Easter Sunday Smorgasbord 4-12

• So let's just this straight, Philadelphia, which has had an NHL team since 1967 and hockey fans that are very rabid, literally, finally this week got one of their native sons into their uniforms for an NHL game. But Washington, D.C, a town with an NHL team since 1974 and a bunch of Know-Nothing-Johnny-Come-Lately-Bandwagon-Jumping fans accomplished the same feat (getting a Native Son into the home team jersey for an NHL game) some 9 and a half years earlier??? Furthermore, Jeff Halpern got into the Caps lineup the old fashioned way, he earned it. With all due respect to David Sloane, he got into the Flyers lineup because of the Flyers' mismanagement of the Salary Cap and could only play one game under the CBA rules as a amateur tryout.
• If an 0-6 start wasn't bad enough for the Nationals, Stan Kasten felt the need to shoot the organization's leg completely off this week with his plea to Philadelphia fans to come on down to Nationals Park to watch the Phillies. The adding insult to injury, he sees nothing wrong with it saying he's proud of the Nationals Park and wants to share it with everybody around Major League Baseball. We at least he's proud of something though we would wonder about him if he were proud of the team on the field. Though in our opinion, the stadium isn't much better. First of all the location is terrible, just like getting in and out of there is (the Navy Yard Station is a joke and Metro has no clue how to run their trains through there). The views aren't all they're cracked up to be, either of the skyline (again, terrible location) or the field (too many blind spots of fair territory). You can change the concessionaires all you want Mr. Kasten but it comes down to the fact that they all hire the same lazy and incompetent fools that Centreplate and Aramark did. So they won't improve. Most, not all, of the ushers and event staff remain a surly bunch that jump all over men without their shirts, but look the other way at a woman "nursing" her child in the stands during a game. Yes, that's right, we had the distinct pleasure of sitting next to a woman on August 12th against the Mets who popped one out and latched a kid on about the 4th inning and made no effort to cover anything up. Add in the fact that we bought a half-season ticket last year but had to buy extra tickets for the bobblehead nights and never knew who our ticket rep was and you understand why we only plan on attending four games this year, if the weather is nice on those days. But now that Kasten is inviting fans from out of town to come on in like Susan O'Malley did, we feel even less incentive to go to games. Though we will give La Sooz credit, we don't know of her ever going on the air in another city to pitch tickets to the Phone Booth the way Stan did this week. We can only guess that was because La Sooz wasn't very proud of the Phone Booth.
• Getting back to hockey, it looks as if Boston University had a thrilling comeback last night to win the NCAA Frozen Four at the Phone Booth. We wonder if our friends over at the On Frozen Bozos think that the (Com)Post and Times coverage of the event was adequate and "professional" enough for their tastes. We only ask because they've complained about the lack of college hockey coverage before despite the fact that there isn't a single NCAA Division I College Hockey program, within the D.C. Metro area. Fair is fair guys.
• In our Diversify or Die moment this week, we only note that the Somali Pirates are only doing what our wonderful Dear Leader thinks is best for everybody by making sure that the wealth is spread around. So why does everybody have problem with these people???
• Getting back to the Nationals, are the Nats as bad as everybody feared getting off to an 0-6 start? Well, the pitching at least is. The Nats have scored 26 runs in the six games so far for an average of 4.3 runs per game. Not great, but not terrible either. According to MLB.com's stats, they should have a record of 2-4. But why don't they? The pitching remains terrible. Maybe these young guys will work things out, but for now, the Nats have just an 8.4% chance of making the playoffs. That seems about 8.4% too high.
• This week, the Caps start the playoff against the Rangers with Game 1 on either Wednesday or Thursday night. We know (hope) that Game 2 is Saturday afternoon. The Nats open up their home schedule with our wonderful Dear Leader throwing...er....backing out of throwing out the first pitch tomorrow against Stan Kasten's best friends forever, the Philadelphia Phillies. Stan is arranging for Philly fans to find hotel rooms for the games on Wednesday and Thursday and White House tours on Tuesday's off day. Saturday, Stan welcomes fans of the Florida Marlins in to Nationals Park for a weekend series. D.C. United, still searching for their first win on the season looks for it on Friday night against the New England Revolution at home on ESPN2.
• As always, please send all comment, criticisms, corrections, questions, suggestions, and the Final NHL First Round Playoff Schedule to "capsnut" over at gmail dot com.