Dude, Shut Up!

Congratulations to Steve Eminger! He is Capital Addiction's "Dude, shut up" award winner for the week of November 11th.

How did Steve get to be our lucky winner? Lets review:

Steve decides to unleash his "frustration" by giving a few choice quotes to Tarik El-Bashir, Caps beat writer for the WaPo. These include -

"It's past frustrating," he said following yesterday's practice at Kettler Capitals Iceplex. "It's just a matter of them putting me in the lineup, and putting me in there for more than one game, or moving me to somewhere I'm going to play. Because clearly I'm not in their plans."

and then

"There should be room for guys on this defense to come in and out of the lineup," he said. "It's not Anaheim where there's Chris Pronger, Scott Niedermayer and Francois Beauchemin, who are complete locks to play. It's a situation where it's a young team and there's going to be a lot of mistakes. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I thought I would have been given more of a chance."

So Steve is frustrated and unhappy. Yup, we all get it.

But you know what else I get? That Steve Eminger has had THREE seasons to prove himself. Was he rushed up from the minors? Sure. But so were defensemen Mike Green and Jeff Schultz. And Mike Green and Jeff Schultz are learning from the mistakes that they made in their rookie seasons and have improved considerably. While they are still working on their games, every time I see them skate, I see an evolved player from last year. That makes it really hard for me to have a lot of sympathy for a guy who has had THREE seasons to define himself for the Capitals. Steve Eminger is still really young, and I think he has a future in the NHL ahead of him, but I am unclear on how such a public temper tantrum is helping him.

And to be fair, I asked myself last night what Steve Eminger was trying to achieve. Will giving this interview help him get playing time? I dont think so. Will it put him in the good graces of his coach or GM? Definitely not. Will it be helpful in a lockerroom that is already trying to battle through losses? No, and in fact it is pretty selfishly timed. Will it help him get traded? In his interview, he claims that he is not ready to be traded. So all this article ends up being is an illtimed tantrum. Not to mention that GMGM has a good point in Tarik's article: part of building a good team is having solid depth players. The Caps learned this the hard way last season when they were decimated by injuries, and had no one to turn to.

So Steve Eminger, we have one thing to say to you: Dude, shut up.

NOTE:Hair Gel, you should be very proud of yourself. This week, you had to compete with Sean Avery, Darcy Tucker, and Maxim Kondratiev in order to win.