The votes are in and it’s official – the best of the last crop, by virtue of your votes, was Nicklas Backstrom and his sweet, puck-dangling ways. Let’s look at it one more time, shall we?
Yup. Still nice.
This week we’re rolling out a whole new crop of fun moving pictures from the past seven days – with a little extra thrown in, because we’re the giving kind. From slick moves to celebrations to silliness, this week has it all.
And away we go…
First up, Tom Wilson gets a pretty big milestone in pretty impressive fashion, as he picks up his first career NHL point with this awesome pass from his posterior. Notice how he’s able to not only maintain control of the puck but also whip it out to the point with great accuracy, despite the fact that he’s sliding, facing backwards and seated on the ice:
That first NHL point would soon be followed by the first NHL goal for Wilson… and as we all know, the first NHL goal for any member of the Capitals is always followed by the first time getting a face full of shaving cream courtesy of your captain.
Ah, the innocence of youth… the psychosis of Alex Ovechkin.
This is up there as one of Ovechkin’s better shaving cream assaults, of which there have been many. How many? Well, here’s just a sampling…
First, former Cap Mathieu Perreault gets the Ovechkin treatment:
Then an unsuspecting Marcus Johansson…
…an unperturbed Connor Carrick…
…and another former Cap, Cody Eakin, who narrowly avoids suffocation by shaving cream:
As renowned a prankster as Ovechkin has become, one would imagine that you can’t just shove towels full of shaving cream into the faces of your teammates forever and expect them not to fight back, can you?
Nope. So here’s Backstrom giving Ovechkin a taste of his own medicine to celebrate the captain’s birthday…
…and Brooks Laich making sure that Ovechkin’s “hot stick” celebration isn’t the only memory from that milestone evening:
Of course none of these would be possible without the original shaving cream attack, the one that started it all – Jeff Halpern teaching a young Ovechkin just how a captain acts, with this nationally-televised celebration of Alex’s 100th point of the season, way back in 2006:
…we now return you to your regularly scheduled GIFs.
After shaking off some early-season hiccups, Braden Holtby has been one of the team’s best players through the first month or so, and last night we saw more of the same awesomeness – including this beauty of a save that kept the game close and enabled the Caps to claw their way back in for the win:
The Holtbeast lives. Rolling right along…
It would be an understatement to say that last Friday’s matchup with the Flyers was a feisty affair. The explosion of fisticuffs – some more willing than others – in the third period was a throwback to Caps-Flyers (or really anyone-Flyers) duels of the early Patrick Division days.
But it didn’t all start in the third period. Note this scuffle between the benches, and keep your eye on Mikhail Grabovski – sneaky with the puck, sneakier in the scrum, as he takes offense to the shoving of Nate Schmidt and launches an all-out assault on the offending Flyer:
Grabo angry! Grabo GRAB FACES.
From feisty scuffles to funny celebrations, we go back to last night’s game and a pair of triumphant expressions of joy that are part of the same moment – and yet are too much to be contained in just one GIF.
No words needed, really, just… observe:
This team might actually be a little crazy. But it’s our kind of crazy, right?
Finally, with a visit to Phoenix on the horizon, we thought it was only appropriate to take a look back at one of the best moments in Caps-Coyotes history – and one of the crowned jewels of Ovechkin’s offensive collection. So a little Flashback Friday action for you, with a moment known simply as The Goal:
Never. Gets. Old.
So which of the GIFs from the past week (not including our nostalgic grab bag) gets your vote? Make your pick below!