As a Washington Capitals fan, I was stoked to see them top the New York Rangers on Wednesday and force a game 7. If I had to compare it to one thing, I’d compare it to the excitement Todd Beamer felt when he decided he was ready to roll on United Airlines Flight 93. Wait, no I wouldn’t, because that would be f**king ignorant.

But here we are. CBC’s Ron MacLean intro’d game 6 by comparing Ryan Callahan and Alex Ovechkin (pictured, right) to 9/11 first responders. Somehow this game wasn’t broadcast on the Onion News Network. “They ARE like police officers, they ARE like firefighters” is especially insipid, and the reason MacLean thinks dying in a collapsing skyscraper and one game of a seven game hockey playoff are similar is “you can’t fight fire with ego”. Or “eagle”, I’m not really sure what he’s saying. You can’t fight fire with either of them, and either word makes the same amount of sense in context.

Ron should spend the rest of the playoffs saying stuff like this, if only for the publicity. He could turn CBC into the Fox News of sports. I want to see him compare Marian Hossa to Trayvon Martin.

[video via Puck Daddy]

Last night, the 7-seed Washington Capitals defeated the defending Stanley Cup champions and 2-seed Boston Bruins to advance in the NHL Playoffs, and plenty of Boston fans were none too pleased. Sadly, instead of simply enjoying a great upset in an exciting series, most of us are enjoying a huge buffet of WTF today.

After Caps RW Joel Ward scored the game-winning goal, Bruins fans took their frustrations to Twitter, and the personal attacks on Ward got out of control quickly. Sadly, the attacks weren’t based on the fact that Ward only scored 6 goals this season and had no business being the hero. Nope, it was because he’s black. And in case you didn’t know, Twitter can be quite the haven for racism.

Thousands of Tweets were posted within minutes, calling Ward the worst word of them all, and they basically all looked like this (NSFW for language)…

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Back in January, Boston Bruins goalie Tim Thomas stirred the political pot a great deal when he refused to attend his team’s visit to the White House to meet President Barack Obama for their Stanley Cup Championship. Instead, Thomas posted some anti-government rhetoric – or his beliefs, rather – on his Facebook page to further stroke the media’s erection. So it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise when reporters asked him how he felt about having to play in Barry O’s hometown in the first round of the NHL playoffs.

He also shouldn’t have been surprised when Washington Capitals fans showed up prepared with signs and Obama masks, like the options that were offered by the puckheads at Russian Machine Never Breaks. Sure enough, Caps fans printed them out and poured into the Verizon Center in D.C. last night and they gave Thomas hell. Oh, the Bruins also beat the Caps 4-3 and lead the series 2-1, but the real victory… that was had by the Caps fans.

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In this week’s edition of the Friday Face-Off, we examine the very real problem of NHL players and fans using big rectangles of glass to incapacitate each other. Your job is to view the incidents and vote for your favorite, whatever your definition of “favorite” might be in regard to dudes getting injured by amorphous solids.

Your poll and options are after the jump.

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Or, “Capped teeth”. Maybe, “talk about a mug shot!”

In a video that is equal parts awesome and cringeworthy, Caps center Mathieu Perreault scores an otherwise unremarkable goal during Wednesday night’s game against the Ottawa Senators by deflecting the puck into the net with his mouth. Specifically with his tongue. Specifically, what?

“My tongue was out, so it bounced off my tongue and in the net,” Perreault said. “These things happen when you go to the net. Not the way you want to get goals, but he hit me in the face and it went in.”

This is like a gritty re-imagining of Untamed Heart, where Christian Slater catches a hockey puck in mid-air with his teeth and just instantly dies.

[h/t SB Nation Hockey]

But not all of them. I hope at least someone from The Smoking Section will appreciate that joke.

Anyway, this Russian rap video has everything you’d expect from a Russian rap video — gangsters bragging about what appears to be Monopoly money, beautiful woman with incredible midsections who will morph into horrid-looking old ladies when they turn 25, random dudes in judo clothes — and, most importantly, Alexander Ovechkin. In a sideways hat. Rapping. All it needs is TaTU and someone piledriving a bear and it’s basically every Russian thing in history.

As a hockey fan it makes me kinda sad to see teaching someone how to do the Soviet Dougie. As a Caps fan, I have to defend it by challenging Sidney Crosby to remember an entire verse without his brain shutting down. That’s what it’s come to, isn’t it? Which guy’s brain is more irreparably damaged.

Feel free to hop over to Puck Daddy and browse the transcribed lyrics, wherein Ovie brags about all the cool championships he’s won and being in the All-Star Game. Nothing in there about the Stanley Cup, though.