Monday, February 16, 2009

The Story of the SOB Line

I'm not trying to say that Capitals Kremlin is the home of the S-O-B line moniker, but Ted Leonsis is looking for its origins.

Ted, we started using the name on Nov. 12, 2008. I happen to think that it also was bred from the Capitals Message Boards.

On Nov. 13, this discussion of naming the line occurred. Many people had the same idea, that coaches say "Son of a B****" after every goal they score.

Other candidates were "the B-O-S line", as in BOSS, the "MVP line," and "the Awesome Line" -- but common sense prevailed!

The name came after the Capitals shellacked the Carolina Hurricanes 5-1 on Nov. 12. In that game, Alex Semin had two goals and three assists, Alex Ovechkin had a goal and two assists and Nicklas Backstrom had a goal and three assists and broke a 20-game goal-scoring drought.

The line had been together for a few games before their dominance over the Canes on Nov. 12, but was not as productive as their Nov. 12 coming-out party.

If we are to use Tarik El-Bashir's blog, Capitals Insider, as a guide, he has the line forming on Nov. 8 for a match against the New York Rangers.

Before the SOB line's first formation, Ovechkin was paired with numerous line mates. Boudreau ran Ovechkin-Backstrom-Kozlov, then Ovechkin-Backstrom-Fedorov and finally Ovechkin-Fedorov-Semin.

2 comments:

  1. SOB/BOS line's roots come from Simon-Oates-Bondra, waaaaaay before Semin-Ovechkin-Backstrom.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is more or less the current "SOB" line, but yes, you are correct. There was an SOB line years ago.

    ReplyDelete

 
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