C! A! P! S! CAPS! CAPS! CAPS!
At this writing, the Washington Capitals are leading their playoff series against the Tampa Bay Lightning by two games. The next game’s tomorrow.
I like hockey, though I don’t get to follow it very closely. When I first got married, I didn’t understand why my husband (a Pittsburgh native) liked hockey; I still had the old stereotype of goons and fights on my mind. One evening, as we were watching a game together, he pointed out a player and said, “See that guy skating backwards there? He’s probably going 35 miles an hour and controlling the puck at the same time.”
I was impressed, and started to study hockey a little bit, to be able to share a little in my husband’s interest. My husband had been agitating for cable TV so he could watch some games. After the cable guy left, my husband settled down with the TV guide, looked for games, and yelled, “What’s this? Where are the Penguins?” Alas, you don’t get nightly coverage of Pittsburgh games in Washington. But sometimes you can get coverage of Washington games, and that’s how I started following the Washington Capitals.
Now we don’t have cable or a daily paper, so it’s harder to follow the teams. You almost never get to see it on broadcast TV, unless ABC gets desperate on Saturday afternoon. (Cable wasn’t that great a source anyway; Washington is not a big hockey town so the basketball teams — pro and college — tend to get most of the local cable coverage, and the Redskins eclipse everything. ESPN tends to favor showing Anaheim, New York, or Philadelphia.)
I’m tickled that the Capitals made it to the playoffs this year and are doing well so far. In past years they’ve made it to the playoffs, only to find get knocked out by Pittsburgh in the first round. But the Pens aren’t in the playoffs this year, so maybe the Capitals will be able to advance to the semifinals this year.
I am pleased to see that there are four Canadian teams in the playoffs this year. But if the Capitals end up facing a Canadian team in the finals, who am I going to cheer for?