FanHouse OlieKolzig

Every Monday morning The Ice Sheet will take a close look at everything that's happened in the NHL since Friday night at 5:00 p.m. -- or if need be, anything else the author wants to bleat about. To read them all, click here.

As someone who counts himself as a fan of the Washington Capitals, I'm having trouble putting the return of Olie Kolzig to Washington as a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning tonight into any larger context.

Don't get me wrong, as someone who's been a resident of the Washington metropolitan area for more than 20 years, I know exactly how much Kolzig means to this franchise, especially as I got to see so many of his greatest -- and lowest -- moments up close at both Verizon (nee MCI) Center and the since demolished Capital Centre.

Ever since the start of the 1997-98 season Kolzig was the man and that was all there was to know -- both on and off the ice. And one of the most enjoyable hockey moments of my life remains traveling to the team's practice in the dead of night following its win over Buffalo in the 1998 Eastern Conference Finals.

One by one, the team stepped onto the ice in street clothes to a thunderous ovation from a packed house, with Kolzig stepping onto the ice last -- a recognition that it was his effort more than anyone else's that had brought the team to the brink of a championship.

Every Monday morning The Ice Sheet will take a close look at everything that's happened in the NHL since Friday night at 5:00 p.m. To read them all, click here.

On Saturday morning when I passed along the news that Petr Prucha was actually going to get into the lineup for Saturday's Rangers-Lightning tilt in Prague, I also made a point of linking to a rather angry Larry Brooks column where the Slap Shot columnist let loose with every little complaint he had about the way the Rangers were handling their pre-season. After giving it a read, you could be forgiven for thinking the team was in a bit of disarray:

It's all about Renney coaching a team without Jagr and Shanahan to lean on, and it's all about this group filling the huge voids created with the decision to dispose of the team's post-lockout identity as if it were toxic.

It's all about one of the most vanilla Rangers teams in memory bonding in order to form a unit greater than the sum of its underwhelming parts.

Well, here we are a little less than 48 hours later, and all is forgotten in the wake of a pair of 2-1 victories over the revamped Lightning. Rangers newcomers Markus Naslund and Wade Redden combined for two goals and two assists over the weekend, as the New Yorkers pretty easily dominated the run of play as the Lightning played against type. While new owners Oren Koules and Len Barrie spent most of the Summer stacking the team with loads of new offensive weapons, it was their goalies, Mike Smith and Olie Kolzig, who kept things close, stopping 76 of 80 shots over the course of two games.

Late last night we passed along the information that long-time Washington goaltender Olie Kolzig wouldn't be back in a Capitals uniform next season. But over at ESPN.com, they might not actually notice that he's gone.

Take a gander at the screen shot I captured a couple of minutes ago. One thing is for sure -- that's not Olie Kolzig. This is Olie Kolzig.

So who is it? After a quick consultation with my colleague, Earl Sleek, we discovered that it's actually Anaheim Ducks defenseman Sean O'Donnell.

Hockey Nerd Tuesday is a feature on NHL FanHouse that chronicles the stat-heads, gear geeks and fanboys (and girls) who spend an uncomfortable amount of time putting the "fan" in fanatic. Have a hockey nerd you'd like to see featured? E-mail Greg Wyshynski with the details.

If I attempted to draw a caricature of Nicklas Backstrom of the Washington Capitals, it would look like a post-bender Owen Wilson stuffed into a Pepsi can. Which is to say that it wouldn't look nearly as good as Paul Nichols's awesome work pictured here.

Nichols has a new blog called Capitals Art where he appears to be slowly cartooning his way through the Washington roster, having already drawn players like Donald Brashear and Olie Kolzig. (I'm hoping Olie doesn't get around to discovering his caricature, because his forehead is about a 27-head. The guy's got a temper.)

Nichols's other cartooning site doesn't exactly appeal to my Blue State sensibilities, but one of the great things about hockey fandom is the way ideology and politics usually stay out of the rink. He's got an eye for these Washington players, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he does next. In fact, he's looking for fans to select which former Capital he'll take a crack at: Rod Langway, Dale Hunter, Mike Gartner or Dennis Maruk. Might I suggest Option B, with a goofy drawing of Pierre Turgeon in celebratory anguish crumbled on the ice next to him?

Previously on FanHouse's Hockey Nerd Tuesday:
Bubble Trick Shots
O Canada, the Toronto Maple Leafs Suck

The most immediate difference between the recently deposed Glen Hanlon and new Washington Capitals head coach Bruce Boudreau -- besides a power play that has suddenly eliminated the urge from Caps fans to scream "decline the penalty" during home games? Postgame press conference demeanor.

Even after victories, Hanlon's words were smart but measured. Boudreau, by contrast, is a virtual quote machine. The 52-year-old coach has been kicking around the minor leagues since the 1992-93 season, waiting for this chance, and I can imagine he made many a bush-league scribe happy with his postgame comments. After Saturday night's 5-2 win over Carolina, a reporter said he had heard Capitals brawler Donald Brashear call the coach "Mr. Boudreau," and wondered if that was out of respect or fear. "Well, it ain't fear," the coach deadpanned.

Boudreau's the kind of coach who tells the media that "it's pretty cool" to finally have a shot in the NHL after managing the bench for teams like the Muskegon Fury, the Fort Wayne Komets and the Lowell Lock Monsters. He's the kind of coach that will go into a humorous story about his son in a youth hockey tournament during a postgame press conference, and begin that story by saying, "I won't bore ya's..."

By all accounts, he's a solid hockey coach with a classic hockey personality to match. Throw in a lifetime in the minor leagues, and he's the personification of Slap Shot lore. So it shouldn't shock anyone that Boudreau has an interesting connection to the 1977 Paul Newman hockey classic.

I'm not finding a whole lot of fight video in my late night wanderings, so I thought I'd share some footage from the past, in this case a classic brawl between the Boston Bruins and the Washington Capitals from November 21, 1998:

This game is so popular, that NESN regularly replays it as part of its "Bruins Classics" program. Because after all, reliving the past is more profitable than actually trying to win in the present. Horribly unfair, I know, but it wouldn't be the NHL Fanhouse if it wasn't!

Thanks to D.C. Sports Chick for the pointer.

After last night's 5-2 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Washington Capitals held a 15-minute closed-door meeting, one that was apparently spurred by a penalty taken during in the game by winger Alexander Semin that led directly to Dan Boyle's game winning goal. Whatever was said during the meeting, Washington's best player, Alex Ovechkin, didn't take it very well:

Afterward the players met for about 15 minutes behind closed doors. Although no one would divulge exactly what was said, when the meeting ended, all-star left wing Alex Ovechkin emerged from the locker room and smashed his stick repeatedly against the wall and a trash can until it broke into four pieces, according to those who witnessed the episode. Ovechkin's iPod and headphones also were destroyed, crumpled in the hallway.

Later, both Semin and Ovechkin left the arena without speaking to the media. The undisputed leader of the Washington locker room, goalie Olie Kolzig, later said that while Ovechkin wasn't the target of what was discussed during the meeting, "He's obviously our guy. But it was something he didn't want to hear."

Last week in Washington after a loss to Pittsburgh, Ovechkin admitted that he was frustrated, not exactly a surprise with the way the season is winding up -- with an undermanned squad playing hard, yet being undone by a combination of bad luck and bad breaks.

I'm sitting at home watching the Red Wings play the Blue Jackets in Columbus, and I couldn't help but notice NBC play-by-play voice Mike Emrick (one of my favorites) sing the praises of Red Wings goalie Dominik Hasek. I'm paraphrasing, but Emrick seemed to indicate that he was impressed by both Hasek's win total (36) as well as his GAA, a league-leading 2.10.

But when I take a look at Hasek's stat line, the number that stands out is save percentage, in his case .909, identical to the number posted by Olie Kolzig of the Washington Capitals. Of course, when you look closer, you'll also notice that though the two goalies have played approximately the same amount of minutes this year, that Kolzig has faced almost 500 more shots.

I wonder what Kolzig's numbers would look like playing behind that Detroit defense.

What does that tell us? For one thing, it's clear that a huge part of Detroit's success is keeping the shot count down and keeping the sight lines open so your goalie can see what's happening. But if you disrupt that in just the same way that the Edmonton Oilers managed to in the first round of last season's Stanley Cup Playoffs, the whole shooting match may very well come apart. And with things looking thin on the Detroit blue line, you've got to wonder if head coach Mike Babcock isn't experiencing some sleepless nights headed into the last week of the season.