Hockeytown, DC

The other day I freely admitted that I'm a playoff hockey fan, not a regular season fan. I take no shame in this; I find an 80-game regular season to be ridiculously long and needless, and I know I'm not alone on this.

For someone who freely admits to not having interest in watching hockey during the regular season, the amount of knowledge I have amassed in watching each game in the wonderful Flyers-Capitals series alone has demonstrated last night to far exceed most casual fans. And by casual fans I mean the ones who were openly rooting for the Capitals, but didn't understand some of the 'complexities' of the game, or were sporting brand-spanking-new Capitals "red" jerseys. You know who you are. (Aside: At least they went away from that black-and-gold crap color scheme. Can the Wizards be far behind?)

Note to Super-Caps-Fan #1: Every time you yell "that's a takedown!!", as if that term has some hockey meaning, to signal outrage that a hold or a hook or a trip was not called, you are embarrassing yourself, your fan-base, and your nation's capital. This is nothing new, but just FYI. I don't want you to stop, mind you, because it makes me giggle.

Note to Super-Caps-Fan #2: If you don't understand the game, don't get outraged when a perfectly legal, obvious, and correct call is made that hurts you. This applies to quite a few folks who protested the goal when the Caps defenseman got checked into Huet (the goalie) and knocked out of the crease, thereby making an each shot for the Flyers. See image below, or the video recap here. He had the puck come back to him and the wrong time, thereby making any check legal; if he didn't have it, it would have been cross-checking. He was caught in a wrong place. What are they going to do -- call their own guy for goalie interference? That has happened already twice in this series and no call was made then, either. Here's a minute-long video recap here; the goal is when the Flyers go up 2-1.
Note to Super-Caps-Fan #3: Do not blame the referee when your team commits an obvious overtime penalty that ends up costing you the game. I don't care if you are in overtime, when you sweep your stick across a guy's legs so obviously that you force the hand of the referee, don't blame me. In the words of Barry Melrose (video above):

The referees just let them have one about twenty seconds before then -- they had to call the second tripping penalty. Good call by the referees.

Thanks, Barry. You would have had a good time out last night.