Sweet Tea, Barbecue, and Bodychecks

So I’m at home chillin’, when I get an IM from my buddy The Sliding Pokecheck:

“Hey, I’ve got a couple free tickets to the game tonight–want to go?”

HELL YES I WANT TO GO!

I finished up this week’s episode of Top Gear (their African adventure), got myself cleaned up and donned the Sub-holy Vestments, grabbed the camera, and boogied out the door to the RBC.

I parked in the East Lot tonight (since the RPD has apparently decided that the free parking lots are no longer an option–and may I just say “fuck you very much” for that), so unfortunately I don’t have any good pictures of any of the scalpers. That, and they all stayed where they were supposed to tonight–mostly cos there weren’t a boatload of people in the lots yet when I got there. It was 5:00 on a Monday evening, so I knew that there would be a boatload of latecomers.

But I do have pictures, which will be posted separately.

The game itself was fun. Of course, a win is always fun–especially a win against a team like Washington that the ‘Canes have a great hate-on for–but this game had a definite fun factor going on for me from the moment Cam Ward snapped an Alex Ovechkin shot right out of the air and looked at him like “Oh HELL no!”

One interesting moment for me during the game came when Chad LaRose, irate at being shoved face-first into the ice in front of a ref (with no call made), was (correctly) called for slashing Alex Ovechkin behind the Hurricanes net. The call was the correct one. A little iffy, but correct. LaRose did slash him, and right under the nose of an official. The call was a fair cop, but oh MAN you would not have known it from the way that fans around me were bitching. C’mon people, just because you’re a fan of a team that doesn’t mean that you have to believe they can do no wrong okay?

So…yeah. The fight that broke out between Matt Bradley and Timmay was completely and totally unnecessary (not to mention absolute weak-sauce). Entertaining despite its wussitude, but still unnecessary.  Good thing Timmay didn’t hurt himself. BUT MOVING RIGHT ALONG.

When Stillman scored his third goal of the night, it was strange–it never registered right away, and then ten seconds later hats starting flying toward the ice. More than a few never made it to the glass, being tossed from the upper rows of the lower bowl and the club level, but there were a decent number. I think that if it were a hat night, there would have been a lot more out there.

OK, if there were more people there would have been a lot more out there. I am guessing that there were about 13,000 or so there tonight. The sides in the lower bowl were full, but there were more than a few rows on the north end and upstairs that were lacking in fans. Too bad, really–folks that stayed home missed a hum-dinger of a game tonight. All we needed was Chris Clark (who was out after Ovechkin about took his ear off with an errant slapper) scoring without touching the puck and Nicky Wallin own-goaling from center ice, and it would have been a serious flashback.

Just sayin’, of course.

At some point in the game, I got the following text message from d-lee:

“Caps announcers are sucking Cam’s cock.”

And I promptly went into spasms, because that gave me a horrifying mental image that I did NOT need–especially when it comes to that Brueghelian imp Craig Laughlin. Just…no. It’s like the traumatic image that somebody once gave me involving Derian Hatcher and marshmallow fluff…

…excuse me, I just self-traumatized and need to go in search of Mental Floss and Orange Clean.

Now then. The game. For some reason, people are hooked on creating a goalie controversy where there is none here. Luke, I am talking to you. What we have this season is a goalie platoon–Lavi clearly doesn’t play favorites, and neither should we. Just sayin’.

There was one call on a Capital that I didn’t agree with at the time–Donald Brashear hit Dennis Seidenberg late in the game, for which he got 5 minutes, a game misconduct, and of course automatic review. It wasn’t until later that I realized why he got all that: it was a high hit that caught Seids in the dome.

If anything comes of it, I’ll be surprised. But at least it’s a token attempt to start taking hits to the head seriously. It’s a start.

At one point during the game, I met Charlie and Katherine, a pair of fraternal twins that sat next to me at the Deck. Katherine comes to games all the time, but Charlie is a new fan–he picked a heck of a game to come to, and I think he’s hooked because he’s decided that he’s going to get season tickets next season and stop spending all his money on the Panthers (the futbol team, not the hockey team). Halfway through the third period, Katherine very generously bought me a small Widman’s Hefeweizen–and it was damn good. Not as good as a Leinie’s Sunset Wheat, but still damn good. Katherine, if you’re reading this: thank you, and I hope I get the opportunity to repay you soon.

As the clock ticked down in the third, TSP and I started getting silly–she pointed out that the piping around the shoulders of the Hurricanes’ unis this season is very “Battlestar Galactica”. I started to say “No it’s not”–and then I remembered that she was talking about the old-school BSG. I was wondering if that means that Ovechkin is a Cylon who has one red eye that moves back and forth (which would explain why he wasn’t hitting anything tonight), and then I read the following quip from Luke DeCock:

The Capitals were already missing captain Chris Clark after he took an Ovechkin shot in the head, severing the top of his ear. They almost lost Matt Pettinger when he took an Ovechkin slap shot in the face in the second period but appeared to have been saved by his visor.
Which says one of two things: Either Ovechkin needs to get his sights dialed in (he attempted 11 shots Monday and only got five on net) or his sights are dialed in and he’s angry at his teammates.

I think the question’s been answered: he’s an old-school Centurion. Just sayin’.

And on that note, I’m off to bed. Scalper-shots will be posted on the morrow.