Every now and then, Pro Hockey Talk will ask for insight from some of the best team bloggers out there. For this feature, we asked a simple question: “Who is your team’s most frustrating player?” Just for fun, I decided to throw my guess in the hat, too. First, here is my guess for the Washington Capitals.
Jose Theodore - I’m sure I could go with Alex Semin, but come on, the guy scored about a billion goals this year. Only Theo could go 0-for-2. The last guy who did it was Ed Belfour, but Beflour was probably hungover. It’s hard to stop two pucks, right?
The Washington Capitals (and the blogger friendliness of Ted Leonsis) helped cultivate some great writers. For their perspective, I asked Becca from the great Japer’s Rink to share her most frustrating player. Make sure to follow her and everyone else at JP, if you somehow haven’t started doing that already.
His nicknames range from The Other Alex to Alex 2.0 to Bongos to ... well, a myriad of wholly inappropriate ones we won’t even discuss in this venue. To Caps fans, however, Alexander Semin is most commonly known as Sasha - and he’s probably the most frustrating player we’ve watched here in DC in a long time.
Because it’s never just Sasha. No, his is a name that is always either followed by “what the heck are you doing??” or introduced with “did you see that sick move by”, expletives and forehead-slapping optional after either one.
More on “Sasha” after the jump.
Alexander Semin is a ridiculously talented player, with a keen ability to slip through defenders, a delicate passing touch, a tricky wrist shot that fools even the best goalies and some of the best hands in hockey. He’s also injury prone, penalty prone and prone to the most ridiculous of mental breaks. There are many who think that Semin is the most talented member of the Caps - and that includes the man with whom he shares a first name - but he is also the most exasperating.
Semin’s offensive skills have never been questioned. He has 37 goals and 39 assists so far this season, a tremendous output for any forward over the course of a year and numbers that put him among the League’s elite. But he’s also only played in 67 games this season and has never played a full campaign without developing some injury or another. Part of what makes him so frustrating is imagining just what those numbers would be if he could play closer to the 82 on the schedule.
And then there are the penalties. It used to be that #28 would simply take penalties all over the place, lazy hooking penalties in the neutral zone or the dreaded diving call that still haunts him to this day, and often several in one game. More recently it’s not the number but the timing - he has a knack for taking penalties at the worst possible time, and often 200 feet from his own net. It’s gotten to the point where we in DC have coined the “Semin Hat Trick” in his honor: two beautiful goals and an offensive zone stick infraction.
Alexander Semin simply has this enigmatic quality about him that confuses fans, baffles the media and drives his coaches downright nutty. He’ll make a beautiful move around four defenders and then turn the puck over without a fight. He’ll score on the simplest of wrist shots then elect to pass when there’s no lane. He’ll kill penalties (and get a shorthanded chance to boot) but find himself on the wrong side of the law at the most inopportune moment. He is at once an immensely talented and highly confounding player - and it’s what earns Alexander Semin the title of Most Frustrating Ever.