I just turned on the Flyers/Caps game, and it looks like Reed was right about the crowd. They are loud, and almost all dressed in red. Pretty impressive.

And the Caps go up 1-0 as a power play was ending 3 minutes in. Maybe I'm glad I won't be able to watch much more of this.

It was the best hockey game I've been to since I saw Minnesota beat North Dakota in dramatic fashion in the WCHA final in St. Paul a few years ago.

Everyone was in red. My friend who came with me, former otfer titianblonde, said she owned nothing red, so I brought her one of my Caps shirts. I wore my 1979 Caps throwback sweater.

There was so much pent up frustration being expressed by that crowd, a fierce determination not to let another team displace us in our home building. I didn't know the Caps had that many fans, but they were all there. There were a few Flyers fans, but no more than the Senators probably could have brought and every attempt they made to cheer was immediately drowned out by C-A-P-S, Caps, Caps, Caps! or Let's Go Caps, or M-V-P. We don't have very good cheers, it must be said.

It looked pretty grim in the second period. The Caps just went to sleep and the Flyers had acres of ice to work with and went down 4-2. But whatever they talked about in the locker room worked for the Caps, because they came out on fire and got the fans back into it. The Flyers contained Ovechkin pretty well for two periods (although that opened up ice for other people like Mike Green) but he was possessed in the third. The game winning goal was unbelievable. I have had to watch the replay several times to understand it.

See here, http://scores.espn.go.com/nhl/recap?gameId=280411023
or here, http://www.nhl.tv/team/console.jsp?hlg=20072008,3,131

Their tying goal was a bit lucky. While trying to kill a penalty, the Flyer's Patrick Thoresen took Mike Green's slap shot right in the nads. Literally. The report is that he may need surgery to remove one of his testicles. So he was down on the ice while play continued and the Caps scored on their next shot. I don't think Thoresen could have stopped that goal, but it was a judgement call by the ref to not blow the whistle.

After the game we went to CapCity Brewing because my recent experience there with Scotian suggested it would probably not be too crowded. The whole walk there, lots of people in the street cheering and honking horns. In the bar, people would spontaneously start cheering for the Caps just for the hell of it. It was like DC was a real hockey town.

Clearly not the result I was hoping for, and I'm worried for the series because Biron did not look comfortable in his first ever playoff game. That being said, I'm thoroughly jealous that you went to that game. I had to go out for the night when the game was 3-2, but even at that point, it was clear that it was an excellent game and that the crowd was electric.

Yeah, hard luck 1890 on the final result but well done anyway for such a good season.

The fifth game of our series has just finished, and a 5-1 home victory brings us our fifth championship. Blues led after the first period but then got swamped in the second. Final resistance was broken some 5 minutes from time when Michal Bros raced out of the bin and put into the empty net.

There'll be pandemonium in town tonight.

I find myself thinking about the Caps for the first time since 1998 or whenever it was they made the Stanley Cup finals. Game seemed exciting, and I guess the Alexi guy is probably good. He's no Rod Langway, though.

I am totally confused about something, though. I thought the Caps were in danger of not even making the playoffs. Then I looked at the seedings and they are number 3. Can someone explain this?

As the winner of a division, the Caps were guaranteed no worse than a third seed (which they received as the division winner with fewest points). If they had lost the division, then they would have ended up tied with the 7th and 8th seed with 94 points. I'm not sure how the tie-breaker would have worked, but had they lost the division (which they won by only 1 game), they may have missed the playoffs.

Wow, so I take it the Patrick division (or whatever it's called now) sucked this year.

Very much so. Although the Caps record is misleading as to their recent quality as they've won 11 out of their last 12 (12 of 13 including last night).

Yeah, I remember at the beginning of the season they were awful.

Their success is great and all, but I must say the most exciting thing to me is the fact that they seem to have gone back to their old shirts. Those sweaters with an eagle on them were bad.

Aw, now I am getting nostalgic for the days when I used to follow the Capitals. Remember in 93 or 94 when Dale Hunter leveled that guy (Pat Lafontaine, maybe?) after he was celebrating a goal? That was awesome.

That ('93/'94) was exactly the period when I lost touch with the NHL (actually, it was from 1990-1994). I had moved to Florida and it was hard to follow hockey before the Panthers started (1993). It, oddly, took playing a ton of NHLPA '94 on the Sega Genesis in college to bring me back to the game.

But, yeah, those red sweaters are beautiful, and it's nice to have them back.

It was actually Pierre Turgeon that Hunter decked (French names--all the same!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xte-Vtxg-m8

Edit: it's pretty odd to think about how much hockey I watched back then. It truly did seem like the sport was going to break through on a national level in the early 1990s. I went to high school in rural Maryland, hardly a hockey hotbed, and suddenly NHL shirts were everywhere, and the Caps became part of our daily sports discussions.

The Patrick Division is no more. Now there are two conferences, East and West, and each has three divisions. The Caps are unfortunately in the Southeast Division with Carolina, Tampa Bay, Atlanta and Florida.
http://www.nhl.com/nhl/app?service=page&page=StandingsPage&type=CON

It's complex now that they have the shootout (retarded) and a team gets one point for an overtime or shootout loss, but winning in overtime or a shootout is worth 2 points, just like a regular win. So there are some "three-point" games. It's confusing.

The last weekend worked out such that for the Caps to get the 8th seed in the East, they needed to win their last two games and they needed either Boston or Philadelphia to lose. That didn't happen. However because the Hurricanes lost to the Panthers and then the Caps beat the Panthers, the Caps won the division and the Hurricanes are out of the playoffs. Had the Hurricanes won that game, they'd have won the division and the Caps would have missed out, I think. And yet, the Caps don't have the fewest points of teams in the East. They have 94 just like Boston and Ottawa. I'm pretty sure the Caps would have won the tie-breaker with Ottawa but not with Boston. And they have more points than anyone in the east that didn't make it, so they would have made the playoffs even without the questionable rule that gives division winners a top three seed.

Clear now?

As Gyuri points out, the Caps are the hottest team right now. The Caps have the best record in the last ten games of the year (9-1-0) and probably the best record for the last month of the season, although I can't confirm that. They went 13-4 since March 1 and have now won 8 in a row.

They were in such a tight fight to get to the playoffs because they were so terrible in the early season. In the first month or so they were the worst team in the league. They are the first team to go from 14th in the conference to make the playoffs.


I quite like the sweaters with the Eagle on them and I have one in my closet. I like the Eagle better than the current Capitals wordmark. But those black home jerseys they had with the stupid Capitol logo on them were awful.

But clearly the Red and Blue is better, especially the red sweaters.

Wait a minute. A "normal" victory gets you 2 points, but a victory in overtime gets you 3 points? Please tell me that's not true.

Edit: ok, no, I misread Reed's post.

I think what Reed means by "three-point games" is that in overtime, the winner gets 2 points and the loser gets 1 point.