Daddy must be proud

Chris Bourque, son of NHL Hall of Famer Ray Bourque, scored in Hershey's 4-2 victory over Hamilton last night, earning a home-ice split after two games of the Calder Cup finals. The series heads to Ontario, with three games through Thursday. The Bears, the Washington Capitals' farm club, are the defending Calder Cup champs.

Caps new look?

Here's a link to what could be the Washington Capitals new RBK Edge sweaters. What do you think? Those look like Avalanche colors to me.

New threads: Washington Capitals

The Washington Capitals will take the wraps off a new look at a practice-rink fan party during the NHL Draft in June. Maybe they'll look like this.

As more teams don the new RBK Edge sweaters, Washington's announcement is unlikely to be the last we'll see of new looks.

Ovie says no

How can you tell that it's been a long season for Washington's Alexander Ovechkin? When he flat-out refuses a child's request to sign a jersey.

Granted, had he signed, it only would've been a "AO8." Still, though, if you're hounding the Washington Capitals, you're really looking for only three players -- Olaf Kolzig, Alexander Semin and Ovechkin. The other players are good to get, but it's always nice to snag the stars, too.

Despite Ovechkin's snub, Colin did pretty good, getting 10 players, including Semin to sign. Others players signing included Chris Clark, Steve Eminger and Mike Green.

We never saw Kolzig. He tends to slip out the side door of the team's hotel in downtown Tampa. It's too bad, too, because I has an old red-white-and-blue Washington Capitals and Tri-City Americans (a Western Hockey League junior team that he once played for and now owns a stake in) pucks.

It was also fun to catch up with Capitals defenseman Milan Jurcina, a former Bruins player. He said he's enjoying himself "much more" with Washington than Boston. Getting a regular shift helps, I suppose.

He's not so tough

Over the years, I've heard that Washington's Donald Brashear was a less-than-willing signer. This morning, after missing the team bus to the morning skate, Brashear willingly signed for a handful of hounds and fans.

I don't know how these impressions are made (someone else's blog, perhaps?), but the pucks shown above are proof that even while being late, he still took the time to sign.

Detours around a busy weekend

With the promise of 750,000 attending a free air show at MacDill Air Force Base tomorrow and Sunday, and the streets of downtown St. Petersburg turned into a waterfront IndyCar race course, there's plenty of entertainment choices in our little corner of the Sunshine State.

That being said, we're still looking forward to hounding the Capitals tomorrow morning. Colin's going to work on getting his Washington jersey signed by the team. I'm focusing on pucks from Donald Brashear, Tomas Fleischmann, Glenn Hanlon and Olaf Kolzig. Oh, yeah, if we're lucky, we might even get Alexander Ovechkin's autograph.

One drawback, though, is the route we'll have to take into downtown Tampa. Instead of our usual route, which takes us to the St. Pete Times Forum in 30 minutes, anticipated traffic jams mean a much longer ride, heading north to Clearwater before taking a right turn toward Tampa.

Sad thing, too, is that we'll take to make the trip twice. We have tickets to the Capitals-Lightning game.

A Capital idea?

I'm not quite sure what to make of this unconfirmed rendering of the Washington Capital's new RBK Edge uniforms.

I can see where the home and away try to incorporate elements from the past two uniforms. The alternate jersey, though, might be popular.

What do you think?

A career day

Though the Washington Capitals have a few big games stars, as in Alexander Ovechkin, Alex Semin and Olaf Kolzig, my key for today's hounding trip was defenseman Mike Green.

And though I'd like to have some kind of story that would explain the reasoning, it was nothing more than I was able, in less than 30 seconds, complete my player collection for him.

When I first started collecting autographed pucks, I set a goal to have players sign a puck representing every step, and stop, in their career. Green, Washington's No. 1 (29th overall) in the 2004 NHL entry draft, provides a very good example. I was able to have him sign pucks from the Capitals, the Hershey Bears and the Saskatoon Blades.

It really was that simple and, as a bonus, he even put the different numbers he wore with each team.

Most of all, though, it was a decent day that ended a streak of disappointing hounding adventures, All told, hounding the Capitals and Lightning added another 45 autographs, including eight pucks, to the collection.

In fact, the only disappointment of the day was I wanted to get a better start my campaign against the bully dealers. Because only two of the dipsticks showed up, I can only surmise that they got the message during Tuesday's session.

Save for a few instances, I have no problems with folks trying to earn a living by selling autographed sports memorabilia. It's just some of the methods, including rushing and crushing of players and collectors, that will continually draw my scorn and unwanted attention to them.

We'll see what happens next Tuesday, when the Maple Leafs are in town.

Alex who?

When is an Alexander not an Alex? That's easy. When the name that follows is Semin, and not Ovechkin.

As the dealers and hounds surrounded Alex Ovechkin and his increasingly illegible "AO" scribble Tuesday morning, I made my way to Alexander Semin. Granted, he's playing in the shadow of his Russian teammate, but the guy, in his first full regular season, is posting some pretty solid numbers.

And that's what makes him worthy of putting on a puck. Maybe another, too, when the Capitals come back to Tampa.

No. 500 for Bondra

Not only am I happy to see hound-friendly Petr Bondra back in the NHL, but I’m also wicked psyched that he scored the 500th goal of his career late last week. With the goal, which came in Chicago’s 3-2 victory over Toronto on Friday, he became the 37th player to reach 500 goals in his career.

For Bondra, in his 16th NHL season, it was his second goal in six games after he signed, as a free agent, with the Blackhawks on Dec. 10. Bondra played for Atlanta this past season, signing the puck shown above April 11th.

Bondra, then playing for Washington, was one of the first big-name stars to sign an autograph for more than 10 years ago.

With the Carolina Hurricanes playing their home games in Greensboro, visiting NHL teams, such as the Capitals, had very few choices for hotels (three, to be exact), so it was pretty easy to find them. And while I was happy to score autographs from Steve Konowalchuk, Andrei Nikolishin and Brendan Witt, it was Bondra’s nearly letter-perfect autograph on a card that made the day.

Erasing an Ovechkin

Whenever the Washington Capitals come to town, uber-phenom Alexander Ovechkin is at the top of every hound’s must-get list. Yesterday, as we waited (The team’s arrival was delayed by three hours) outside the hotel, was no different. Hounds had pucks, pictures, a mini-helmet and a CCM Vector stick.

Ovechkin, to his credit, obliged a few hounds. Unfortunately, he used just one silver Sharpie, one apparently that was low on ink. Either way, I got the traditional "AO8" on a Capitals puck, but the scribble, and that’s really all it is, was very thin. So thin, in fact, that I nearly rubbed it off of the puck (see above) by hand.

I was tempted to try and fill it in, but I felt it would be cheating. Hopefully, I’ll have him sign it again, this time using one of my trusted paint pens. Sure, it pains me to do this, but I’d rather have a quality scribble, so to speak, than what I got yesterday.

Besides, it's not like it was the first puck I've had signed by Ovechkin.

And even despite getting a few cards signed by Ben Clymer, Jamie Heward and Brent Johnson, it was hard to walk away and not be disappointed.