I usually collect all the stories and tweets for ‘crisis’ situations for a “What They’re Saying” fanpost. This round was too depressing and I didn’t.

oxymoronic hysterical journalism. He’s just looking for the new shiny coin to tarnish since the one he holds so dear needs to be dropped in acid to be cleaned.

Its just noise.

Media has become so decentralized that to stay relevant, people must scream louder and fiercer at increasingly less relevant information in order to get eyeballs.

 Say something controversial and you get attention. That’s the new reality and it works.

If he was such an ass why did they ask him to stay for the closing ceremony?

I guess Wilbon didn’t want to talk about Hanna Storm’s f-me boots.

(h/t to Nate:)

Wilbon, 19 days ago:

Ovechkin is the best player in the NHL right now. He’s sixth in assists and we don’t think of him as a playmaker, really. The rage he plays with is irresistible. Goodness.

http://j.mp/CiQAD

I can’t wait until the Post’s next round of buy-outs. Hopefully Wilbon is OUT. As far as I’m concerned, he contributes exactly nothing to their sports section.

I’m about tired of the lobby that says: “at least they’re talking about hockey”

It’s like we’re congratulating them for remembering to breathe. They’re sports journalists in a town where the only functional sport is Hockey. How hard is it to learn about it? Clearly they just hope that it goes away, because they aren’t putting any effort into attempting to learn it and are just throwing dangerous, ignorant rhetoric out into the world. People that don’t understand will be tarnished by it.

Thank goodness this team is supported by the best communication staff in the league.

I’m surprised nobody has mentionned it already, and I looked it up just to make sure I didn’t miss it when it happened, but Crosby never won the World Championships, Ovechkin did (once). Crosby played once and Canada finished 4th, although he finished first in scoring.
Everything else Wilbon says, he’s entitled to his opinions, but facts are facts, and that one is just not true. If it was he’d be memeber of the “Triple Gold” and probably the youngest, and we’d never hear the end of it.
I fear, unfortunately, that in the minds of many, Crosby will stay ahead of Ovechkin because of team success. In my mind, Crosby in the beginning of his career has been blessed with, well, luck. And we all know we need it in hockey. Sometimes you create your own luck, but sometimes it just happens. It’s not like Crosby carried the team through the Olympics. In fact he played pretty poorly in the 2 games I watched (Russia and Final) in my opinion but in the end he got the winning goal, and that’s all people will remember.
But we’re Caps fans first, OV fans second, so first things first, let’s win a Cup, the praise for Ovechkin will rain down once we win (right….)
On a side note, I was blown away by Kane last night. I never saw him play much really, but that kid really carried the team throughout the game. I would have loved hime to get the game-winner.

Once again, Peerless does it best.

I think after this Olympics that Ovi has now learned who his “real” friends and “real” fans are. Most of the Ovi bandwagon jumpers have probably abandoned him at this point. And even many Caps fans now feel that Crosby is more mature and a better role model than Ovi.

Granted Ovi didn’t do the right thing by pushing the video photographer but it seemed to me that he was being hounded.

As for Crosby, let’s face it, it’s easier to be nice to the press and nice to everyone after a win. But would Crosby necessarily act that well if his team had lost an important game in an embarrassing fashion and much worse than expected and he were being hounded by the press? That’s a very good question that remains to be answered. I’m not saying that Crosby would behave worse under the same circumstance. I’m saying it’s easier to be nice to others when things are going well than when things are going badly.

I’m utterly fascinated that Ovechkin’s critcised for relative inaccessibility to NA press. Was Kane hanging out with Russian reporters? Did Toews host an espresso bar for the Finnish media? The guy was there as a Russian, not as a feed trough for imbeciles. The team had one relationship to foreign media, and Ovechkin was exactly right not to forge a separate peace.
A mind less lazy than Wilbon’s might praise Ovechkin for putting his ‘Russian’ before his ‘superstar’ during the Olympic games. (And in Russia, I think that girl’s camera is meeting a porcupine halfway.)

…Crosby doesn’t have an IIHF World Championship Gold Medal. The last time Canada won it in 2007, he wasn’t on the team. The only player who joined the IIHF’s “triple crown” club or whatever they call it with Canada’s win was Eric Staal, who was on the 2007 Canadian IIHF team.

As for Wilbon, he used to be relevant, but now he’s a TV talking head looking to stir up controversy to get rating and to make sure he out-does Cornholio Kornheiser. Wilbon is looking to get himself barred from the VC by Ted if he keeps this up. Not an issue now for the Caps, but when Ted owns the Wizards…

When Ovechkin gets the Stanley Cup from Gary Bettman this June, Wilbon will be singing Ovechkin’s praises…