Rock The Red To The Cup

ROCK THE RED: Going to the Cup!

Wednesday 23 May 2018 a night of Washington Hockey History. The Washington Capitals defeated the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-0 winning GAME 7. They go on to the Stanley Cup Finals to face the new kids on the block the Las Vegas Golden Knights for the right to raise THE CUP.

Well the excitement has begun. Monday 28 May 2018 Memorial Day The Caps faced off against the Golden Knights for only the third time in the one season short history of team Vegas. During the regular season the Caps lost both games. Unfortunately they have also lost 4-6 in Vegas Game 1 of the Cup Final Series. The game did make it's own NHL history by being the first Final Game to have 4 Leader changes during the game. The game was tied through out most of the game whenever one team would score the other would score a few minutes later. In that way it was frustrating because the Caps were only in the lead for a little over 3 minutes 2-1 in the first period. Then in the 3rd they were briefly up 4-3 for about 2.5 minutes til the Golden Knights tied it up 4-4 and then took the lead 7 minutes later. They scored the final coffin nail with only 2 seconds left in the game to an empty net. One of the reasons I dislike the open net strategy. The concept is fairly solid with about 2 minutes left to play you pull your goalkeeper out and put in an extra man so you have six players capable of scoring a goal. Unfortunately, like it did in this game, it often backfires and the leading team manages to breakaway from the action at their side of the rink and toss in an unobstructed unmanned net goal.

Another sad factor is that most times the team that scores first in game 1, as did the Golden Knights, ends up winning the game, as the Knights did. Also the team that wins game 1 that would be Vegas ends up winning the series. So far no indication which team will win it all. Anyway no matter which team wins the series it will be that team's first Cup

Rock The Red

The Washington Capitals in their 44 years of existence have gone to the playoffs at least 75% of the time. 29 of 44 seasons. For the last 20 or so they have been almost every year. Most post-seasons they do the old "one and done" losing in the first round to the Philadelphia Flyers, or New York Rangers, Boston Bruins or the dreaded Pittsburgh Penguins who have squashed them 9 out of 10 times.

Occasionally like this year the Caps have advanced to round two like they have done this year. They beat the Columbus Blue Jackets in 6 games. Usually they go the full 7 games and lose in round one. When they do go on to Round 2 again they usually lose in game 7. It seems like it is always at home as well, but not always. So they are always the Bridesmaids NEVER the Bride so to speak.

For both the 2015-16 and 2016-17 seasons the Caps won the "President's Trophy" which is presented to the league's team that finished the regular season with the best record most "points". These are not the highest scores as in goals but rather the points for games won that are used to determine a team's position in the standings. When a team wins a game they get 2 points,  if they outright lose they don't get any points. If a game ties and goes into overtime they get 1 point for going to overtime and then another point for an overtime win. This season 2017-18 they didn't win the President's Trophy. That is a good thing. Having the best record does not guarantee going to the Stanley Cup finals.

As of the writing of this post the Caps are in Round 2 vs. The Penguins. The series is tied 2-2. The Winner of Round 2 will face the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Eastern Conference Championship Final.

Update For Game 5:
Saturday 05 May is game 5. The Caps won game 5 and lead the series 3-2. Game 6 is coming up tonight.

Update Game 6:
Monday 07 May.
The game has gone into Overtime it is tied 1-1. WOW Alex Ovechkin at center ice retrieves the puck and passes to Evgeny Kuznetsov who swoops toward the goal, he shoots and SCORES the Game Winning SERIES WINNING Goal.

The CAPS Move on. Next up The Eastern Conference Finals vs The Tampa Bay Lightning. On the plus side the Caps overall in regular season are 80-49-6 vs the Lightning (61.5%), however they are 2-8 vs Lightning in the playoffs. That is the negative side they are 2-8 (20%) vs Lightning in playoffs.

From last year the Caps made a cute video "All Caps No Pens" starring their mascot Slapshot the Eagle.

Blogging In Spurts And Drips

For me blogging has always come in spurts and drips mostly drips. Sometimes I have so much inspiration to get stuff recorded on pen and paper, er typed out into the Either nets. I make several posts and line them up in the scheduling queue. Other times it just slowly drips and I have to scramble at the end of the month to come up with some sort of post for my self appointed and regulated monthly posting quota minimum. Which is 20 posts short of my yearly quota.

At the end of April this year I had one of those posting spurts, at least on over at my regular trading card blog. That blog will have 2 posts for April and so far at least 3 posts for May. Here on this regular blog I once again only posted my minimum one post for the month drip. That post I started drafting in the early part of the month and was ready to post about 4 or 5 days before its posting date on 30 April 2018 which is today as I start to draft this post.

I have noticed that it is easier for me to post about my trading card hobby (or maybe it is an obsession) than it is to post general stuff here on this my regular blog. Part of it is I am more interested in writing about my hobby than I am random mundane things of life.

Of my three blogs my regular trading card blog "CaptKirk42's Trading Card blog" is the easiest to make posts for then my Washington Baseball "Curly W Cards" blog then this one the most difficult.

Doing regular features on a specific subject does help build the quota. I have had a few regular features on this blog: Fryday Fourtoon, Myka Monday, Year in Review (State of the Blog recaps), Warehouse 13 Wednesday, Book Review (was "Recent Read") I have also frequently mentioned times my name has been misspelled but it isn't a regular feature just a reoccurring subject.

Well now that I have that written down time to post this puppy. That is schedule this post for publishing Tomorrow to get in early for the May Posting.