Japers' Playoff Challenge Brackets

Japers' Playoff Bracket

Tighten up Time

Game Status Update on Upcoming Caps Games

"I was shaky at first, but I settled down and played my game," said Neuvirth, a 21-year-old making his first start since being pulled on back-to-back nights Jan. 12-13. "I was really down after those two games. I felt like my career was over."

Carcillo fined $2,500 for throat-slash gesture against Leafs

Annapolis, Md.: I understand the need to make the trade, what with the extra defensemen on the roster, but why didn't we trade Schultz?

Lindsay Applebaum: You know Columbus has to agree to the deal, too, right? Heh.

Goaltending styles always change a bit, and you’ll see, with the new rules, you’ll see that a lot of guys don’t even close their gloves anymore. Henrik Lundqvist, our guy—this just happened in the last year—we had one glove that we beefed up quite a bit in the palm because he was going to use it for practice, every day he was getting 200 shots against him, and he doesn’t want to get hurt in practice, but he realized that once he made the glove stiffer, it was bigger, and he taught himself how to catch it like a lacrosse stick, kind of cradling the puck in, and it seems like more and more guys are doing that now.

I think this also gives a guy like Tomas Fleischmann a chance to show everyone how good he can be. He is bigger and stronger than he was last year. I am a big Fleischmann fan, and I know how good he can be. He is the player nobody knows about on our team, but he is a really good glue guy. He is responsible and is a top-six forward who can play both offensively and defensively and those guys are really hard to find.

Is it too late to use "The Pretender" as the opening video?

Michael Neuvirth was reassigned to Hershey today. Boudreau said the goalie has declared himself healthy and "ready to go". He also told Boudreau: "I'll be back."

Evgeni Malkin in an interview said that he was going to seriously improve his English because, in his view, his communication with the journalists was not enough to get him the Hart Trophy. How would you look at it?
If someone believes that Hart Trophy is given only for communicating with the journalists, they can even start learning Chinese if they think it would help.

Omsk GM: We Keep Intensive Talks With Nylander

Teds Take - Red Matter

More on Green's Lucky Stick
As you read last night, Mike Green's record-breaking stick, the one that was earmarked for the Hockey Hall of Fame, made it to Pittsburgh in time for the opening faceoff. But Green didn't use the Stealth because he said he had already decided to go with S17.

"I couldn't use it" in Game 6, Green said. "I just got used to the other one. To go back right before the game ..."

Apparently, the hall-of-fame stick wasn't the last Mike Green edition Stealth in the world, as I claimed yesterday. Green said at least a half dozen are supposed to arrive sometime today or tomorrow -- from fans and friends of friends.

"Somebody wrote something yesterday," Green said, referring to my blog post yesterday. "So [Stealths] are coming in like no tomorrow. They're coming out of everywhere. Fans and one of the reporters even had one.

"I'll use [a Stealth] in the morning and see how it feels," he added.

GM George McPhee said Chris Clark suffered the wrist injury in training camp and that he met with the Caps captain a few days ago and explained to him that the team would prefer for him to have surgery instead of continuing to play hurt.

"It has everything to with [his lack of production]," McPhee said, referring to Clark's one goal and five assists in 32 games. "It's not the Chris Clark we know. He's having a tough time handling a pass, making a pass and shooting the puck."

"It just got to the point where he wasn't the player we know he is," he added. "He was hurting himself and hurting his team. So we're probably going to go [the surgery] route instead of playing through it without getting any results."

The injury is to Clark's right wrist and McPhee described it as torn tendon sheath. There is a small possibility that Clark will not require surgery, but it sounds like he's going to miss a significant amount of time either way.

If Clark does go on long term injured reserve, that would free up enough cap space to promote Karl Alzner (or someone else) from Hershey. But McPhee wouldn't commit to a move.

"We've talked about some options in there," McPhee said. "It may be Karl, it may be some other defenseman we bring up. [Sean] Collins has been good [in Hershey], [Tyler] Sloan has been good."

Coach Bruce Boudreau, meantime, said he has no plans to make a switch at captain.

"Clark is our captain," he said. "There's no controversy there. When he gets healthy, he'll come back and be our captain."

Clark Says He's Okay.
Chris Clark apparently was not injured when Alex Ovechkin accidentally hit him late in the third period of last night's 2-1 shootout win over the Flyers. The Caps' captain said he simply was not expecting the collision, which made it look worse that it really was.

"I was more stunned," Clark said this morning. "It was more of football block. Nothing hurt or anything."