Your savory breakfast links:
- Previews of tonight’s game against the Bruins from Vogs, Peerless, CSN Washington, and NHL.com, and be sure to check out 4 Sport Boston, Black and Gold Blog and our SB Nation partner, the great Stanley Cup of Chowder, for coverage from the other side of tonight’s match up.
- To refresh your memory, this is the second meeting of the season between the two teams, with the Caps turning in a dominant performance on Opening Night in Beantown and leaving with a 4-1 win.
- It looks like a bunch of you guys are gathering to watch tonight’s game. Enjoy! [FanShot]
- Notes from a somewhat eventful yesterday at Kettler… [Loose Pucks, Capitals Insider, D.C. Sports Bog]
- … and a couple of seemingly encouraging pictures from practices. [First, Second]
- Hey, a Caps column in The Post. [WaPo]
- Fresh power rankings are out, with the Caps holding onto the top spot at Sporting News and the LA Times, up one to first at The Hockey News and the National Post, up one to second at ESPN, holding at second at CBC and steady at third at TSN.
- Pierre McGuire called Mike Green and Jeff Schultz “the most underrated defensive pair in the NHL,” which is odd in that it’s guys like McGuire who make it possible for them to be underrated by bagging on their defensive abilities ad nauseum. [Loose Pucks]
- Fair to call Tom Poti and Schultz the Caps’ top two shut-down defensemen? I’d say so. [BtN]
- Brooks Laich gets well-deserved kudos for his comments on the Green suspension… [CBCSports]
- … while Alan May pulls no punches in giving his thoughts on what drove the suspension. [D.C. Sports Bog]
- Craig Laughlin on the last ten-game win streak… [Capitals]
- … and Ed Frankovic on that same season. [Ed Frankovic’s Blog]
- The Caps were scouting Sunday night’s Stars/‘Yotes game. [Stars Blog]
- You can’t talk Caps history without talking Ron Weber. [On Frozen Blog]
- Jason Chimera on Bambi, being a shrimp, and his new team. [Homer McFanboy]
- Analyzing the schedule the rest of the way (spoiler alert: it looks good if you’re a Caps fan). [On the Forecheck, dissected in a FanPost]
- Great find: photographic evidence of a Hershey Bears’ 2005 Christmas gathering. [RtR]
- Some really nice photos from Sunday’s game. [cobracg‘s Flickr stream]
- Speaking of photos, Alex Ovechkin, Alexander Semin and Nicklas Backstrom had their Olympic photo shoots the other day, and here are the results. [Getty Images]
- And here are still more pics from the Ducks, Panthers and Lightning games. [clydeorama]
- Comparing Backstrom to some of his high-profile fellow countrymen. [FanPost]
- “CSN switches Caps off CSN plus for Friday night, puts Wiz on it. Caps go to HD.” Win. [@dcsportsbog]
- A third jersey idea that recalls the not-too-distant past. [icethetics]
- A math-y rebuttal to “the Caps are getting fat on the weak sisters of the Southeast.” [FanPost]
- Keith Aucoin was named AHL Player of the Month for January. [Bears]
- Speaking of Aucoin, not to cue the inevitable chorus of “I don’t understand how a guy can be so productive in the AHL and not have it translate at all to the NHL,” but Aucoin and Alexandre Giroux have 16-game point streaks going during which they’ve combined for 72 points. Those are video game numbers. [HBH]
- There may not be a more under-discussed prospect in the organization than Patrick McNeill. [John Walton Hockey]
- Bear Tracks! [LDN]
- The real good news out of Hershey. Kudos, all. [John Walton Hockey]
- Site note: Lurking? C’mon in and join the fray. [FanPost]
- Finally, happy 43rd birthday to Arturs Irbe and happy 33rd to Jean-Luc Grand-Pierre (we must never forget 2003-04…).