Poor Olie...

Meszaros traded from Ottawa for 1/3 of Tampa Defense

Okay, that's not a real headline but its accurate. As a hockey fan who takes in an occasional Bolt's game, I'm shaking my head in disbelief.

Breaking Down the Deal
1. Filip Kuba to Ottawa - He's never going to be compared to Nicklas Lidstrom or even Nicklas Wallin, but last year he amounted to 1/2 of the shutdown pairing placed on the ice against AO and other strong offensive lines. Granted, this was out of necessity and not the natural order of defensemen, but he was deemed the best option by a pretty decent coach. Look at this link for the last Caps v. Bolts match-up you'll see that Kuba was on the ice for 10.4 of AO's 23.31. Second only to...

2. Alexandre Picard to Ottawa - I'm not sure where to begin here. I remember during this game thinking that the kid could hit, dig in his own corners retrieving the puck and making a decent first pass. Torts was obviously in a "nothing to lose", "lets play the kids" mentality but Picard had 24:19 of ice time, second only to Dan Boyle's 26 minutes. Plus, he played 11.2 minutes against AO -- tops on the team. Smaby, Lundin, Janik, and Karlsson together totalled 9.1 minutes against Ovechkin in that game.

3. Andrej Meszaros to Tampa - Watching him play as a rookie when he was putting up those ludicrous +/- numbers, I was impressed by his ability to find the open seams in the ice, and take a shot. I didn't notice his defensive skills but I didn't care because I was kicking myself over not grabbing him in my Fantasy league off the waiver wire. Apparently Len & Oren have a similar mentality. "Oh man, we could get him for nothing" must have been the sentiment around Hockey ThinkTank that masquerades itself as the Bolt's front-office nowadays. The difference, however, was that he wasn't a free waiver wire pick and in fact cost quite a bit.

In 2006-2007, Team Melvis drafted him as a second defenseman, and he was expected to deliver the goods. Puzzlingly, after a miserable start to the season statistically I decided to watch a couple of games before deciding whether to toss the bum out on the street. What I saw was that he wasn't joining the rush, was stuck playing in no man's land between the bluelines, and showed little of the same confidence as he did playing as a rookie in 05-06. With the departure of Chara, he was getting tougher opponents and was asked to take a larger defensive role. In short, I tossed him. Team Melvis didn't pay much attention to him in 2007-2008, so he may have broken out of his funk. However, looking at the comments from the Sens staff over the last couple of weeks, probably not.

The Net:
Sens - They ship out a defensively "mercurial" player (one of my favorite euphemisms for inconsistent) that was going to cost them at least 4m in exchange for a solid 2nd pair of d-man and a first round pick. They should see this like a kid being told that for Christmas he can choose between new clothes or books. But then on Christmas morning he wakes to find the clothes, the books, plus a Playstation, and a supermodel girlfriend under the tree. So if you're the Sens, you're pretty happy with the deal (unless the supermodel girlfriend was not your girlfriend, you cannot remember what happened the night before, and the police are beating down your door).

Bolts - Olie is going to wish he retired after last year. His career GAA and SV% numbers are going to take a beating with this defense in front of him. This deal stinks for the short-term or long-term health of the Bolts. They lose two of their best defensemen (if not their two best outright performers), once of which being a potential stud on the backline, plus a 1st round pick from San Jose. At least they didn't give up their own first round pick because that one is going to be a good one... Are there two or three syllables in Tavares?

A Little Lightning Love

I'm "fortunate" enough to get the real Lightning broadcast rather than the feed from Center Ice and was privy to the post-game report and interviews. The announcer interviewed a pretty exhausted but grinning Karri Ramo who said he was pretty happy about his 37 saves against Carolina. He said,"We had a rough one against Washington the other night, and now we've just helped them out. They're only one back of Carolina now".

I'm not sure if he was grinning because of this victory of if he was really trying to stick it to the Canes. Either way, I wanted to share.

Caps v Bolts - Postgame

Just made it back to the homestead. 1h 30m door to door isn't too bad and well worth it. I only get to see 2-3 games Caps games per year including one up in DC around Christmas and a weekender in Tampa so the drive is easily justified. Nevermind... the game.

It was a decent game except for the 10 minutes at the end of the second and that minute at the end of the third that almost doomed them. That second period breakdown was like watching a quarter spiral down one of those charity blackhole games where it starts really wide and slow then tightens to a really fast circle then disappears? No? Okay I was cursing and squirming for 10 minutes waiting for the walls to collapse. But Olaf saved the day. He was square and perfect and didn't seemed rattled by the shaky start he had in the first and second.

The two quickies by the Bolts at the end of the game had the Forum shaking. The crowd noise was still at a stupid level when Semin stuffed in the rebound that made it 3-2. It was very surreal as all the Bolts fans sat at once and the Caps fans stood in unison. That was my only yell of the game. A pure knee-jerk fist pump scream. We need more of those ugly beautiful goals.

I'll have to watch the DVR of the game tomorrow to really look at what I think I saw from Lepisto, but he seemed pretty solid, took a couple of shots, and made a pretty slap pass. Erskine was a danger to his own team. Can we take out "Own Goal" insurance on him? It goes like this, we spot the opposition a goal before the game starts and have to pick one bonehead. If we pick Erskine, for instance, any goals that result from that player's head being lodged temporarily in his own ass, don't count. You would think the opposition would jump at this. True, but so would the Caps.

Laing was a stud (welcome back). The first Tampa goal was plain ole' ring around the rosey. You know, run in circles then all fall down. The second was Ovechkin's fault for not picking up the break-out from Olie who relayed it perfectly up the boards to where the LEFT FRICKIN WING should be waiting. Instead, the puck made it to the pinching defenseman who pushed it in and soon enough it was BLOWHORN city. It was at that point I saw the season collapsing which explains why the primordial yell was so needed on the Caps go ahead marker on the next shift. I think I even hugged the guy next to me.

Funny aside... I got a call at 3:00 minutes into the third from Peaker (you know, the other blogger on the site who doesn't blog). He didn't know I was attending the game and he says, "Hey, you're at the game. I just walked into my living room and saw you on TV."

Now, it's late but I'm going to see if I can change Peaker's name to Hide-n-Peeker or maybe Phone-n-Peeker, he can dial a number and have blog entries transcribed by a blogger secretary.