Sleeksays

Here are a few photos from the Sharks 7-2 thrashing of the Washington Capitals on Saturday night. Evgeni Nabokov returned to the lineup to backup Brian Boucher, and he is expected to start Wednesday night against Chicago. More photos and notes from the game are available here , and postgame comments from the coaches are available here . Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis was kind enough to answer a lot of questions for me about technology and the NHL prior to the game here , and Offwing.com and AOL's Eric McErlain also answered a few questions for me about the Capitals here . Naturally Jody Shelley and Donald Brashear fight when I am in the tunnel going from one side of the rink to the other, but hockeyfights.com posted a video clip of the fight here . I am the first to admit I was not as positive about Shelley when he was with Columbus, but scroll through some of his fights this season on HF. He is having an incredible season, and Todd McLellan is throwing him out on a line wi...

-Can't score? Check. -Can't keep the puck out of their own zone? Check. -Takes 2 penalties, including one when the opposing team has the puck stationary behind their own net? Check. That Zeiler-Boyle-Ivanans line is terrible. Can make Derek Armstrong a coach, waive Zeiler and bring up Matt Moulson and Ted Purcell? *** The Maxi-PAD line was matched up against Ovechkin's line all night, with Dustin Brown pretty much shadowing Ovy all night. Ovechkin was getting frustrated and in the third period took it out on Dustin Brown, blindsiding Brown with a little bit of an elbow in front of the net when the puck was in the corner; unfortunately for Ovy, Brown's skate got up and clipped Ovechkin in the ear. He fell to the ice and rolled around for a little while before he got up and realized he was getting a penalty for interference. Suddenly his ear wasn't bothering him that much anymore. Exactly one minute later, Dustin Brown scored on the power play. Hilarious. ***...

LA Kings vs. Washington Bolsheviks 7:30 PST, Fox Sports West Tonight is Russian Heritage Night at Staples Center, which is a great idea because it gets all of them in one spot so we can capture them. I stopped paying attention to politics in 1989, so I don't know too much, but I do know that commies are bad and I hate them. They tried to trick me with that whole Glasnost thing, but I know what's up: Russians, having failed to take over the world economically, are now trying to take over through hockey. They've infiltrated our nation's capital, led by their furry leader, Alex Ovechkin. His comrades Alex Semin (hehe) and Sergei Fedorov are probably "out" tonight, but I'm pretty sure it's all a ruse for some sort of un-American activity.* Standing in their way? The good, solid, American squad of Los Angeles Kings, led by Drew Doughty, Anze Kopitar and Erik Ersberg. The Kings are the only thing standing in the way of a Russian invasion, and I...

Washington Capitals (10-4-3, 4th in east) at Anaheim Ducks (10-7-2, t-4th in west) NHL's other poster child is in town. Welcome to the second installment of Brian Burke Week, as I ponder back on the Anaheim yester-legacy of the mouthy one. Yesterday I made a case for three moves that I think Burke gets too much flak for ; today it's time for Part II: Criticizing three Burke moves that I don't think get enough flak. A few things (1) I'm not going to include the Todd Bertuzzi signing; that one's so obviously bad that I don't know if it's worth discussing. Just know that my list has these three things plus signing Todd Bertuzzi. I'm still not passing judgment on Brendan Morrison, either (he gets a free pass for a while because two knowledgeable Canucks fans I talked to were shocked that B-Mo was even playing already) . (2) I am not saying that any of these moves are guaranteed to fail -- there's still judgment to be made on all of them. It's jus...