250th Post!

I am not one to blow my own horn, but...


Yup, my 250th post. I was hoping to get to 300 by the end of the season, but that didn't happen. I started this blog back in September of 2005 after reading a particular blog called Japer's Rink. Before that I had a piddly little geocities website that got very little traffic and was hard to update. I thought, "Well, if JP can do it, how hard can it be?"

Little did I know of the joy and hardship of putting together well thought out posts about a hockey team that has done little since the inception of this blog. I named it Puckhead's Thoughts because Puckhead was a nickname I was given by teammates when I played and mostly because "Garrett the Ferret" doesn't really scream hockey blog for a title.

I picked out three posts that were my most popular:

I Guess The Capitals Can Practice Now - Opening of the Kettler Capitals Iceplex at the Ballston mall. Complete with video.

Fearless Finals Prediction - I correctly predicted the NHL Finals with Carolina winning in 7 games. That won't happen for a while.

Ok Colorado, You've Had Your Night - The most popular post on Puckhead. Featured on deadspin.com and sort of put my little blog on the map amongst other blogs.

Okay, enough tooting my own horn.

--Other Notes--

• The race for the last coveted playoff spot in the eastern conference is making for high drama. The Capitals can play spoiler again against a team in the hunt. The Montreal Canadiens are knocking on the door of that 8th place spot held by Carolina. The Caps could make things a bit more difficult for that to happen.
• Earning official spots in the playoffs are Buffalo, Detroit, Nashville and Anaheim. No surprise here, but would like to see Buffalo steal the President's Trophy from Detroit.
• Todd Fedoruk's season has ended after taking a shot from Colton Orr during a fight in the Flyers/Rangers game. While this was a "clean" fight, NHL still has to face it's critics that the sport is too violent. My only response is that it's late in the season, guys are playing with sprained joints, bruised bodies and beat up faces. An 82 game schedule takes a lot out of a player physically. Fedoruk could have been able to withstand a hit like that earlier in the season. But when the body is worn, it's at it's most vulnerable.

That's all I got.

NHL Gets It Right (for once)

Suspensions were handed out today following the rough play that ensued at MSG between the Capitals and Rangers. Cap's tough guy Donald Brashear got a one game suspension for the sucker punch on Aaron Ward (which I might have given him a three to five game suspension). Ranger's tough guy Colton Orr got the worst of it after checking Alex Ovechkin high in the face, getting a 5 game suspension (I would have given him 10).

That should have some enforcers thinking twice about hitting Ovie again. Although I think there will be more shots to come his way. You can't hit the prodigy of the National Hockey League and get away with it. If Sid "the Kid" Crosby had been hit in that manner, I almost guarantee that the league would have thrown the book at Orr.

The Caps now are hurting again to fill it's ranks. With Brashear out and several Caps feeling under the weather, we could see more Bears in Caps uniforms when they face off with the Phoenix Coyotes although GMGM doesn't see that happening. If the Capitals can weather this little storm and get some big wins in '07, playoffs could still be in the picture.