Couple of items for your perusal on a Friday afternoon:
Our old friend, Capitals buyout and current $250,000 cap hit, forward Ben Clymer, shares his thoughts on playing in Red Square for the KHL’s inaugural all-star affair:
It was an incredibly cold day, something like minus-16 degrees Celsius. It was a little windy, but not too bad. The wind in your face from skating was far colder. Actually, I might still be a little sick from the game!
Your hands, your toes and your face are just freezing in a game like that, no matter what else you put on. I wore a hat under my helmet, an extra long-sleeved shirt, an extra pair of shorts and I tried to use a pair of heavier skiing socks to keep my feet warm, but I’ll tell you what, after five minutes my feet were completely numb.
Every intermission I took my skates off in the dressing room to try and warm them up, but at no point did they regain feeling until finally about half an hour after the game. It made me think about all the times when I was a boy skating outside in Minnesota and I would get frost bitten on my toes.
Of course, it also adds to the experience when you get in on the scoring and I was lucky enough to get one in the first period off a nice pass from my former teammate in Washington, Jakub Klepis, who now plays in Omsk. In hindsight, I wish I would have grabbed the puck; it would have been a great keepsake to have, but at the time I didn’t think of it and just kept playing.
Yup, Clymer in the ASG. And he didn’t think to collect that puck?
And this morning, another compelling statistical crunch from The Forechecker, who breaks down the travel distances and time-zone changes for each team, during this season and last.
The Caps are, predictably, tied for the fewest time zone changes (with the Sabres, Devils, and Islanders), with 8. Phoenix, enduring plenty already off the ice, also suffers the greatest number of time zone changes this season: forty two.
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