Thrashers thrashing

Karen, and I made the trek to Hot-Lanta for the Capitals-Thrashers game. A friend of mine (a Thrashers fan) had a connection for some free tickets, and we were able to sit in row Q in the 100 level behind the Thrashers’ bench, basically on the blue line a few rows behind the tunnel to their locker room. Awesome seats, just in the right place to see most of the action but not too far down near the glass where it seems like you’re in a tunnel and miss some of the action.

I’ve been to every Capitals home game this season with one road game – with the Capitals Road Crew to the 8-2 drubbing on the Flyers in December in Philadelphia (this is foreshadowing).

We went down for warmups, and I got some great action shots of some Capitals drinking water and Gatorade.

For the national anthem, I felt relieved not to hear a single “Oh!” or “Red!” exclamation, but my shoulders sagged when the Atlanta crowd yelled “Night!” My Thrasher buddy said it goes back to the days of the Atlanta Knights.

There were quite a few Capitals fans, not as many as in Philadelphia and no big pockets of fans, just a scattering of 2-4 here and there throughout the arena.

Nothing news worthy about the game. The Caps won in an 8-1 snoozefest.

Seriously, when they were up 4-1 going into the third period, I was hoping the Caps wouldn’t allow a quick goal to get the Thrashers’ momentum going. But then Alex Semin scored (again), and then Dave Steckel (I was wearing my Steckel jersey and was especially happy for that), and then Tom Poti scored basically with half the net open, and finally, mercifully, Jason Chimera put an exclamation on it with his first goal as a Cap.

At the December game in Philadelphia, Mike Green and Thomas Fleishmann came out for the “Three Stars” announcement, and once again on enemy turf, Green came out as the third star, and Mike Knuble came out as the first star.

And now, on to the show:

One from Karen:

The unedited pictures are here, as well as many others.