First of all, happy within-the-last-week birthday to these two:

Jay Beagle, October 16, Sami Lepisto, October 17

With that out of the way….

I’ve been to Caps games for the beginning of the season at this point, and while I’m still not completely sold on where they’re going, they’re starting to bring me along despite that. Obviously, as you can see on any other blog, the defense is the issue right now, which I’ll back 100%. However, in my gang of game-going-girls, we’re also seeing the connection between every time Ovie has a semi-significant other/BFF outside the team and his lack in play. Chris Cooley, please stop hanging out with him. Sure, he managed to put two in last night, but how do we know that’s not a fluke? The last time he had a girlfriend, his play suffered in the same way. Coincidence? I THINK NOT.

I’m also losing the Ovie luster the longer I watch him. I’m not going over to Team Sid or anything, but it’s more like becoming Big Star Neutral. The longer I watch Ovie cherrypick and NOT go into the corners after pucks less than twenty feet away from him, the more I want to kick him in the shins and remind him it’s a team game. TEAM GAME. I don’t care if he makes a bazillion million dollars, that’s no excuse for him to not play the whole game if people like Matt Bradley will. Of course, part of this newfound hostility for his lack of work ethic may be my recent run-ins with water polo cherrypickers, but it’s starting to make me a little throw-my-hands-up-and-walk-awayish with A.O.

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But this wouldn’t be THTM if all I did was whine about big stars….. so a question to leave you all with that I’ve been tossing around with people for a week or so.

The NHL teams travel on chartered airplanes, all together….. what happens if the plane goes down?

This isn’t that bizarre a concept, as there have been at least three sports teams this has happened to: the most famous being Marshall University and the fewer casualties of the Wichita State crash and the Cal Poly crash.

In Marshall’s case, they pulled up part of their JV team and recruited other athletes from within the school to play, and just played a really incredibly bad season or two. Wichita State ultimately shut down their football program, and Cal Poly didn’t travel cross-country for games for a number of years.

If it happened to a professional sports team, I really have no idea what would happen. Obviously, the first instinct might be to shut down the franchise for the rest of the season, but then you have unhappy ticketholders out money to deal with. Do you keep the same name if the entire team isn’t there? Do you move the franchise somewhere else? Does it matter whether it’s an iconic franchise like the Penguins or a less known or troubled franchise like the Yotes or the Preds?

If you rebuild the team in the same season, do you pull up the entire AHL team? Do you pick up players from around the world? Do you rebalance players from other teams? Do you pull together a good beer league?

Just something to ponder….morbid, but kind of fascinating.

Upcoming, watch for LEPISTOWNED day…… I’m accumulating as much as I can!