Tag Archives: Nicklas Backstrom

Caution is Best Policy

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When it comes to concussions, patience and caution is the best policy.

Sixty-six players this season have suffered from concussions or from concussion-like symptoms throughout the NHL.

This article in the Washington Post concerning Nicklas Backstrom is enlightening and well researched for our fans.

Nick continues to be day to day. He is missed but he won’t be rushed back into play.

We care for Nick as a player and more importantly as a person.

He will have a long and productive career with us. He signed a 10 year contract with us as you all know.

Wish him well in his recovery.

Mike Green continues to skate and get back into shape. We hope to see him back in the line up in a few weeks. He is missed as well.

Injuries are a part of the game. Onward.

Thud

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Another tough and poor performance by us in Winnipeg.

After going up 1 to 0; we allow 4 goals against – 3 in a four minute time frame. We lose 4 to 1.

After sifting through a lot of noise – and focusing on signal; for us it usually comes down to:

How well is our core group performing; how are Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Mike Green and Alex Semin contributing to the team performance? They are still the straws the stir the drink. Semin scored one goal last night – Mike Green is still at home, sad to say.

How well are we playing on special teams? Our power play – is it contributing? We are zero for a long time now on the power play. Zero for five last night.

How well are we killing off penalties; we didn’t kill off enough last night. The Jets scored twice.

We have work to do. It is shocking to see we are til tied for the lead in the division at 10-6 and 1. Onward to Toronto. Thank you for your emails over night; I appreciate them all.

Videos Galore

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Here you go.

Enjoy. Watch.

All the video on demand about the Caps new season that you would want to consume.

I think our web site staff do great work for our fans. This is a good example.

This is the most comprehensive coverage of the start of the season from the players perspective.

I enjoyed Jeff Halpern’s comments and I thought Backstrom had the best line. Question… “What do you have to do to do win this season?”

Answer…”We need to score more goals than the other team”.

Fun and good stuff within. Thank you. Caps 365; All Caps all the time.

A Good Ongoing Series

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Peerless is writing good stuff; good analysis here.

We do have a core of young players that we started the rebuild around; ” the Young Guns” and we have added to it with even younger players of late – and then added to it with vets this off season.

This is all a part of a narrative of trying to find the goldilocks phenomenon; “Yum … just right”.

But clearly our highest paid players – Ovechkin, Semin, Backstrom and Green; are the straws that stir the drink.

Health plays a big role in their productivity.

I also think special teams play is key to our team’s productivity in the playoffs; and to the individual stats during the year for this core group.

Great power play during the regular season – and the playoffs – the better we will do as a team.

Good health helps a lot too!

Unemotional Response

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The Washington Capitals are now one of the fastest growing revenue teams in the NHL. We are driving a lot of revenue growth to the league and the NHL Players’ Association. The players receive a disproportionate piece of any and all revenues as per the CBA. Any revenue growth we generate for the league is good news for the players. And the league. Simple equation: We generate more revenues; the salary cap increases; the players get more dollars.

Our hyper growth can be directly attributed to our team success and our drafting and developing and retaining in a long term deal – Alex Ovechkin. In fact, you can trace our real success to literally the day we announced that Alex Ovechkin had signed his 13 year deal. Do some research and trace the success of the team. See what I mean? Since that signing, Alex has gone on to win the League MVP twice and then Player of Year trophy three times as selected by his peers. He has led the league in scoring and in goals twice. We have one of the best records in the NHL over the last three years as well. All since we announced his new contract. We sell out every game. We have a waiting list for season tickets. We have one of the largest full season ticket holder bases in the entire NHL. The long term deal was a great hockey decision and a great business decision.

More importantly, as we own the NBA team too and have seen what happened this off season with star players leaving their franchises in their prime, signing Alex to a long term deal was of great comfort and benefit to the most important constituency we have – our fans.

And we play in a building that we own now. No tax payer dollars went into constructing our building. We generate revenues for our community. We pay taxes. The revitalization of downtown DC can be attributed to the Verizon Center and Mr. Pollin’s courageous decision. There is a reason why the Capitals were named DC Chamber of Commerce’s “Company of the Year.” Everyone is benefitting from our revenue growth. We have a long term mortgage on our building. Other than player payroll our mortgage is our biggest line item expense. It is important for us to do as much as possible to “securitize” our future success. Hence long term deals to Alex Ovechkin and to Backstrom too.

The 13 year deal signed by Alex Ovechkin was a simple deal. His salary is straight-lined across the life of his contract. There was never an issue with the structure of the contract with the NHL. It was all done in the light of day – honest and transparent. By the rules. The writer of this article knows that. He is just mad because he didn’t have access to Alex Ovechkin when he wrote his book. We don’t agree with his point of view in his book and we won’t have anything to do with him and his book now. He is on his own.

Alex’s contract was NOT a long term front-loaded contract structured to achieve artificial low contract value for the purpose of achieving certain advantages under the salary cap. Nor was Backstrom’s deal. That is why they were approved and why we played by the rules. Alex will still be young enough when his deal ends to sign another contract too! As will Backstrom. The writer knows that. Why he lumps the deal in with these other deals is just mean-spirited and inspired by other factors known only to him.

The writer can say anything he wants about me. He doesn’t scare me. :-) He just can’t distort facts. We won’t let him and he is being called out on this one right here and now.