::alio!::

. . . so . . . sleepy . . .

off the top:

Is Anson Carter's hair safe? I mean, it doesn't look like his helmet fits properly. I'm afraid for his brain.

the score:

FIRST PERIOD: Not an exciting game, not really worth the price of admission, or so said the millions of fans who weren't at the game. I saw so many empty seats. There couldn't have been more than five thousand people there in Washington tonight.

Ottawa dominated from the first, and its defense got long shifts, because they didn't have a lot of work to do. By sheer fluke, Washington killed off two penalties, in between which a remark was made about Super-K's puck handling skills. It was not favourable, but I would protest. Firstly, he can actually skate (when he doesn't fall over, that is). He can handle the puck, and his rebounds have gotten much better this season. These rebounds showed nicely in the first. Super-K was strong when he needed to be, which wasn't often, because his defense, mainly Chara and Pothier, stepped in to keep the play away from the net. Another goaltender who was strong tonight was Olaf Kolzig. He was the sole reason there was no scoring in the first, although when he's swimming around in his net, he looks a lot like a frog from above. I laughed.

SECOND PERIOD: More strong defense from Ottawa. More fanschmastic saves from Super-K. They were very patient, waiting for Washington to make mistakes. Alfredsson had a nice breakaway, but missed in his attempt to go top shelf. Chara made some appropriate poke checks, and Phillips used his size and speed to keep the puck in the Washington zone. In one of the many messes around the Caps net, Hossa was spun around and accidentally elbowed Redden in the nose. He was apologetic, though, Jen, so you can't send him hatemail.

Bondra hooked up Chara and pulls him to the ground. The officials called Bondra's interference, and also gave Chara two for diving. I guess they figured that some little dude can't easily pull down a big dude. Seeing as I have never seen Zed take a dive, I think he probably just overbalanced and fell. In the resulting 4-on-4, Hossa took another two for holding, and, in the following 4-on-3, Gonchar scored on Super-K, a goal he would probably like to have back, given the angry way he pitched the puck from the net. A beautiful move by Phillips prevented it from being 2-0.

THIRD PERIOD: Another strong period for Ottawa defensement. Pothier, exhausted at the end of a shift, stayed on and made some nice moves to put the puck back in the offensive zone. A lot of almosts mostly from messes around the Caps net, especially from Hossa, who was strong on the forecheck and the backcheck. Phillips nearly did the same thing in another mess at the net. Bondra, on a breakaway, nearly made it 2-0, but missed, thank God. Super-K is good, but not that good. There wasn't enough traffic around the net to solve Olie the Goalie, and too much around Super-K's net. There were some tense minutes in the third. The Caps resorted to a clutch-and-grab game, and this didn't help matters. Nice positioning by callup Denis Hamel led to a nice save by Super-K on Carter, however. Then Havlat, on a nice offensive rush, did some dipsy-doodling and some dangling and then got taken down right at the net. In the resulting power play, Hossa scored, from Havlat and Spezza, to tie the game in the dying minutes of the third.

OVERTIME: Boumedienne's name is too long. It doesn't fit on his jersey . . . HAHAHA. But that was the only funny observation I made in this period. A stupid high stick to Schaefer's face left blood running down his cheek, so the instigator got four minutes. That was the first good call tonight.

HOWEVER

Two minutes later, Spezza got a penalty for . . . for what? He didn't actually do anything. I think we're all still confused about that one. Damned officials and their desire to even things up. So then there was 3-on-3 hockey for a bit. Kind of shinny-ish. Lots of back and forth -- a definite nailbiter. With four seconds to go, Hossa got into a mess at the Caps net and just barely failed to get it past Kolzig. Shots were 48-19 in favour of Ottawa. I don't understand how they didn't manage two points out of that. They dominated throughout, but just couldn't figure Olie out . . . *sigh*

off the ice:

White took a shot to the foot tonight, which means that Ottawa has four missing centres: Bonk, Vermette, Fisher, and now wee Tad. The good news is that Volchenkov could be back within a couple of weeks. I'm stoked. I love him.

in other news:

Went to see Andrew WK last night with Rachelle.

We got there mega early, probably around 2030 or so, and so sat around for a while, scoping out the boy situation. As we were two of maybe a grand total of twelve women there at the time, we had a lot to look at.

There was this one guy, in particular, whom we thought was cute, because he looked kind of like Kyle Avery.

Then we waited, and waited, and waited. And waited some more. I think the opening band came on at around 2115 or so.

And what a piece of shit they were. They were called something like The Daiquiri, and they were from Chicago, IL. There was a guitar player, a weird sort of beatbox that sat on a chair, and the lead singer -- if you could call that singing.

He had a reverse mullet (that would make it "business in the back, party up in front"). His face was obscured with a generous wrapping of French caution tape and a big-pimpin' pair of dollar store special sunglasses. He wore a white blazer over top of his mother's blue cow-spotted apron and the most peculiar shirt I have ever seen.

He spent most of his time on stage engaged in a frenetic, but poorly-executed form of the Robot (or, at least, that's what I think he was trying to do), while his cohort threw his equally poorly-coiffed head around so much that I was convinced he was going to snap a vertebra or something.

And the music? I wouldn't really call it music, although I'm sure it was something Stefan would enjoy. To me, however, it sounded like what would happen if you took Billy Talent, the Beastie Boys, Foreigner, Fantastic Plastic Machine, and a large cat slowly being ground to death in a trash compactor, and you stuffed them all in an industrial-sized clothes dryer and turned it on while they were performing. Call me a philistine all you want, but whatever they screamed was unintelligible, and I didn't even recognize the Kelis cover they did at the end. What was even weirder was that there were so many people there who were singing along to their songs!

Towards the end of their set (which dragged on interiminably -- they even had an ENCORE), I suddenly became aware of the sensation of being very cold -- and soaking wet. It was a pint of beer that had poured all the way down the front of my sweater and my jeans, and all the way down the back of my sweater, and was in my hair. I turned around to reprimand the culprit -- and saw pseudoKyle, who said something stupid, like, "did I do that?"

"Uh, I think you owe me a beer for that," I said, ineffectually brushing foam from my chest.
"D'you want this one?" he asked, handing me his now nearly empty plastic cup.
"No, I think I deserve a fresh one," said I, more than mildly irritated to be standing, fermenting in stinky Molson Canadian crappy-assed beer.
"Okay, I'll be right back," he said, and disappeared. And never returned. Meh. Whatever. Anything to get him away from me. I was dripping, and irritated.

So, Andrew WK comes on around 2230 or so, after we had waited and waited -- you know the drill. They were their typical selves, Trailer Park Trash of the first degree, Andrew himself with tight white jeans and a white tshirt he soon made transparent after emptying several bottles of water over his loooooong hair. I felt like he looked. Except it was just water, in his case. He threw some at us, too. So Andrew and crew start rocking out, he at his little piano. It gets boring after a while, as all of his stuff sounds the same. But the crowd got interesting, as this was when the moshing began. Chel and I stood on the edge of the pit, puching those who fell out of it back in While this is fun, as it releases a lot of pent-up frustration at being used as a beer repository, it takes a toll on you. I have a bruise on my knee, another on my shin, a swollen toe, and my shoes are destroyed. Good times were had by all, however.

Except when pseudoKyle showed up again. He decided that the area in which Chel and I were standing would be a good place to move the centre of the pit, so he began throwing himself around, crashing into people who weren't part of the pit, and being so drunk when he did so that he couldn't get back up again on his own power. Then, apparently, he went too far, and this girl, who couldn't have been much bigger than Caitlin, had him by the throat, her tiny fist pulled back to nail him one. Out of nowhere, this huge man in leather materialized and separated them. Then about four bouncers appear, and two of them stick around for a while. I leaned over to one of them (more like leaned up to him, as he topped me by a good six inches) and said, "any reason you have to take that guy out, I will support you 100% -- he's a total asshole." The bouncer nodded and replied that they'd been watching him all night.

Undeterred by the presence of two hulking men (probably too drunk to see the bright orange tshirts), pseudoKyle continued to aim the majority of his flailings in our direction. It's like he was going out of his way to annoy me. It worked. I gabe him a good shove, and Rachelle got a couple of good ones, in as well. So the other of the two bouncers, a ridiculously hot chunk of meat (even Rachelle thought so, and he wasn't her type -- dark skin, no piercings or tattoos above average) stepped in front of us to run interference. Chel said, rather plaintively, "but we wanna be in front of you! So he turns around, gives us a blindingly brilliant smile,and ushers us ahead with a "by all means, ladies." It seemed to us that, as long as we were on the floor, we were the target of chivalry from all fronts. Every time things got rough -- although nothing we couldn't handle, of course -- big boys would automatically appear and take the trouble away. Odd.

We eventually left the floor in favour of a better vantage point. While Chel took pictures of AWK, I watched the crown and pseudoKyle's multiple attempts to crowdsurf, which was strictly outlawed at this venue. We stayed for the encore in order to hear "Party Hard," then booked it out of there as people started climbing on stage -- pseudoKyle included -- so we could avoid a line at coat check. We had had it, and we were exhausted. What an evening!

Posted by Ally at February 17, 2004 12:00 AM