Vote For Your NHL and NBA All-Stars

Well since the local teams are all taking the day off, you should take a few minutes tonight to vote your favorite Capitals and Wizards into their respective all-star games. And by favorite, I mean if your favorites are Alexander Ovechkin, Olie Kolzig, Gilbert Arenas or Antawn Jamison. If not ... well ... you get one write-in vote.

Go here to vote for the NHL All-Stars. The NHL's first all-star game since before the lockout will take place in Dallas on January 24 at 8 p.m. The game will only be televised on Versus.

You can vote as many times as you want before 11:59 p.m. EST on January 2.

If you'll remember, last time I was given the opportunity to vote for a local player an unlimited number of times I voted for Orioles catcher Razor Ramon Hernandez over 1,000 times in a single day. I expect similar dedication for Olie and Ovie.

Obviously I'm voting for Ovechkin and Kolzig, but I've also been writing in Dainius Zubrus because he's having a good year ... and the Easstern Conference is filled with too many Penguins, Sabres, Flyers and Jagrs that I just can't bring myself to vote for.

You can vote for the NBA All-Stars here. The NBA's first all-star game since last season's will be held in Las Vegas (where there is no NBA team) on February 18 at 8 p.m. It will be shown live on TNT (watch me explooooode).

For the NBA you can vote once per day until January 21, 2007.

My only request as you vote for the NBA All-Stars -- other than to vote for Arenas lest he take offense, come to your house, drop 45 points on you in your driveway and flip you the bird as he's leaving -- is to recognize that Shaquille O'Neal has only played in four games so far this year. Just because he may be the only center in the Eastern Conference whose name is even vaguely familiar does not mean you should vote for him.

Capitals Take On The Penguins Tonight

Your nation's Capitals take on the hated Pittsburgh Penguins/Pengwhines/Pengweenies tonight at 7 at the Verizon Center and in front of a national audience on Versus.

It's round five of Alexander Ovechkin vs. Sidney Crosby, with the Penguins taking three of four of last year's meetings.

This year both teams have added another Russian stud to the mix. The Caps have Alexander Semin (12 goals, 12 assists), and the Pens have Evgeni Malkin (14 goals, 14 assists).

A few analysts ('sup, Barry Melrose?) have said that many GMs claim they would have taken Malkin over Ovechkin in the 2004 entry draft. I'm not going to claim that no GMs said that, but I'm going to call them out as the dirty liars that they are. Because before that 2004 draft, Ovechkin going number one was as much of a lock as Crosby going number one in 2005. And even in 2005 some scouts claimed that, had Phil Kessel been available, Crosby just might have been number two on their draft board.

A) Easy to say when it's not your pick.
B) Phil freaking Kessel? He's alright, but he was picked fifth last year. You're fired if you suggest Kessel over Crosby.
C) Sometimes when you have the number one pick, there's a pick you just HAVE TO make. Crosby in '05 was one. Ovechkin in '04 was another. LeBron James in the NBA in 2003. Reggie Bush in the NFL in 2006 ... whoops!

But enough about that crap, because the real talk is Ovechkin vs. Crosby.

And when I say "the real talk," I mean in USA Today, SI.com, ESPN.com, and on the Versus Web site (the network also ran banner ads on NHL.com and washingtonpost.com hyping the game).

So there's your pre-game reading.

Ovechkin's 18 goals lead a group of five Caps already in double-digits less than 30 games into the season. That group also includes Semin (12), Dainius Zubrus (12), Chris Clark (10) and Matt Pettinger (10).

Malkin and Crosby are the only Penguins with more than 10 goals thus far in the campaign.

In other news, is there any chance that Ryan Whitney gets introduced to Donald Brashear tonight? Please?

I Told You Zednik Would Bust Out

As I stated last Monday, it was only a matter of time before Richard Zednik started scoring goals for the Washington Capitals.

After 10 games of being a buzzsaw every time he stepped onto the ice, making strong plays in the offensive zone and hounding defenders on the backcheck, Zednik finally broke through with a pair of goals in last night's 4-2 win over the Calgary Flames.

Zed could have easily buried a third, deking Flames' goalie Miikka Kiprusoff out of his pants and finding himself with a wide open goal, but he couldn't quite pop home his third of the night.

Dainius Zubrus netted the other two tallies for the Caps, including an empty netter to secure the victory.

Despite failing to reach their "six points every five games" goal with the loss against Edmonton on Saturday, the Caps road trip was a huge success, taking 5 points in four games against difficult Western Conference opponents.

The Caps now have a few days off before playing back-to-back nights starting Friday with a home game against the Southeast Division-leading Atlanta Thrashers. On Saturday the Caps take on the struggling Flyers in Philadelphia, a city in which they haven't won since January of 1998. That's a span of 16 games, with the Caps only even managing to come away with a point once -- a 1-1 tie in October 2000.

With the state of the Flyers this season, there may be no better chance than Saturday to snap that skid.

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If you're interested in getting a glimpse of what it's like to be the most accessible owner in professional sports, Ted Leonsis posted on his blog, Ted's Take, that fans were e-mailing him after a disastrous first period against the Vancouver Canucks on Friday basically telling him how to do his job. The Caps were outshot 16-1 in the period and were losing 2-0. They came back and tied it in the second period and eventually lost in the shootout, earning a point in the standings. Click here to read the post, Let's Chill Out.

(Funny note about Leonsis' blog: You can type in Ted's Take into Firefox and it will take you directly to his blog.)

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There's been a lot of talk over the past few years about the Capitals going back to red, white and blue uniforms and some fans have even called for a return to the old jerseys.

My problem with that notion is that the old logo with the lowercase, backwards italics and stick for a 't' (I always thought it looked like an L) was too "'70s looking," so in a fit of boredom I whipped up a modernized version of that logo. It's not the sexiest thing ever, but here it is: