Hockey Mom is Back and Seeing Stars...

Hockey Mom is back on the beat after a 5-day business trip to Las Vegas and getting my Caps fix as they take on the Dallas Stars. I missed watching my men in red this week as they battled the Calgary Flames and the Phoenix Coyotes. HM is not a betting gal, but the sports book in the conference hotel was a beautiful thing as you could watch about 4 NHL games at a time - yet despite the number of televised games, I still couldn't catch my Caps!

So far, tonight's contest has been a high-scoring affair. With the score 4 - 4 at the start of the third (2 goals from Sergei Fedorov and 2 from Tomas Fleischmann), Tyler Sloan netted his first NHL goal to take the Caps ahead. Speaking of Tomas Fleishmann (A.K.A. "Flash"), we had the chance to see some kids from his native country of Czechoslovakia play a local travel team at our home rink today. Boy, were those kids great (kudos to our local boys for playing them tough)! There were definitely some future NHLers in that bunch...

Hockey Mom knows that much has been said of Jose Theodore's less than stellar play in recent weeks but he gets an HM gold star for some of the spectacular saves he's made so far in this third period. Does anyone else think that the Star's goalie Marty Turco resembles a younger, thinner and better-looking version of Tony Soprano? Just checking...either way, Turco just made a magnificent split save on a fab goal attempt by the Cap's Alex Semin.

Late into this game, the obnoxious fashionista we all love to hate (no ladies, I'm not talking about Paris Hilton but the Dallas Star's Sean Avery) has been kept in check by the Capitals. I was kinda hoping that Donald Brashear would have the opportunity to give Avery a different kind of "makeover."

With less than 58 seconds left in the final period, the Star's Mike Modano scored to tie this game up 5 - 5. So now we go into another sudden death overtime.

And the Cap's shining star Alexander Semin wrapped it up in OT with a super sweet goal against Turco to claim the victory. Maybe I should refer to Semin as a meteor - the guy has been on fire so far this season!

So congrats to the Caps for a high-scoring victory and a renergized effort from goalie Jose Theodore. I am glad to be home!!!!