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Sharks Gameday: Oven Chicken

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Washington Capitals (24-9-6) at San Jose Sharks (24-8-7), 7:00 PM PST

(Update: Forgot to note the 7:00 start.)

If you haven't heard, Patrick Marleau, Dany Heatley, Joe Thornton, and Dan Boyle are all on Team Canada. Add in Douglas Murray (Sweden), Evgeni Nabokov (Russia), Thomas Greiss (Germany), and most likely Joe Pavelski (USA) and that's a whole heck of a lot of injury concerns. But it'll be fun to watch, right?

In any case, we've got the Washington Capitals with Olympian Alexander Ovechkin and non-Olympian Mike Green. Green's a hell of a player, but I have to question why his taste in web design doesn't stray too far from the Jersey Shore motif. Ever since I saw that, that's all I can think about with him.

When it comes to Ovechkin, though, I always think of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Strange, right? It stems from a few years back during the Ovechkin/Crosby rookie year of 2005-06. One of my buddies popped into a sports collectible store in San Jose (I want to think that it's the one by Chuck E. Cheese off Kooser and Meridian but I could be wrong). He was looking at some of the hockey stuff on display and the owner was commenting about how good the oven chicken was.

Dumbfounded, my friend looked around and realized he was the only person in the store besides the owner. He politely said, "Excuse me?" and the owner repeated his statement about how good the oven chicken was.

Since there was a KFC across the street from the shop, my friend thought he was referring to that -- though this was before they offered oven-baked chicken, so he was a little confused. He smiled and nodded and continued browsing at the hockey stuff.

Finally, the owner goes, "Yeah, you know, everyone's all hyped up on Sidney Crosby, but that Oven Chicken guy is even better."

Ah, yes. This is before Alexander Ovechkin became pretty well known in the casual sporting world, so this shop owner, as well meaning as he was, butchered Ovechkin's name by inserting a few extra syllables into it, thus making it sound like Oven Chicken.

To this day, my friends and I refer to Ovechkin as Oven Chicken, or Oven for short. (As in "Did you see Oven's goal last night?")

The Capital I'd Like On My Team: Kentucky Oven Chicken, of course!

Prediction: Sharks 5, Caps 3. Goals by Team Canada -- Boyle, Marleau (2), Thornton, and Heatley.