Off Wing Opinion

Last night Jussi Jokinen had the Gretzky touch; everything he touched turned to goal. Jokinen scored 4 goals on 5 shots in just his first 5 minutes of ice time. (see video here)

Sergei Zubov seemed to find him open every time, and a mixture of luck - his second goal - and skill - the first and third - made him the first Star to net three in a game since now-GM Brett Hull.

For a guy who had 3 goals in 17 games coming into tonight, he didn't do half bad.

With last night's loss to Florida, and tonight's game against Tampa Bay, Caps bloggers have been pumping out postgames and pregames and other tidbits like there's no tomorrow.

We'll start off with the best news, at least for Caps fans, that I've seen so far today. Both Tarik and Corey are reporting that Semin is "close" to returning, according to Coach Hanlon. Semin has been skating on his own at Ballston and could play again as soon as Monday. All I can say is, it's about time. Hopefully he does start Monday, because his play has been missed.

Japers' Rink and The Peerless have their usual postgames up, with JP putting most of the blame for the loss on Tom Poti, and The Peerless wondering how Ovechkin is producing almost 30 percent of the team's goals, considering the offensive additions to the team this season. Maybe noticing he didn't include that in his postgame, JP threw up another post at Japers' Rink detailing the scoring weight that is currently on Ovie's shoulders. It really makes you think. How do you add Nylander, Kozlov, Backstrom, and Poti, and still have Ovie's scoring percentage up from 19.7% last season to 29.3% this one? The rest of the team, especially the names just mentioned, need to step up and play like they know how.

The Caps need to pick up their game in a big way. And The Peerless explains why.

Very difficult?...Here's how difficult. The Caps have 13 points in 18 games. If 92 points is enough to get in, they need 79 points in their remaining 64 games.

That is a 101-point pace over a whole season.

With back to back 70 point seasons the past 2 years, can they really get 79 points in 64 games? There's a lot of people that hope so, but not a lot of people that think so.

Tonight's game against Tampa is a big one for the Caps - although I guess all games now are big ones for them - as Tampa is 7-1-1 at home, and recently pasted the Caps 5-2 at the Phonebooth. The Peerless has his pregame roundup, and is calling for a win. I sure hope he's right.

Over at On Frozen Blog pucksandbooks takes a deep look into the management situation with the Caps. Are the fans overreacting in calling for heads to roll, or are the right in this instance?

New free agents aren

After 4 days off, the Caps travel to Florida, facing off against the Panthers. That mean's we're back to pre-game writeups, starting with the rantings and ravings of The Peerless Prognosticator. Today's guest, Gary Bettman channeling Robin Williams. There are no words, you have to read it for yourself.

Japers' Rink has their usual pre-game notes and links. Both teams hover near the bottom of the standings, and for both teams, that needs to change....fast.

They say that misery loves company, and while you know precisely how miserable the Caps have been on most nights this fall, you may not have noticed that they're only two points behind the Panthers (with two games in hand) in the Southeast standings. How's that for company?

Both teams need to swing their momentum back to the positive side, and they should come out slugging, looking for that win to get back on track. Anything less and maybe they don't deserve to make the playoffs.

Tarik has a good article in the Post today concerning the injury problems that are preventing the Caps from putting up decent offensive numbers so far this season. Although doing poorly, the players still seem to have faith in Coach Hanlon. "All of us feel guilty that we're at where we're at, because we've got a good coach, a players' coach," Kolzig said. "He's preaching the right message, we're just not delivering." With Poti and Clark back, and just Semin out, it's time to start delivering.

Following that article up, On Frozen Blog has a poll going on how many points the Caps need in their next 10 games to have a respectable position in the standings. The 3 choices are 8 pts, 10 or more, or 12 or more. 6 wins, or 5 and a couple of OT losses out of ten games seems reasonable, and almost necessary at this point. That's why it's no surprise that as I write this over half the voters have gone with at least 12 points. With 8 of the games against Southeast rivals, this is a crucial stretch for the Caps, and they need to get some points and climb back into the hunt in their division. With all these 4 point games coming up, they need to get things done.

And over at Dump 'n Chase Mike Vogel has the inside scoop on the first episode of the new XM Radio's NHL HomeIce show Hockey Confidential. The first guest is Washington's own Olaf Kolzig. I know I'll be calling the old man and suggesting he put his XM to good use. The first airing of Monday at 11 pm might be a little late, but with it being re-aired 6 times next week, I'll be home to hear it with him.

One of the more common complaints that NHL fans have made since the lockout has concerned the continued bashing the sport has been suffering at the hands of the MSM when it comes to television ratings.

That's not exactly a shock, because it's something of an easy storyline to sell to and editor and explain to an audience. But I just came across a piece of data that I hope gets wider play.

This morning, Sports Business Daily ran a Web traffic ranking survey of the top sports Web sites (subscription required). While the top finishers weren't terribly surprising -- ESPN and the usual suspects -- something further down the list caught my eye:

Are my eyes playing tricks on me, or is NHL.com just behind NBA.com in terms of popularity? Remember, these are Web stats, so you can't factor out our friends to the North the way you do with television ratings.

Now I'm sure there may be a valid explanation here. After all, the NHL starts its season earlier than the NBA, so season traffic might just surge a little earlier for the NHL. Still, with the way folks talk, you'd think the league ought to be dead and buried.

And here's something else I'm seeing: According to that footnote at the end, the Turner number at about 3.8 million per month is the aggregation of PGATour.com, PGA.com and NASCAR.com. I wonder how the NHL would fare against any of those sites if they were broken out individually.

And don't think I didn't notice the WWE right behind the NHL. Another question that comes to mind -- why no numbers for UFC.com?

I could write a few paragraphs about Brett Hull's sudden promotion in Dallas, but Scott Burnside hits all the right points.

He's just a kid with a camera phone. For the proper perspective, visit this post by Mark Cuban.

In yesterday's roundup I included a link to The Peerless about how the Caps have been having trouble scoring so far this season. Well Tarik at the Insider has some news; scoring is down across the league.

And of course Japers' Rink has a great roundup, including stories on Caps goalie prospect Michael Neuvirth's trade to Windsor and Joe Finley's attack on the Wisconsin Badger.

OFB has more on the story of "Mean" Joe Finley. Says pucksandbooks, "He can

Last week I posted a clip of a fight (above) in a Canadian juniors game in the MJAHL between the Halifax Wolverines and the Summerside Western Capitals that Eric had unearthed earlier. (details here) You see one player chasing another into the bench, leading to a brawl. But what you don't see is what happens before the fight. Normally, I wouldn't have thought any more of it. That is, until I read Ross Bernstein's The Code. In the introduction Bernstein talks about watching commentary on the Donald Brashear -- Marty McSorley incident, when he first discovered "the code."

The code was hockey's sacred covenant, its unwritten rules of engagement that had been handed down from generation to generation. There was, as I learned, a mysterious chain of accountability that dealt with the issues of violence and fighting.

... back then, when there was a fight, I just stood and cheered. I had no idea what had led up to it or why they were even doing it. I think many casual hockey fans would concur. Now, after spending the better part of two years immersing my life in their craft, I have been enlightened. That new knowledge has opened my eyes, and the game is much, much more exciting to watch now.

While I consider myself more than a casual hockey fan, I never gave too much thought as to what led to up to fights. As a player and a fan, I've seen many games from both sides of the glass. As a player, you see all, especially from the bench. Every hook, elbow, or other infraction, whether it gets called or not. But from the stands or television, it's hard to keep track of everything, because your eyes become glued to the puck. It's can be easy to lose track of everything else that is going on out on the ice.

So when a fight breaks out, you just assume the two players were mad at each other. But Bernstein's book brings out so much more, and has enlightened me in much the same way it did him. I'll be honest, if I hadn't read his book before I saw the video, I wouldn't be writing this. I would have seen it, thought, "wow, that was nuts," and moved on. But since I read The Code, my second thought was "what happened before the fight that led to what I just saw?"

Today finds most of us coming off quite a Hockey Hall of Fame induction weekend, which means a handful of excellent posts concerning it. We'll start off with OFB's pucksandbooks, whose summary of the importance of a hockey family is more dead on than any Ray Bourque shot in the accuracy section of the NHL Skills Competition.

Becoming a hockey player is rarely a fleeting, half-hearted venture. Perhaps that

With the Caps off until Thursday, the blogosphere is a little light today. Both Dump 'n Chase's Mike Vogel and The Times' Corey Masisak are up in Toronto for the Hall of Fame inductions. While up there, they got a chance to go see the Oshawa Generals and their star, John Tavares. Says Vogel;

We got to see the highly touted John Tavares and were not disappointed, except for the fact that he was ejected for kneeing early in the third period. He is just a real smart player, a guy with a nose for the net who makes everyone on the ice better when he is out there. He circles the net like a piranha, and sometimes even sets up behind the net without the puck, coming around either side for a quick and sneaky deflection bid. Tavares is not the skater that players like Alex Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby are, but he gets where he needs to go without dificulty. We saw him net the game-tying goal