The Bear

How fitting on the day the most over hyped athlete wins his first NBA MVP, I am talking to you LeBron James, we were witness to a great back and forth battle of two of the biggest stars in the NHL. Both mega stars notched their first post-season hat trick, Ovechkin’s third goal also the game winner, as the Capitals for once in the last two seasons have an early lead in a playoff series. What a special night for the NHL in fact this has only happen four other times in playoff history.

The other budding star in this series is Simeon Varlamov, who has now played more playoff games in his career than regular season games. This Russian rookie has been making spectacular save after spectacular save, and I am official calling him “The Bear”. People feel free to use this nickname, named after half of his mask being the Hershey Bear, and flat out that he takes up the net like a big grizzly bear. The kid has been the best thing to happen to D.C. sports since MJ un-retired for the 100th time to play for the Wizards. Monday was The Bear’s 5th straight win and he kept the Caps in the game long enough to allow his countryman to win it for them. How can you not be pumped for the next game in this series, one can only hope the Pens win both in Pittsburgh so we can have a long and fun series.

I have not given my timeout in a while, and I would love to give Malkin a timeout, but my blog has been all about that series, so I am going to head west and throw Ryan Getzlaf in for a timeout. Not for the reason I normally give a person a timeout, but I need to talk about this guy. Getzlaf leads the league in points headed into action Tuesday night, but has also been physically dominant in both series. Joe Thornton thought he was pumping up his team in both Game 5 and 6, when he went after The Franchise, but it did not work as the 8th seed Ducks upset the Sharks. Now Getzlaf has 5 multi-point games and the Ducks have a legit chance against the Juggernaut Wings. Ice time has become a topic of discussion with Getzlaf, for he has already played 67 minutes in two games, I think this won’t affect his scoring touch, but will take away his physical presence which would hurt the Ducks chances big time. This is why I want to give Getzlaf the timeout, so he doesn’t have to play all these minutes for the Ducks and we can continue to be amazed by his skills and strength.