Jose and the Pussycats

You're not as scary as you think you are, Caps.

Now that's what I call a rebound game.

Following a game where even our otherwise rock solid goaltending looked weak, the Sabres put together perhaps their most complete effort of the season to shut out a talent-heavy team looking for their seventh straight win. The offense was creating and capitalizing, the defense was all over the ice, and Ryan Miller was the Ryan Miller we've come to expect him to be. As always it's impossible to tell if this version of the Sabres is going to stick around, but if ever we needed them to show up, it was after Monday night's ugly loss. It feels good to feel good about this team again, if only for a little while.

I'm not sure if this was entirely the Sabres doing or not, but Washington's best players were totally invisible last night. I literally just had to google Alex Semin to make sure that he wasn't injured, because I don't remember hearing his name a single time last night. Of course Ovie was talked about a lot (when is he ever not?), but he never really got anything going offensively. In fact, most of the replays he was involved in showed a good move made by a Sabre to defend him. In any case, the Caps never made me feel any kind of doom, impending or otherwise, despite having been led to believe that I should be shaking in my boots.

Of course, no Ovechkin replay sticks out more prominently in my mind than the one showing him taking a dive on a trip by none other than Derek Roy. I sure won't be forgetting that irony in a hurry. I'm disappointed that there's no clip to be found of it yet, because I so wanted to post it (not to mention watch it over and over and over). But in my search I found this:



It's quite similar, in that the trip is just as blatant, the embellishment just as obvious, and the broadcast team (though thankfully not the officials) just as oblivious. On second thought, maybe I won't be watching it over and over and over. The icky pirouette combined with the announcers' unjustifiable indignation is making me feel a little bit like looking for the fucking phone.

To close on a happier thought, seeing everyone on the ice tower over Nathan Gerbe made me think of this:



I'm glad the game didn't end up going south, but if it had, I would have greatly enjoyed posting a picture of Gerbe with the excuse: "I do not, for one, think that the problem was that the team was down. I think that the problem may have been that there was a "hockey player" on the ice that was in danger of being crushed by Derek Roy!" Maybe I'll put that extrapolated moment of happiness behind breakable glass for a future emergency.

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

As I write this, I am sitting in my parents' house, mere feet away from the HDTV that will be brightening my life with crystal clear hockey later on. I am so looking forward to that.

Another reason it's the most wonderful time of the year is that today is my sister's birthday, and she's pretty great. Happy birthday, Meghan!

And then I guess there's that whole Thanksgiving thing coming up, too.

One thing that decidedly does not make it the most wonderful time of the year is that the Sabres are playing the Caps tonight. For reasons I've never quite been able to articulate, the Caps--and Alex Ovechkin in particular--get my ire up in a way no one else in hockey can. There's no obvious historical justification for it, not like with the Senators or the Hurricanes, but that doesn't make it any less real. The Caps and I are just true hate. Even though I can't explain it, I see the potential to harness the power of that hate and use it for something good--or at least entertaining.

Just as the off-season was coming to a close, in an effort to rediscover my enthusiasm for blogging, I delved into the Desperation Hockey archives, hoping to be inspired by my own genius. It ultimately worked, and along the way I was reminded of a few running themes, structures, and jokes that I hoped and plan to revive. Chief among these was the exclamation "Where's the fucking phone?!" which is a reference to this scene from Wet Hot American Summer:



I originally used "Where's the fucking phone?!" to illustrate my feelings about seeing Chris Drury in a Rangers jersey for the first time, when I felt like tipping over cabinets and tearing things off shelves. As time went on, though, my grudge hardened and my rage waned, and my need to find the fucking phone appeared less frequently and less vehemently. I don't know if I'm getting soft, or if general cynicism has just mellowed out the peaks and valleys of my moods, but nothing seems to send me into an infirmary-destroying tizzy these days. That's where the Caps come in. We haven't met them yet this season, so I haven't given them much thought. Tonight they and the wrath they leave in their wake will become impossible to ignore, and I'm trying to make the best of that situation in advance. The Sabres need a win like they need fewer holes in their line-up, but since they seem to find expectations an unbearable weight, this is what remains of mine after pitching the majority overboard: no matter the outcome, if I have an excuse to type "Where's the fucking phone?!" again, well, it hasn't been all bad.