Another week is drawing to a close, which means it’s time to look back at the best moments captured in GIF form – but first, let’s look back even further at the one that captured your hearts (and your votes) last week:
A wizard, a magician and a sorceror all in one, that Nick Backstrom.
And on we roll to the last seven days – first up, Philipp Grubauer has made the case that he’s made of rubber bands before. This time? We’re starting to think he’s Gumby’s long-lost brother:
Gruby. Says. Nein. (See, because that’s German for “no”…)
Now, we don’t actually know what “no” is in Czech…but that’s okay, because neither does the goalie for the Czech team at this year’s World Juniors tournament. Or at least he didn’t at this particular moment, which saw Riley Barber – make that Caps’ prospect, team captain and American Hero-in-the-making Riley Barber – give Team USA their first goal of the tournament:
It’s ugly and yet almost beautiful. Because you just know Riley totally meant to do that.
Moving right along…
Alex Ovechkin has made a career out of terrorizing opposing goaltenders. No one has a shot quite like his, and no one uses that shot anywhere near as much – one gets the feeling that goalies just really don’t like facing this guy. So naturally Ovechkin scores his historic 400th career goal… on an empty net:
And somewhere on the Carolina bench, Cam Ward breathes a sigh of relief.
Speaking of benches, the Caps’ bench was a pretty busy place earlier this week, as Corey Perry decided to stop by for a surprise visit… surprising even to him, actually, thanks to some gentle urging by Jason Chimera:
There just aren’t many guys in the League you would rather see rudely dumped into the bench more than this guy, am I right? Just look at Mikhail Grabovski‘s face next to him – he totally agrees. (Although Martin Erat, who had the misfortune to be sitting there at the time, might not in this particular moment.)
And there you have it, the last GIFs of 2013!
But before you go vote for your favorites, a little Flashback Friday action – because we would be remiss, with a visit to Buffalo looming, if we didn’t recall one of the greatest moments in franchise history:
It’s the goal which catapulted the Caps into the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time (and to this point, the only time), and cemented Joe Juneau‘s place as a DC hockey legend. A thing of beauty to this day.
Happy Friday, everyone!
