How do you say "ouch" in Russian?

My guess is that many members of the Russian Olympic team are red in the race right now, and it's not from the cold. A great post from Greg Wyshynski wraps up the Russian loss to Canada in the Olympics:

Russia was embarrassed. To the point where Russian NHL player participation
in the 2014 Games in Sochi is now guaranteed; there's no other way to cleanse
the stench from this defeat. This game was supposed to be a classic. Instead, it
was a coronation for the Canadians in this rivalry.

If Russia is serious about pitting the Superleague against the NHL as the best place to play hockey in the world and keeping their talent in the Motherland , making the Russian team exciting to watch would be a good step in that direction.

A shiny new season!

Is that the smell of cupcakes in the air? Or sunshine? Or just general happy feelings? Must be the start of hockey season! I am in grad school application hell (although no longer traveling the big ol' world, I once again have a kinda permanent address) but I will be making it to DC this season for some games. In the meantime, I leave you with a Caps win and this gem (fast forward to the 1:30 mark):

Suck it Tortorella!

Even this wandering fan girl heard about the Caps big comeback...Hurray!

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Time to make it official...

Wow, it feels like a lot longer then four months since I lasted posted here. That might have something to do with how often I used to post here and how much time I spent thinking about hockey!

I have spent the last four months making some whirlwind changes and traveling quite a bit. I have been everywhere from Vegas to Ireland, and I am off in a week to travel across Asia. Pretty fun, but as I expected, not a lot of time for hockey or a blog.

It seems like its time to officially sign off, but not to say goodbye! You never know what is around the corner, and I could very well end up back in DC pretty soon, blogging, eating copious amounts of Five Guys, and bumming off work to get to the Caps game.

Thank you to all the people who took the time to read this blog! It was amazing fun and I made a lot of new friends. I especially want to thank the folks at On Frozen Pond and CapsChick for being such terrific fellow bloggers. Good luck to everyone in the New Year and take care!

With lots of affection - - Shmee

PS: I'll be keeping the site up for several more months and you can still read the occasional missive from me at Hockey's Ladies of Greatness.

PPS: I have been sorting through my neglected Cap Addiction mailbox, and I have a few emails about a new site with a very similar name to Cap Addiction. Nope, its not me blogging at a new home and I dont have any affiliation with that site.

Decision 2008

No, not a post about politics. Though I did just get my hair cut and I asked for "young and fun". Instead, I got this.

I have posted a bit on Cap Addiction about my hectic spring and summer, which saw me traveling for work about 80% of the time. Some of it was fun, some stressful and some of it just plain sucked. Like being stuck at Albuquerque Airport during Hurricane Dolly. I also had some bad moments about leaving this blog unattended for so long, but there wasnt much I could do about it. And as usual with me, I eventually got over it.

With the first pre-season game tomorrow, the decision I have to make is over my season tickets. With all that traveling, something became really clear to me -- I want to continue traveling. And not for work, and not just in America. So after a two week stint on the road, I came back to my office and resigned. And for right now, all my future plans entail is a road trip I am leaving for tomorrow, a trip to Central America in November, and an extended trip to Asia and the South Pacific in December and January. Not much time for hockey, eh?

I have been holding onto my season tickets, even as I booked my flights and started packing up my apartment (yup, I'm leaving DC too). Even as I am writing this post, my season tickets are sitting on my dresser. And even as I get ready to leave tomorrow, I dont know that I am going to be able to call and cancel them. I have every logical reason to give up my tickets and every emotional one to keep them and try to get to any game that I can. Decision 2008 isnt going to be an easy one for me, at least in one sense.

ESPN kinda blows

So the one nice thing about traveling this much for work (well, two nice things -- I just got to spend a weekend in San Francisco), is that I get to watch some TV. I'm not really a huge TV watcher in my normal life (normal life = being home 95% of the time) but spending this much time in hotels and airports means I watch a LOT of TV. And since most hotel TVs give you HBO, 4 channels of ESPN or CNN, ESPN seemed like the best choice. HBO always that Bunny Ranch show on, and while I'm sure plenty of people enjoy it, its not really my thing. CNN just annoys me...Wolf Blizter has got to be the worst fake anchor name of all time.

I stopped watching ESPN a handful of years ago, when they decided beach volleyball and bowling where more important to broadcast then hockey. But even when I stopped watching, I had no idea that it had so completely gone down the tubes. ESPN kinda blows.

Problem 1: They have nothing on hockey. Fine, self explanatory. Its summer, and they really dont cover hockey anyway.

Problem 2: ESPN is like CNN's stepchild. Everything is on loop. Constantly. I started putting ESPN on in the mornings, and in the hour it takes for me to shower, put on make up, and slap some gunk in my hair, they repeat the same news, the same teasers, the same commericals, over and over. Nothing original whatsoever. By the time I left California, I could perfectly imitate Jeremy Schaap's voice saying, "Why Joe Torre isnt upset over Manny being Manny...coming up next". Except it never came up next. They just looped back to same news stories they showed 15 minutes earlier.

And this isnt just on ESPN news...its every ESPN channel. And when they arent busy looping the same news, its either those SportsCenter commercials (can I recommend that they spend less time on the commercials and more time on original programming?) or beach volleyball. Or lacrosse. Or college wrestling.

Problem 3: The jokes. Oh, the jokes. I know the jokes are supposed to be aimed at the audience in some sort of "I mean this ironically but not really if you laugh and no one is as smart as I (an ESPN writer) so even if you dont laugh, I am laughing at you for not laughing" kind of way. Yes, I can discern all that from the smirks on the faces of these anchors when they deliver their not funny jokes. But seriously, stop it with the jokes. It's a little pathetic.

I am moving back to HBO. When they dont have Bunny Ranch on, they have Generation Kill on loop, and at least I kinda like that show. Much better then watching Jeremy Schaap preen at the camera, AGAIN.

PS: I know many of you already came to this conclusion long ago, so pardon me for being a little slower to get there. I really didnt watch it until the past couple months or so and I'll probably never watch it again. Until I am in an airport next week.

Now we just need Mike Comrie!

So the Caps signed Jose Theodore. I can only say...that's hot.

Photo from thesuperficial.com