Seriously?!

If this isn't bulletin board fodder for the Capitals, I don't know what is.

After last night's Caps win over the Pens (4-3), Sidney (or Cindy as he's known in some circles due to his incessant whining) Crosby explained what he was talking to the ref about in the aftermath of Alex Ovechkin's hat trick.
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From Dan Steinburg's (The Washington Post) blog post last night after the win:
If you're one of the best hockey players in the world, and you have a potentially undeserved reputation for excessive complaining, and you're asked what you were discussing with a game official following your rival's game-clinching playoff hat trick, you could potentially say, "Oh, it was nothing." Or, if you were feeling frisky, you could venture further afield.

"People kept throwing hats," Sidney Crosby said tonight. "I was just asking if he could make an announcement to ask them to stop. I mean, the first wave came and then I think they were all pretty much picked up, and then more started coming. So for us, we just wanted to make sure we kept kind of moving and kept the game going, wanted to try to get back in it. So wasn't complaining about anything."

Depends on the definition, I suppose. And I can't imagine any rambunctious Caps fans will start preemptively throwing hats on ice Saturday night. ..."
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He went on to rag on Caps, goalie, Varlamov and say that the Caps were nothing more than a lucky power play goal last night. Wow. Coach Bylsma might want to get a sock for that kid...

Back to the hats...

Good grief! Grow a pair! You're a professional athlete for God's sake. Throwing hats onto the ice after a player scores three goals in a game is a tradition that's as old as... well, I don't know how old it is. But it's older than me, so it's a tradition that's WAY older than you, Cindy.

Perhaps he's just mad because only one hat was thrown on the ice following HIS hat trick last night. Sheesh. He's lucky the red-clad fans at Verizon Center didn't throw purses on the ice!

Crosby's whining aside, last night's game was pretty epic. Arguably two of hockey's greatest young players each scored a hat trick during a playoff game. That's the stuff television ratings are made of! Executives at the VS network must've been giggling like school girls this morning.

As usual, an argument could be made that the reffing left a little (or a lot) to be desired. I didn't see the entire game--missed the first half of the first period. But two things stand out in my mind from the rest of the game. (1) The Caps got a power play out of a call where it looked to me like OV dived. Bad call. And (2) at the end of the game, the Caps' outstanding acrobat of a goalie was clearly cross-checked in the head just before Crosby scored his third goal. No call there. There were other zebra follies, but those are the two that stick out for me from last night.

So now it's on to Pittsburgh for Games 3 and 4. I'm sure the Pens fans will be just as loud and rowdy as the Caps fans here in DC have been. It'd be great to take a game in Pittsburgh--even better to take two. How great would it be to sweep the Pens right out of the playoffs? But I get ahead of myself. One game at a time.

In the meantime, I'll be watching to see what other crazy, idiotic, and/or unbelievable things pour out of Crosby's mouth when he opens it. The more he talks, the more motivated I bet OV and the boys in red will become. So blather away, pretty boy... blather away!