| 12 July 2009
Continuing with where we left off, it's time to countdown the top five moments that made us cheer, jeer and enjoying being a fan.
#5. The Capitals Get All Metro On Us - For those who didn't live it, imagine the scene; frustrated Caps fans are pouring into the Verizon Center after the season-opening loss to Atlanta. The lights go down, the pump-up video plays -- fog billows out of the end zone service entrance as the starting lineup is about to be announced.
Arena events announcer Wes Johnson firmly grabs the microphone, flexing the muscles in his diaphragm in order to belt out the name of the triumphant heroes who would start the first home game of the season.
NUMBER 21.......BROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOKKKSSSS LAICH!
The crowd roars and then -- this photo appears.
What...the...@*!#?
One-by-one the players took to the ice and a picture that looked like it was lifted from "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" appeared.
Little did we know then that the high-fashion photos of the Capitals were the ground work for "Club Scarlet", a Capitals hockey club for women, but the shock of seeing Ovie, Backstrom, Semin and the gang in glossy, stud-muffin photos was quite...um...unique.
#4. It's Semyon Dammit - Game Two of the first round of the playoffs arrives and out-of-the-blue goalie prospect Simeon Varlamov leads the Capitals out on to the ice. He plays a phenomenal game despite losing and soon Varlamov is the No.1 goalie for the playoffs. Pretty memorable, right? But who can forget when all of a sudden we learned we had been saying his name wrong the whole season?
And I was just getting used to Simeon VarlaMOV.
Needless to say, the change hasn't exactly gone smoothly. During the Caps and Pens series, Pierre McGuire took pleasure in butchering his last name while acknowledging that the youngster wanted it to be said properly and Joe Benanati had to write it out on a piece of paper for Varly so he could see what syllables to put emphasis on.
So how have things changed since May? Well, he's still Simeon.
It's not the most earth-shattering moment that happened off the ice, but say his name wrong once come this fall and you'll be corrected by a couple hundred strangers. I'd say that's pretty important.
#3. Chris Cooley Has A Man-Crush - Alex Ovechkin is one popular dude. So when the Redskins season ended as it usually does (early), Chris Cooley needed to find some way to occupy his time when he wasn't trying to convince Jim Zorn to draw passing plays to him in the endzone.
So that's where our story begins, Chris Cooley comes to a Caps game, uses his celebrity to meet Alex Ovechkin and the next thing you know, they're the best of friends.
What a cute play-date awesome pairing of destructive D.C. superstar sports power. Chris Cooley might as well be Alex Ovechkin's head cheerleader. He comes to tons of games, he blogs about Ovie, he wants to swim with Ovie in his new pool (of Pooley if you're being technical) and he even developed a scheme to get Ovie to do push-ups in front of him.
You can pretty much count on Chris Cooley to be appearing at Caps games for the rest of his tenure as a Redskin and this sport-transcending relationship was a bridge that brought Redskin fans over to the Capitals bandwagon at the end of the year.
It's not quite the A-Rod and Jeter bro-mance, but it was pretty entertaining.
#2. Alex Ovechkin Joins Easterns' Motors - You know you've made it as a D.C. athlete when Easterns' Motors come calling. The used-car dealer whose catchy slogan "your job's your credit" has a roster featuring some of Washington and Baltimore's finest. Carmelo Anthony, Ray Lewis, Clinton Portis and now, Alex Ovechkin.
I can't re-call the last time a city was so anxious to see a local car dealership ad, but when word hit the street that The Great 8 would be singing the Easterns' jingle, people ate up every bit of info they could about the commercial.
I enjoy the part where he rolls the "R" to give it a more exotic sound, but regardless, the commercial was a classic. It even was spoofed by the Atlanta Thrashers, causing Bruce Boudreau to throw a fit.
Just think, we have 12 more years for Ovechkin to make more commercials for Easterns'!
#1. Brett Leonhardt's Fifteen Minutes of Hockey Fame - Another great scene for those who didn't live it. The Caps take the ice in mid-December for a game against the Ottawa Senators. Johnson is out there, but Theodore is missing.
Some guy in a blue goalie mask is out there, but Theo is nowhere to be found! Fans quickly grab their phones, blackberries and PDA's in the hopes of finding out who this rouge No. 80 goalie is.
Turns out he's the web editor of the Capitals Web site. The rest, they say, is history.
You only see stories like this happen in the movies, and while Brett never touched the ice in the game, he's become somewhat of a hero for his ready-to-go antics. Walk around Verizon Center and you'll see a few Leonhardt No. 80 sweaters in the crowd reminding you of the time a Disney movie sports plot almost actually happened.
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