Sharks hope to end skid vs. struggling Caps

Hockey Betting Lines

02/21/2007 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - A pair of struggling teams meet this evening in the nation's capital, where the Washington Capitals host the San Jose Sharks at the Verizon Center.

The Capitals have dropped four games in a row, while the Sharks come into the matchup having lost their last three contests. San Jose hasn't lost four in a row since December 22-28, 2005.

Washington was in action Tuesday evening at the Bell Centre. The Canadiens posted a 5-3 victory, as Chris Higgins and Michael Ryder netted two goals apiece.

Jamie Heward finished with a goal and two assists while Brent Johnson came up with 27 saves for Washington, which is 12 points behind Carolina for the eighth and final postseason berth in the Eastern Conference.

Washington played its third straight game without starting goaltender Olaf Kolzig, who is sidelined indefinitely with a torn MCL in his left knee.

Caps star forward Alexander Ovechkin, who leads his team in goals (34) and assists (38), was held without a point once again in Tuesday's contest. The 21-year-old Russian has been scoreless in three straight games and has just one goal and one assist over his last eight contests.

Starting this evening, the Caps will play five of their next six games on home ice. Washington is 14-12-4 as the host this year.

Meanwhile, the Sharks haven't played since losing an important test in Dallas on Sunday. Mike Ribeiro and Jere Lehtinen both scored a pair of goals to lift the Stars to a 5-2 triumph at the American Airlines Center.

The Sharks and Stars are tied for fifth place in the Western Conference standings with 73 points apiece. The teams are also seven points behind Anaheim for the top spot in the Pacific Division.

Mark Bell and Mike Grier scored Sunday for the Sharks, while Evgeni Nabokov stopped 16 shots.

San Jose captain and leading scorer Patrick Marleau is questionable for tonight's game after missing Tuesday's practice with an illness. Marleau has 29 goals and 35 assists on the season.

The Sharks are expected to have forward Curtis Brown back in the lineup tonight after he missed the last two games due to the birth of his third son. Brown has seven goals and eight assists this year and is key component of San Jose's penalty-killing unit.

Tonight marks the sixth test of an eight-game road trip for San Jose, which is 2-3-0 so far on the swing and 18-11-0 as the visiting club this season.

This evening's game between the Sharks and Capitals marks the only time this season the clubs will meet. San Jose has dominated the series in recent years, winning nine straight overall matchups and five in a row at Washington.

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.