes out on his way to the net, just as we agree that we will all be disappointed by anything less than an Ovechkin hat trick tonight.

17:46 Pookie expresses her dislike for Backstrom’s hair as he steps in on a faceoff, and CC says happily, “It’s a Swedish mullet! It’s so cute!” Pookie: “Cute? I do not think that word means what you think it means.”

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Caps @ Rangers 10/12/07

Fasten your seatbelts, Gentle Reader – it’s our very first Rangers game diary of the season. So let’s go Caps. Bring the pain! Kick off our weekend with an awesome smackdown of our most hated team!

FIRST PERIOD

19:50 Ovie kicks things off by taking a penalty; based on the replay MSG shows us (accompanied by Micheletti’s helpful color commentary, “It’s Ovechkin… he comes in… it’s Ovechkin… um…”) the infraction was the always-egregious “playing the puck”. Nice job, guys in the truck.

18:20 Big slow goalies have big slow fiveholes; Gomer is left alone at the side of the net and sweeps the puck through Kolzig to give the Rangers a 1-0 lead. The intro to this game had some “the sky is falling!” action about how Jagr, Shanny and Gomer are all goalless in their first three games, and featured a graphic detailing the last time those guys had that happen. For Jagr it was in, like, ’94, Shanny, like, ’73 and Gomez? Well, he’s never scored a goal in his first three games. Do the Rangers have some slightly misguided expectations of their big free-agent pick-up?

18:10 MSG gives us a replay of what the Ovechkin penalty actually was – he slew-footed a Ranger on the opening faceoff. That’s a dumb-assed penalty, but Micheletti squawks, “That’s a slew-foot! He’s lucky he only got two!” Joe, it’s not that dumb a penalty.

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