[Terminator]

If you're one of the best hockey players in the world, and you have a potentially undeserved reputation for excessive complaining, and you're asked what you were discussing with a game official following your rival's game-clinching playoff hat trick, you could potentially say, "Oh, it was nothing." Or, if you were feeling frisky, you could venture further afield. "People kept throwing hats," Sidney Crosby said tonight. "I was just asking if he could make an announcement to ask them to stop. I mean, the first wave came and then I think they were all pretty much picked up, and then more started coming. So for us, we just wanted to make sure we kept kind of moving and kept the game going, wanted to try to get back in it. So wasn't complaining about anything."
Depends on the definition, I suppose. And I can't imagine any rambunctious Caps fans will start preemptively throwing hats on ice Saturday night. As for the stellar Simeon Varlamov, Crosby was suitably effusive.

"I mean, yeah, he's made some timely saves," Crosby said. "I still think we can do a better job of burying the puck and capitalizing on our chances. The difference is a few inches, but he battles and he competes, and there's times where he's out of position but he finds a way to get a piece of his body on it. So as a shooter you have to make sure that you bear down, and we have to really correct that quickly. I mean, there are times when he's kind of swimming in the crease and we've got some loose pucks and we've got to put them in."
Might as well keep this train rolling. Here's Crosby on Ovie and the hat trick.

"When it comes down to it they got a big goal there on the power play when it counted, and that's the difference. I don't see anything else but that. We had opportunities, I mean, the last two games we can honestly say we did some really good things but we made a few mistakes that have hurt us. That can be a good thing to look at as well, knowing that we're that close and these are things that we can easily and change quickly. But we have to do that."

[tapout]

ugh, crosby is such a crybaby. hes all finesse, and although he has gifted goal scoring ability and is one of the brightest young stars in the league, he doesnt really impress me because he is not a complete hockey player. ovechkin on the other hand, is the real deal. hes got freakish offensive skills, he gets back on d, he hits, he fights, he mixes it up, and he aint scurrred. im not a caps fan, but that guy is amazing.