Ovechkin to Miss Preds Game

As you've probably heard, Alex Ovechkin will not be in the line up tomorrow against the men from Music City, also known as the Nashville Predators. Ovechkin is en route to Russia to visit his grandfather who is very ill. Hockey Mom along with all of the Caps faithful send our thoughts and prayers to Ovie and his family. As much as we all love the game of hockey, when it comes to your health and your family, it is after all just a game and we wish the Ovechkins the best.

Unfortunately, tomorrow night's game won't be televised. I am totally confused as to why the Versus Network owns the rights to this game (which features 2 playoff teams from last year in the Caps and Preds) is choosing to televise the Flyers/Thrashers game instead. Be careful, Bill Clement, you might be the next victim of a stink or smoke bomb thrown by a nasty Flyers fan. Those Flyers fans are so creative aren't they? In this day and age of post 9/11, how brilliant you must be to sneak in any type of flaming or smoking object; you must have earned a Ph.D. to actually be brave enough to throw it on the ice. Sorry, I digress. Honestly, the blatant disregard that some sports fans show for both their teams and fellow fans sometimes just amazes me.

Back to the Capitals/Predators preview. Despite hailing from the land of Elvis Presley, this team is not one to be taken lightly. I watched a few games of the Preds against the Red Wings last season and they played the Wings pretty tight. Interesting note: apparently the team was named after some bones of a prehistoric predator that were uncovered near their arena site. Or so I was told by a friend who lives in Nashville - don't quote me on that one! Ones to watch on the Predators include: Goalie Dan Ellis, defensemen Ville Koistinen and Shea Weber and forwards Jason Arnott, Martin Erat, Jordin Tootoo and J-P Dumont.

While we will absolutely miss the Great 8, let's hope that Alex Semin continues to light it up in scoring. We'll know more on the starting line up tomorrow.

In the meantime, HM had a chance to see a Pee Wee team from the Czech Republic take on our local Pee Wee AA team last night. Wow, what a game! The Czech kids were phenomenal and I'm sure we'll see some of them in the NHL (though since I couldn't read some of their names, I won't recognize them when they get there)! And several of the kids were sporting Jaromir Jagr mullets, which was fabulous. Our local kids played a heck of a game though and actually finished with a tie by scoring with 14 seconds left in the final period. The Czechs were quite a raucous bunch and yelled and sang the entire game. Seems like it would be a blast to watch a game over there, kinda like the European soccer crowd. It was a lot of fun to watch and kudos to all the players for a hard-fought contest.