Thursday, January 15, 2009

Pens lose to Caps

At the end of the day the Penguins let too many early chances go…Sidney Crosby had a breakaway but couldn’t score. Jordan Staal came down on a 2 on 1 and was rebuffed. On and on, so it goes.

--Rob Scuderi caught a shot in the face and was obviously out for the game. Dropping to five defensemen for the rest of the night on back to back games may not be an excuse they’ll use, but it looked like it took it’s toll.

--Hold your breath on the Crosby injury front, looked like Sid was in a lot of pain. Hopefully we’ll hear something today and it will be good news…Remember with the All-Star break the Penguins only play three games in the next 13 days.

--For the chances the Penguins failed on, the Caps seemed to put them in. There were certainly no shortage of weak calls (for both teams) to give each other’s power-plays chances to separate. Credit the Caps on this night for doing that.

--The Malkin/Ovechkin angle is fascinating. We can’t remember two players so good just going after each other so personally. It elevates both of their games too, with three combined goals on 22 shots. This could be the angle of the Olympics, how the two countrymen interact and coexist.

--You still get the feeling this team is missing that certain something, but what is it? Sergei Gonchar can do a lot of things, but playing the wing is not one of them. Ray Shero’s inactivity is starting to hurt the team. No one wants him to make a move just to make a move, but at some point he’s gotta step up to the plate and make something happen. Is it fire the coach? Is it shaking the team up with a trade? Hey we don’t have the answers, but “do nothing” seems to be the wrong one. The season is slipping away.

--Finally, eye rolls on Ted Leonsis taking swipes at the Pensblog and then follow up by tooting his own team's blogosphere for being "sophisticated". (Side note: we still can't find the page in the sophistication manual where it says you can call someone a clown?) It's doubtful he'd be crowing like this if the Penguins had won yesterday. But the Caps carried the play so give the man his day.

Still, it's the Pensblog, what do you expect? They "job" everyone all the time, themselves included. The Pensblog is like a juvenile George Carlin--it's profane, it's shocking, it's loud. Japers Rink is like a hip network news show that's always a good read. Both are excellent in their own regards, but they have different ways and different methods. There's no shortage of analytical, even-handed Penguins blogs that offered accounts of the game that Ted would have found a little more mature, but it seemed like he wanted to target the Pensblog and get off a shot while he could at an entire fanbase while he was at it. Classy indeed.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

what even happened between geno and douchevechkin?

Hooks Orpik said...

That's the great thing Molly, the cause of their falling out is unknown, and it only adds to the allure of the dislike.

There was an incident a couple summers ago where Ovechkin allegedly punched Malkin's Russian agent at a bar. Ovechkin denied the reports but Malkin later confirmed them to the American media.

It seemed to piss AO off that Geno talked about the situation pubically; but dude's got a lot of anger in him for what seems so simple a situation. I think there's got to be something deeper at the heart of this, maybe it even involves a woman (doesn't it always?)... Maybe they were always more of just general acquaintances and colleagues than actually being considered friends, but whatever happened, they went from being warm enough to being roommates at the Olympics in 2006 to now being bitter enemies in basically no time flat.

FAUX RUMORS said...

1) It has to be a woman involved to cause such deep anymosity between two former friends. It makes for a great story line for folks who aren't necessarily fans of either team

Anonymous said...

hey, caps fan here. stumbled across this site from Japer's Rink.

On the Ovie/Malkin thing, I def. think they were good friends before this falling out. They roomed together in Turin and there are numerous photos and video clips of the 2 of them talking to each other before their games and on different occasions.

I think it goes back to the agent thing. I think it was around the time Ovie fired his agent and was going to go with his mom instead. I get the feeling Malkin's agent probably said something to Ovie about letting him be his agent and that his mom couldn't handle it, and that pissed off Ovie.

And as we all know, Ovie is a very emotional and loyal guy. So he was probably offended that Malkin didn't stick up for him to his agent the way that Ovie thought he should have. Then Ovie thought Malkin didn't have his back and the friendship started to grow cold.

I don't think it is about a girl because Ovie seems to be seen with a lot of different girls and he has been happy with his current g/f Ms. Russia. And also, hasn't Malkin had a girlfriend for years or for a long time now?