Live Q&As

Hey people. Welcome, and please do your best to get me to say something stupid and controversial, causing others to link to my chat.

This is a great question, in asmuch as I'm currently sitting in my living room doing this chat instead of talking to hockey players in Ballston. So no, I won't be going to Montreal, at least not for games 3/4. The theory is that I can do what I do nearly as well at home, and that it's a lot cheaper and there's much less time wasted in airports, cabs and/or poutine shops.

What day is his next start? I'd say I doubt it for that, too, for all the above reasons, plus the fact that it's a Nats thing. You know, because no one clicks on Nats things. Not because I don't love and adore the franchise.

Thanks.

I'm pretty sure I was third runner-up in the "posting bad photos of banned signs taken out of stadium garbage cans" category.

Yeah, this would be my guess. But this is probably the easiest guess in the world to make. "Caps Sweep" just seems like there's too little margin for error, though that's what Alan May is saying on CSN.

As long as we're feeling so confident, is it time yet to handicap most likely second-round opponents? I'll say it goes like this: Pittsburgh, Philly, Ottawa, Boston. Philly is inflated a bit, because if they win there's a 100 percent chance they'd play the Caps.

I don't remember at all writing this last year, but I will ask them if this is possible. It seems like a no-brainer.

I think you could spin it as "objective, paid analyst" or as "strongly opinionated, direct analyst." He's not supposed to not have opinions. That wouldn't be interesting.

His opinion is that McNabb is overrated, was the benificiary of having a good defense for years, and consistently failed to excel in key moments. You can disagree with it, but that's his opinion, and I don't think he crossed any lines of good taste.

His opinion is also that the Redskins aren't good enough to become a playoff team merely with a slight upgrade at quarterback. You can argue this a lot of different ways: that McNabb is more than a slight upgrade, that NFL teams can improve their talent dramatically in a single offseason, that he's forgetting the impact of Shanahan over Zorn. But that's his opinion, and I don't think it's necessarily absurd.

I think the biggest improvement this year is coming from the guy in the headset, though. I believe that Jim Zorn is not a good head coach, and that Shanahan is. If the Skins make dramatic improvements this season, it'll be fun trying to figure out which of these things gets the most credit.

Who has he ticked off? Caps fans, for sure, but I'm not sure anyone else. I guess some Redskins fans with the nickname column, and most West Virginia fans....am I missing anyone?

Tony K worked in this market for two decades while ticking off Caps fans at every turn. So no, I don't believe Mike Wise is a short timer.

I do believe that it's just absurd how many people come up to me and say "Mike Wise!" We just don't look that much alike. Plus he's like four inches taller than me.

To be honest, it'll be a lot easier for him to have one bad game and have the entire continent screaming "Told you so, told you so!" -- than for him to have two or three solid games and have people come around. It's a lot less fun to say "Well, maybe the Caps are sort of a B+ in goal with enough offensive firepower to make that irrelevant" than it is to say "the situation in net will prevent them from a serious Cup run."

I agree. Barf. I guess answering this question is a failure to ignore the topic, but I'm almost positive I've written zero blog entries on Tiger Woods in the past five months.

Also, I can't be the only one who thinks this was all karma from inviting Tony Romo to be his pro-am partner at a D.C. golf event, right? Next time, choose Darrell Green, and everything will work out just fine.

Um, they were ranked last on my list. There are four possibilities, and I had them fourth. I'm not sure how much lower I could have put them.

There ya go.

I'm going to come right out and say it's more likely that I win a Pulitzer for my coverage of herding trials than the Caps score two goals total in this series.

Though if I'm banned from Verizon Center for negative Caps work, would I still be permitted to go to the horse show? I love the horse show. Horses are way more entertaining than herders.

I think you can do it moreso with quartebacks than just about any other player in any other sport. We've seen so many big NFL playoff games in recent years decided by quarterbacks in two-minute drill type situations, where they're more in charge of what happens than a single hockey player could ever be.

I like Wilbon, understand where he's coming from and agree that if Crosby finishes with four Cups to Ovechkin's none, that will be an indenible part of their legacy. Even if Crosby's Penguins beat Ovechkin's Caps this year, I'd say it's a worthy angle of inquiry. But I wouldn't hold the Olympics up; each man was too small a part of a game filled with too great an overall disparity.

And while he wasn't great in Game 7  last year, you really can't accuse Ovechkin of not showing up in the playoffs.

I have no idea what Lindsay will do, but she sort of already is a D.C. institution. There aren't too many media folks who do one job for 50 years and then retire any more, and it's not like the 11 o'clock news broadcasts will become more and more popular over the next few decades.

Maybe she'll decide to become a blogger, now that I think about it. That's really where the glory is.

I think a lot of knowledgeable fans -- or at least one knowledgeable fan with a huge forum through his blog -- would argue that the penalty kill is perhaps the issue most to be feared during the playoffs.

I wasn't trying to argue that Jose Theodore is setting the world on fire; that would be illegal, anyhow. I was just saying it might not be accurate to say Montreal has an advantage in net.

As for the plus-minus, Jeff Schultz is, simply, Mr. Nasty.

Well, you certainly see old guard Caps fans unhappy with bandwagon leaping media members who don't know too much about the sport. And, at least in online comments, you see chatter here and there about some behavior/cheers from the newer fans, and about the prices of tickets now that the Caps are winning.

But largely I'd say no, I haven't seen any unwelcoming behavior to any new fans, and I've never heard a peep suggesting that older fans wish newer fans would stop showing up. I'd hope at some point we could stop talking about the bandwagon; this is now three straight years of playoffs. Even if you didn't get interested before the first playoff run, I don't think three straight seasons of being a fan is really "bandwagon" any more.

Well, those are two massive media markets, but as you point out, the games will be shown there. Outside of the Philly/NYC area, who's a bigger star, Mike Richards or Sidney Crosby? Do people want to turn in to see the Devils, who allowed the lowest number of goals in the NHL, or the Caps/Penguins, who were 1 and 2 in the East in scoring?

I'm not sure these are dramatic differences in ratings one way or the other, but I sort of can see the logic.

He is massive in all of Canada, but especially in Vancouver and Montreal, from what media members and Caps PR folks say. They all said that the scene in Vancouver this year was unlike anything they've seen in any other city. That's the scene that had Bruce Boudreau comparing Alex to the Beatles.

But yeah, he's also just huge in Montreal. It should make for some good scene for the traveling media folks.

Seems like it's been pretty much 100 percent participation in recent years. Backstrom is just about a complete scratch in facial hair. Maybe Carlson too. But I'll bet they're all in on it.

I have a mustache as of this writing. Not sure how long I'll keep it.

Last Friday at the Verizon Center. It'll be/was awesome.

Yeah. But not the longest in the NHL, that's for sure. I'd say he can survive an opening game meltdown, which he couldn't survive last year. If he has two bad games though? People will at least start asking the questions.

I just don't have a good memory. I don't remember this at all. But I believe you, because you're an anonymous person on the Internet.

But (and this is obviously belaboring the point) does this "bellyaching" have any real world implications, or is it just a few people posting comments online? Sure, if Caps fans throw hats on the ice after someone with two goals scores during a shootout, the old timers will snicker, but that's hardly offensive behavior. I mean, if old guard fans are roughing up new fans in the bathrooms and stenciling their sternums with "1974 OG," I'd be interested. If it's just snarky Internet comments, I think we could all move on with our lives.

I'd recommend something about the Expos, but I don't have anything great. People, any ideas?

Tracking down those three gents would make for a good story, huh?

And I don't know what any of them are doing, so I'm not being purposefully insensitive if one of them has been struck by some tragedy.

Also, if I were Bill Mikkelson, I'd definitely get a personalized "Minus 82" license plate.

Gee, are you hearing a lot of stories about a site being close to finalized? I mean, where are we even talking about now? I like Kevin Payne's strategy of a media blackout, but it doesn't give lots of reason to play for Opening Day 2013 in a new stadium.

As for the 0-3, this is the rare upside of being the MLS team in a five-pro-sport market. Fans justly complain when winning United teams don't make the front of sports, but when the team isn't winning, at least you don't have to worry about columnists dropping any hammers. They're too busy talking about the bandwagons for other teams.

So you can be a bandwagon fan who does know hockey, then? I don't think those are really the subject of this dispute, if there even is a dispute, which I don't think there really is. I think the pseudo-fake-dispute is whether hockey newbies are somehow diluting the purity of the fan base.

I still maintain that someone could throw a hat in the above circumstance as a joke. But no one agrees with me.

I don't think you could find a Nats fan who disagrees with you on this. The lack of Actavation was just infuriating, even to objective observers. Manny was a terrific guy (or is, I guess), but even Jim Zorn could get fired up once in a while. It seemed like all the criticism about the lack of fire made Manny dig his heels into that vanilla pudding, refusing to get mad simply to prove the point that he could be effective without public displays of anger.

Obviously, after he was fired, enough players made it clear that they would have appreciated some vinegar. Curious to see what the strike zone for Nats' pitchers looks like on Wednesday, post-ejection.

It used to be standard practice in any sport to make expansion teams horrifically loserific in their first 70 or so seasons, right? I remember how outraged I felt when the Panthers and Jaguars did so well in the NFL playoffs in 96. Just didn't seem fair.

Plus, it's much more memorable now, 35 years later, to be able to look back on a historically awful inaugural season instead of a merely mediocre one. Wonder how many people there are who have been season ticket holders every season of the Caps existence?

So now after I'm defending the old timers, you have to go and drop that, huh?

Will there be less excitement when the Caps dip in the standings? Obviously. Old timers will be less excited, and newcomers will be less excited, and the media will be less excited. Will people who care about the Caps right now stop caring entirely? If they do, then they don't really care. Don't worry about 'em. Try to be happy. You can do it.

Let me run this one by my editor, but something tells me if I'm not going to Montreal for an actual Washington Capitals hockey game, I'm not going to Manitoba for a story about a dude with a Minus 82 rating from 1975, before I was born.

Also, everyone tells me that Calgary is a much, much, much more enjoyable city than Winnipeg. True or not true? I've only been to three Canadian provinces, which is a real personal failing.

Ooh, that's a good question. And what would the reaction be? Combine the Baltimore-based Caps fans with the Redskins-haters with the McNabb haters, and it might be surprisingly mixed. But I'd guess the cheers would win out.

He is going to be on PTI tonight, from what I understand. Maybe they'll ask him about the Caps.

Tarik reports that Bruce Boudreau says Backstrom is "ill" and questionable for Game 1. Guess this is why the team traded for 17 extra forwards back in March. Unfortunately, none of them scored 100 points.

As for Fedorov, one of the Russian reporters (Dmitry Chesnokov?) wrote that Fedorov planned to be in D.C. during the playoffs. If he is, I'm guessing his first interview goes to either Caps.com or NBC 4. Hopefully he'll have a red beard.

Ok, I'm off to try to find more controversial French language newspaper stories. Enjoy the playoffs, everybody. Can't say that too often around these parts.