#mike knuble

[st-louis]

"i remember the song 'the orange the black.' like, [singing] the orange and the black. that one. i remember that. i remember--i don't know if they still do it, like the PECO power play. i don't know why i always remembered that. i remember mike richards. he was definitely my favorite player. i love his game. he was gritty and got the job done."

-- cole knuble, the son of former flyer mike knuble, the flyers' 103rd pick, on learning to skate at voorhees and what he remembers from philly

[hockeytown-gifs]

Power Play Winning  -  Wings @ Flames  -  October 1, 1997

[lonewolflink]

WILLY!!!!!!!! or hendrix?? either WAY LET'S FUCKING GO

ONE MORE

TIE THE GAME

[goalhofer]

Where every player played during the 2012-13 NHL lockout: Philadelphia

Czech Extraliga: Wayne Simmonds (Bílí Tygři Liberec) ECHL: Jason Akeson (Trenton Titans) EIHL: Tom Sestito (Sheffield Steelers) Liiga: Maxime Talbot (Ilves) OHL: Scott Laughton (Oshawa Generals) DEL: Daniel Brière (Eisbären Berlin) & Claude Giroux (Eisbären Berlin) Eishockey-Bundesliga: Bruno Gervais (Heilbronner Falken) & Wayne Simmonds (E.T.C. Crimmitschau) HockeyAllsvenskan: Nicklas Grossmann (Södertälje Sportklubb) & Matt Read (Södertälje Sportklubb) KHL: Ilya Bryzgalov (K.K. C.S.K.A. Moscow), Ruslan Fedotenko (K.K. Donbass Donetsk) & Jakub Voráček (H.K. Lev Praha) AHL: Jason Akeson (Adirondack Phantoms), Sean Couturier (Adirondack Phantoms), Erik Gustafsson (Adirondack Phantoms), Oliver Holton-Lauridsen (Adirondack Phantoms), Brandon Manning (Adirondack Phantoms), Tye McGinn (Adirondack Phantoms), Zac Rinaldo (Adirondack Phantoms), Jay Rosehill (Norfolk Admirals), Brayden Schenn (Adirondack Phantoms) & Harry Zolnierczyk (Adirondack Phantoms) Didn't Play: Braydon Coburn, Simon Gagné, Scott Hartnell, Mike Knuble, Andrej Meszároš, Luke Schenn & Kimmo Timonen

[thebeezcnys]

No one is more committed to the bit than the Flyers. Cole Knuble? Mike Knuble's son Cole Knuble?! We can't even DRAFT outside of this organization.

[holtbys-left-eyebrow]

mike knuble’s SON is in this year’s draft class???? HIS SON IS OLD ENOUGH TO BE DRAFTED IN THE NHL????????????

[mommiessecret]

Check out this listing I just added to my Poshmark closet: Mike Knuble 2011 Winter Classic Washington Capitals NHL Sewn Jersey SMALL.

[thornescratch]

Ovechkin, a 36-year-old Russian star, is described by former and current teammates as loud, flashy and boisterous. Backstrom, a 34-year-old from Sweden, is described as quiet, laid-back, thoughtful and composed.

“Opposites attract,” said former Capitals coach Bruce Boudreau.

“You can’t help but talk about both of them in the same breath,” Karl Alzner, their former teammate, said. “They go hand in hand.”

“It’s very rare and we’re very fortunate to be in the same organization for this long,” said Backstrom said. “I think we know everything about each other inside out. Just very fortunate to play like this for this long.”

Um.

Boudreau, the first coach to play Ovechkin and Backstrom on a line together during the 2008-09 season, described Ovechkin and Backstrom’s relationship as like “husband and wife.” When he coached them, he could recall how they would chat together most days, going back and forth with each other. Other days, they needed their own space.

“There would be times when Nick would roll his eyes when Ovi would be doing stuff, but in the end, they knew where their bread was buttered,” Boudreau said. “They know each other better than two guys know anybody and so it always came back to them. Just two amazing players.”

UM.

Ovechkin and Backstrom’s opposite personalities complement each other well in the locker room as well. Alzner, who was drafted by the Capitals and spent nine seasons with Washington, called the duo perhaps one of the best in NHL history because of their contrasting skills and characteristics. Alzner said Ovechkin is more “in your face,” while Backstrom is more “wait in the weeds” before throwing in his comments here and there.

“They are a perfect combo,” Alzner remarked.

In team meetings or closed-door sessions after bad games, Alzner would recall the same situation popping up each time. Ovechkin would typically start with a loud message, then Backstrom would usually follow it up with more reserved comments along the same lines. They took different approaches, but had the same end goal.

OKAY SO LIKE.

Off the ice, Ovechkin said he can tell when Backstrom is in a good mood, bad mood and vice versa. They might not spend time together as much outside of the rink as when they were younger, but their bond is still apparent.

After a recent photo shoot, they fielded questions about their time together in Washington. Once again, they had similar answers, just different ways of getting there. When asked what the best attribute was of the other, or the best compliment they could give the other, their answers were simple.

“You’re so beautiful, man,” Ovechkin said to Backstrom as he turned to face his teammate.

“You’re so cute,” responded Backstrom. Then they burst out laughing and walked down the hall, together again.

These married-as-hell-ass motherfuckers just being all kinds of soulmates up in here, how dare.

[hockey-cards]

[puckinggoodpics]

Capitals Training Camp (9/18/11)

[csykora]

hey i was reading your post about evgeny kusnetsov and alexander semin (the friendship necklace one) and i got into hockey somewhat recently but i've heard/read some things about sasha and i was wondering if you could give me a rundown/what your perspective is? you mentioned cultural assimilation, but also social class, ethnic identity, ability, neurodiversity, and trauma and i was really curious what exactly you were talking about??

First, that’s cool you’re getting into hockey! How’s that going? I hope you’re having fun. Second…thanks for making me reread my old writing as we come up on the New Year ;)

That was one of my very first posts, and I think it reads like it—I definitely wasn’t much of a sports writer back then, and (I don’t think) I tell stories quite the same way now.

I don’t think some of those words I used mean much, except that I was angry. So I’d like to spell out what made, makes, me angry. The first half of this is stuff I’ve said before, more organized, with jokes. The second half is not fun, but it’s also something I think NHL fans have a duty to think about. So I want to try to talk about Lokomotiv.

Sasha Semin is the star and captain of a quite good, more fun KHL team. Today he was named to the All-Star team, actually. KHL All-Stars is a magical place where the players sing acoustic covers and routinely set things on fire, so hopefully they’ll let him bring his sword.

(I love the KHL)

Before that, he was the cool big brother of a generation of Russian stars. In the early 2000s the first post-Soviet young players were coming of age and working out what post-Soviet, now-Russian style hockey was going to be. In that moment we got two spectacular players: Sasha from Siberia, and Sasha from Moscow.

The Soviet style of play was supposed to be egalitarian—players skated the opposition sick and pass-pass-passed, always giving it to a teammate instead of taking chances, until whoever happened to have it had a sure shot. The Alexanders grew up in that style, and they grew up fuck-off strong. They started feeding off all their teammates’ passes and beginning to gun down goalies with one of two shots: Alex Ovechkin had the one-timer, and Alex Semin had the best wristshot in the game.

Did you watch Vegas’ magic season? Pull some clips of Wild Bill Karlsson. Imagine if he had upper body strength but was just as light on his feet. That’s how inexplicably electric young Semin was.

His and then Ovi’s performances at World Juniors were so explosive they convinced American businesses to risk money on something new. Semin was oldest, and the Capitals kind of sucked, so they got him first. Then a few years later they still sucked, so they got Ovi too. Then the two of them got Nicklas Backstrom and matching line promise necklaces and played really good hockey together for a number of years.

(If anyone would like 3,000 more nicer words about the above subjects, @ me)

A couple things shaped what happened after that:

▪ Semin’s unique wrister, twisted to be almost as hard as a slapper, is like spending every night downing jägerbombs with a shot of carpal tunnel. He seems to have chronic wrist and hand problems from inflammation, with apparent flare-ups that sometimes got rest and sometimes didn’t. So that’s a factor—not the only, but a—in why he had periods of poor shooting.

▪ Either because he never really went to school or just because he’s wired that way, Semin seems to suck at math.

▪ Ovi’s hot stick and the Sid Incident (Sidcident?): 

In their first interview together, Ovi described him and Sid as “partners”, and Sid asked for Ovi’s shirt. But over the first few years the League swung from branding them as buddies to making money off a rivalry, and Don Cherry started a string of bitter conflicts with Ovi.

Local journalists who knew him wrote about seeing Ovi flinch in interviews. They described him starting to hesitate, pale, tired, doubling back over answers to make sure they were watertight. We now know from Tatyana Ovechina that he was spending a lot of nights on the phone back home with her, asking if he was letting everybody down.

Sasha, who’s basically that guy on twitter who found kittens in his sock drawer and adopted them all, but with little brothers, got protective. He told Russian media that he thought Sid was a good player, but not his favorite, and said that the way the League was pushing media attention could make someone a ‘star’ even if they weren’t that good. The phrase he used means “dead wood”, or boring, useless person. The grammar he used means something like “even if he were (ie, he isn’t)”.

I think this was objectively very funny. And I still hold that anyone saying the level of exposure Sid endured was good for him or anyone sounds like the stage parents on Toddlers & Tiaras.)

But people get protective of their person, and most won’t stop for a grammar lesson before deciding what they think something meant. There was a media blitz, mostly accusing Sasha of wanting the attention Sid got, which made sense, if you didn’t know Russian or two things about him—that he’s best friends with Alex Ovechkin, and that he’d only just started to practice English with local reporters after several years. If he were an egomaniac, he was bad at it.

From his reaction it seems like he hadn’t thought his comment was that wild, and wasn’t prepared for the backlash. Next time he talked to local reporters, he brought the translator back. Asked routine questions he’d been getting for a couple years, he flinched and turned to them to rehearse every word of his answer. Asked what was up with the translator, he said “I just don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

Although teammates like Mike Knuble, Jeff Schultz, Backstrom and Ovechkin kept talking about his personable, joking side, and we’d see it plenty in practice, he started insisting to reporters that he didn’t know English and that he was boring anyway, claiming “I’m just an ordinary person, just like everybody else. The only difference is I’m out there on the ice and that’s it. I’d just rather talk about hockey.”

–> Without math or English, Semin’s career depended on his agent, Mark Gandler.

Try not to depend on Mark Gandler.

As the Globe and Mail put it, “to many Canadian hockey fans, Mark Gandler is nothing less than the Prince of Darkness.”

Mark Gandler’s business was based on presenting himself as a friendly face to young Russian athletes, and pissing of NHL franchises. I’m pro-pissing off the NHL in general; my problem with Gandler is that if he was sincerely trying to get the best deal for him clients, he was bad at it..

When anyone talks about something Semin decided, they’re talking about what Gandler decided for him. Semin was honest with the media that he had no fucking clue what Gandler was asking for in negotiations. The Caps and Gandler couldn’t agree on anything, so while Ovechkin was locked down for life, Semin was only ever signed to one and two year bridge contracts, constantly up, his performance a constant subject of discussion and every wobble obvious.

Note: the following is the bit where I got angry and A. asked why the hell I was looking at photos of this and told me to go lie on the floor and do my butterfly exercises for a while.

One year Semin’s game really sucked. It didn’t help that Ovechkin was sucking too—they both got benched, Coach got fired, and still the Capitals just kind of sucked. Around the league, Russian stars were mostly fizzling. That was the 2011-2012 season. 

On September 7, 2011, the airplane carrying the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team, coaching staff, and four youth players had overrun the runway, struck a signal tower, crashed, and caught fire moments after takeoff. Every member of the team onboard was killed.

I can’t understand, so certainly can’t explain, how that day changed the community. I’m not trying to speculate too much on anyone’s personal situation, but to point out how much more profound it was than just some other league’s trivia.

I don’t think there’s a mainstream North American parallel for the hockey community in Eastern Europe. Players are raised in a small number of hockey schools, often at that time in dormitories like the one where Semin lived in Chelyabinsk. While young North Americans are quite strictly separated by age, the Russians are growing up with older and younger kids from the same school all around them. Older teens are encouraged to mentor younger ones—Kuznetsov’s attachment to Semin is endearing, but not really so weird. Stanislav Yarushin is several years older than Sasha, and he befriended him, and then down to Kuz. In a community like that, any one person is intimately connected to the others.

From the coaches to the rookies, someone from three generations across nine nations was killed in the disaster. Each of them was connected not only to their peers, but to players older and younger than them, and to the city that raised them. Every Russian, Czech, and Slovak in the NHL lost at least one person they knew deeply.

Just that spring, Kuznetsov won gold at World Juniors with a little clique of friends. Vladimir Tarasenko, Artemi Panarin, and Dmitry Orlov are stars now, and two of the others are dead.

Kuznetsov is the one draped in the flag. #14, with the awesome hair, smiling, is Danylo Sobchenko. #12, reaching up towards the cup, is Yuri Urychev. Urychev had been injured, and supposed to stay home the day of the disaster, but he asked to be allowed to fly with them, so he could cheer for his friends.

Tarasenko himself was born in Yaroslavl, and his father played for Lokomotiv; he knew even more of the team, and if he’d taken a hometown offer instead of signing with Sibir, he would have died that day too.

The thing about a loss like this is that it keeps budding with new losses. It hadn’t been a problem with the plane, or a freak accident. Over the following month a miserable investigation revealed that the airline had fudged documents, and the pilots just didn’t know what they were doing. So as well as losing friends, the younger players lost any trust that people in authority were going to keep them safe in the future.

After the disaster, Ovechkin, Semin, and Malkin had to hold their phones waiting while Alexander Galimov (a friend from nationals) was found with burns over 80% of his body, stabilized, transported, placed in a medically-induced coma and ventilated. He finally died five days later. The day he died Tarasenko and Kuznetsov and all the others got back on their own planes and kept playing, so the NHLers just had to keeping waiting up for them, too. Now Tarasenko and Kuznetsov have little brothers on those planes. They’re better fucking planes now, because the disaster changed Russian law, but they’re still not great.

In a grim way, Semin and Ovechkin were lucky, because they had each other. At the time almost no NHL team had as many Eastern Europeans as the Caps, meaning almost all the others were alone.

Of course it just wasn’t possible for the North American public to grieve with them the way that Europe did, but how quickly it was boxed away and forgotten as a factor in players’ lives just…sucks.

You don’t just grieve somebody when you lose them; people who aren’t sure what to say will say it fades with time, but what it really does is rise and fall in waves. You grieve them when you lose them, and again when you’re as old as they were and realize how insufficient it really was, and again, when you’re older than they’ll ever be, when you’re old enough to see children their age. Like injuring your wrist, you can get back to work, but never back to exactly what you were before. 

Five years later, when Tarasenko scored his 100th goal, he dedicated it to Sobchenko and Urychev. 

Most of a decade later, Alex Ovechkin wears the Lokomotiv crest on his chest protector, over his heart.

So if we know all that, we can start to imagine why they sucked at hockey.

Actually, after a slow start to the season, Sasha sucked the least of all the Capitals. Always a stronger possession player than Ovechkin, Sasha actually recovered after the Caps brought in Dale Hunter, who ripped up the Goals First, Goals Always game plan and tried to make Ovi play defense. Sasha ended the season with the best possession metrics on the team (yes, including Nicke Backstrom). 

His goal-scoring didn’t recover, but that was because Coach Dale was basically treating him like Ovi’s security blanket, putting him on the second line with Mojo so Ovi couldn’t cuddle him until Ovi backchecked. Mojo (this is a Science fact) is not Nicke Backstrom.

The reason the Capitals traded Semin is they desperately needed to trade someone to make up for the team’s collective failures that year, he could be traded due to his shitty contracts, and he was worth trading. 

I’m not actually angry the Caps traded Semin. It made sense. I am mad the Habs did, because it was one of many decisions made by Marc Bergevin coughing up a heavily-gelled hairball on a depth chart, but hey.

Sports is hard. I don’t mean that teams should keep players who aren’t playing the way that team needs them to out of sympathy. I mean that it’s possible to say that Semin or Ovechkin sometimes play badly without saying they don’t care. It’s possible to name a practical problem without making it a moral one.

Because when we see someone not doing what we want, and we make it moral, we say, “well gosh, I can’t imagine a reason why they aren’t jazzed to do what I want right now, so there can’t be a reason, they just suck,” we’re always wrong, because we miss shit!

In 2011, the common complaint that Russian players “don’t seem to care” went from boring to breathtakingly cruel. 

It’s a collective failure of empathy, where a lot of us didn’t even know that empathy’s needed. How many NHL fans don’t know Lokomotiv existed? If we don’t even know what weight another person’s carrying, we can’t possibly judge them rightly! 

The athletes we’re watching aren’t just cartoon characters for American consumption, who always act and react in easily-readable ways. They’re people with beliefs, behaviors, and problems which might be meaningfully different from what we’re personally familiar with and really hard to sympathize with.  

But when we see someone struggling to do what we want them to, we have to wonder why, and look around to learn more about moments like this, and then offer empathy. I believe that if we have information, most people use it to be kind. So we really fucking need historical information.

I’m back on the floor and don’t have a closer, so here’s a picture of a cat with big mitts like Sasha. His name is Peppers.

[hockeytown-gifs]

Stevie scores on Roy  -  Stadium Series Alumni Game-  Feb. 26, 2016

[vegasknightsoftheroundtable-blog]

George McPhee's 2nd Chance With The Vegas Golden Knights

George McPhee’s 2nd Chance With The Vegas Golden Knights

Tonight we saw the Washington Capitals get eliminated by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the  2nd round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in back-2-back seasons only this time the series wen the distance. The Capitals team that was iced tonight were majority built by former Washington General Manager George McPhee.

The purpose of this analysis is to take a look back at McPhee’s time as the Capitals builder.…

[art-was-anal]

Giphy (From: https://giphy.com/gifs/brooks-laich-washington-capitals-mike-knuble-101cQQ2YjFCozC)

[goalhofer]

Today In Bruins History: February 14

1925: Bruins lose 5-1 to canadiens in 1st game on February 14.

1928: Bruins beat blackhawks 1-0. Bruins 1st February 14 shutout.

1929: Bruins lose 2-0 to Pittsburgh Pirates.

1931: Bruins beat Montreal Maroons 4-2.

1932: Bruins beat New York Americans 3-1.

1933: Alex Smith scores 1:00 into game in 7-2 win against maple leafs.

1937: Bruins beat blackhawks 2-1.

1939: Bruins beat red wings 2-1.

1943: Bruins lose 3-2 to blackhawks.

1946: Bruins end game against rangers tied at 2.

1948: Bruins end game against rangers tied at 4.

1953: Bruins beat rangers 5-4.

1954: Bruins beat canadiens 4-1.

1959: Bruins lose 2-1 to canadiens.

1960: Bruins beat rangers 3-0.

1963: Bruins beat canadiens 2-1.

1965: Bruins end game against maple leafs tied at 2.

1967: Bruins beat red wings 6-3.

1968: Bruins lose 3-1 to blackhawks.

1970: Gerry Cheevers shuts out penguins in 3-0 win.

1971: Bruins beat maple leafs 5-1.

1979: Bruins lose 5-1 to rangers.

1981: Bruins beat kings 5-4.

1982: Bruins end game against oilers tied at 2.

1985: Bruins end game against kings tied at 3. 1st bruins OT game on February 14.

1987: Bruins lose 5-4 to maple leafs.

1989: Bruins lose 5-2 to canucks.

1990: Bruins lose 3-2 to jets.

1993: bruins end game against lightning tied at 3.

1994: Cam Neely scores 2 goals in 3-2 OT win against kings.

1995: Bruins lose 5-3 to penguins.

1996: Bill Ranford shuts out whalers in 3-0 win.

2003: Mike Knuble and Joe Thornton each score 2 goals in 6-5 OT win against panthers.

2004: Bruins lose 5-4 in OT to blackhawks.

2009: Bruins lose 3-2 in SO to predators. 1st February 14 SO.

2012: Bruins lose 3-0 to rangers.

2016: Bruins lose 6-5 to red wings.

[holtbys-left-eyebrow]

the newest rookie is wearing 22 <3