Your savory breakfast links:
- Recaps of last night’s stayin’-alive victoire from us, Vogs, Monumental (Oates, Ovechkin, Holtby, Backstrom, Alzner), NHL.com, WaPo, CSNW, Frankovic, DSP, Peerless and RMNB.
- Alex Ovechkin hits the big 5-0 for the fifth time in his career. [Rink, Capitals Voice (audio), Monumental (video), WaPo, Puck Daddy, PHT, RMNB (and again), SI.com, CBS]
- From Elias: “Alex Ovechkin scored his 50th goal of the season in the Capitals’ 4-1 win at St. Louis. It’s the fifth time that Ovechkin has reached the 50-goal mark in his nine seasons in the NHL. The only other active NHL players with more than one season of 50 or more goals are Jaromir Jagr (3), Teemu Selanne (3), Dany Heatley (2), Jarome Iginla (2) and Steven Stamkos (2).”
- In what has become a far-too-frequent occurrence lately, two Caps collided (this time Troy Brouwer and Marcus Johansson) and the results weren’t pretty. [RMNB]
#Caps @ovi8 No. 50 pic.twitter.com/gp6QtLT4ZQ
— CapitalsPR (@CapitalsPR) April 9, 2014
- News and notes from yesterday’s pre-game:
- The Day in Drama featured Jaroslav Halak not starting because he wasn’t “100% comfortable” playing back in St. Loo and his coach all too happy to tell everyone about it. [Monumental video (Oates), WaPo, DC Sports Bog, Puck Daddy]
- Connor Carrick got back into the lineup, leaving a very green (but not Green) bottom-four. [CSNW]
- It’s one crazy world we live in when a 50-goal scoring Richard Trophy-winning wing would essentially be considered a “sell low” candidate. [Backhand Shelf]
- A brief history of Ovi’s 50ths. [CSNW]
- Last week was mostly “down,” so this week might be “out.” [Rink]
- Three-thousand shots into his career, Braden Holtby is looking pretty good, which is pretty good. [RMNB]
- “The Washington Capitals dumped the puck into the offensive zone 40 times at even strength during this game, only 1 resulted in an unblocked shot attempt.” Hmm… might want to try another tactic. [Talk the Red]
- Very fancy, Andre Burakovsky. [RMNB]
- How about a prospect report for March? [THW]
- Get ready for the Frozen Four with this primer. [USoH]
- Finally, is it Rick Tocchet‘s 50th birthday? You bet!