Caps/Jets, 12/15/2011

If you are still alive and breathing after this, I commend you and your lungs. 0-0 games are boring in the first period, but when it's gets to the third period and it's still 0-0, you are basically dead. By the time the game clock wound down to five minutes remaining I was about three inches from my TV screen. Every second of the Jets in our zone was a life-changing disaster waiting to happen. We could have lost that game a dozen times.

But maybe you forgot that we have Alex Ovechkin on our team. That's right, he's not a fucking showpiece. He still scores goals.

Our captain was clutch. Our goalie was brilliant. More importantly, everyone was where they were supposed to be at all the right times. Maybe that's a game that we lose a month ago. Ask the Nashville Predators.

But that's not a game that we lose tonight.


Like I said, first period, not so good. It's December in Winnipeg and the boys are fighting the urge to go into hibernation, but being strong and willful men, they battle through it. The Jets try to take advantage of this, but Neuvirth is having none of that.

The Jets will be haunted by Neuvirth's glove hand in their dreams.

Refs decide to ignore all penalties against the Capitals for a majority of the game. They have earned my undying ire, which should not be taken lightly, referees, but luckily our penalty killers are heroes.

Your medals are in the mail. Wear them with pride.

Neuvirth is being twelve kinds of amazing. I begin to worry that we will be penalized for building a brick wall in our goal.

Dennis Wideman, inspired by Neuvirth's play, also decides to be a goalie and stops a shot on a nearly empty net. I am really warming up to this motherfucker, to say the least.

Unfortunately for the Caps, Neuvirth's good buddy Pavalec is no slouch on the other end, taking away things that we would have liked to be goals and making us very mad in general.

Czechmate.

I have to admit that Pavalec is pretty great, but that's much easier to do tonight because we won. Credit where it's due. Have a cheap joke anyway:

Now the Caps are rolling. Winnipeg thinks that they are going to take this to overtime and get a point the cheap, slutty way. Caps have other ideas.

Winnipeg starts to chant "Ovi". We tried to warn them. This never works out.

Captain Clutch. They should make him his own cereal. Someone photoshop this and get back to me.

Do you get that same deep joy and happiness from seeing Ovechkin smile like that? I think it's a Caps fan thing. It happens more rarely but that almost make it mean more these days. He's still the same when he scores, no matter how rare it becomes. It's like sunshine.

WIN.

SHUTOUT WIN, the very best kind of win.

Hey Evander Kane, how many goals did you score against us tonight? I'm sorry, what was that? Was it ZERO GOALS?

Caps killing season is over, bud. You had a good run.

This was a good and terrifying game, this was a game where the Capitals did not make the kind of mistakes that you've come to expect from them, and they didn't make the kind of mistakes that lose them hockey games. It was tough, it was stupidly, incredibly tough to win, but they did it anyway. This is such a good sign.

Is our goaltending starting to get out of the woods? This would be a good time for it, because our ex-boyfriend is coming to town. Time to pretend like we look hot and we're doing just fine without him.

Avs Saturday.

Let's go Caps.