Sunday Musings

Well the New Year's revelry has wound down (Happy New Year to you all by the way, as I have been remiss of my blogging duties these past few days) and it's back to the grind - and in our case, the rink. Several of my son's team mates were at the Winter Classic and regaled me with tales of the festivities and chippy action. They even made my day by bringing me a souvenir cup! Hopefully we'll be rocking the red for Winter Classic 2011!

HM was able to catch just a few brief moments of the Caps rare showdown with the Western Conference-climbing L.A. Kings on Saturday. One of my boys had a doubleheader and I was running in and out of the rink to catch the score between periods. As you all know by now, the Caps lost a close one with a final score of 2-1, minus the services for much of the contest of our brilliant center Nick Backstrom. HM is hoping that Nick is feeling much better, as he left yesterday's game suffering from a wicked migraine.

So yesterday's loss to LA gave the team their third consecutive loss in a row, a stat that Caps faithful haven't seen in awhile. But it's a new year and the boys return home for a meeting with the Habs on Tuesday, which will hopefully see the return of a healthy Semyon Varlamov. Varly was in the net up in Hershey today and stopped 28 of 29 shots against the Adirondack Phantoms. Yup, looks like our young man is getting his groove back and cheers to the outstanding effort by Michal Neuvirth minding the Caps crease the past few weeks as well! *But apparently as I penned this post, it was reported that Varly has suffered another undisclosed injury and is listed as day-to-day - grrrr!

Meanwhile in other hockey happenings, Canada is headed to the finals and will compete for its sixth straight Gold medal at the IIHF World Junior Championship. The roster of talented youngsters which features the likes of Nazem Kadri, Brayden Schenn, Alex Pietrangelo, Stephan Della Rovere and Taylor Hall, blasted the Swiss team in a 6-1 victory to advance to the final round. They'll face the winners of the United States/Sweden showdown taking place later tonight. You could tell our boys spent much of their holiday vacation watching the World Juniors, as evident from the increased number and caliber of the hits during both of yesterday's games. Should be an exciting final on Tuesday night for sure - my household will be channel flipping between Caps game and World Jr. Finals!