Meanwhile, back at Foggy Bottom...

...AKA the Saturday morning walk.

"Oh, it's too foggy to take the paper to your porch.  Let me just toss it in the middle of the yard..."

And the woods is right over.. uhh...

...there. See it?

How about now?

 The out-of-towners- a herd of about six who are too shy to pose- were in the woods this morning.  Their leader, "Boss Moss", wandered upwind of the group and hid, allowing the others to check things out.  After about a minute, he snorted, and off they went.

The three muskedeers.

"Hey, man, why'd yer bark fall off?"  "Oh, man, I had some psychadelic worms, man.  They didn't even taste like tequila.  It was a bad trip..."


_______________________________

Loko broke the losing streak Friday with a 3-2 win over Salavat at home.  Curtis Sanford gave up two goal early, but Yegor Averin tied it with two of his own.  Then it was the blistering hot Artym Anisimov  who took a cross-crease pass that left him with so much empty net right in front that KC said watching the video, "He coulda blew that one in."

And he huffed, and he puffed...

Moments later, Salavat thought they had the game-tier, but replay showed that the right post was off the moorings before the shot was taken.  The shot hit the crossbar and fell in, but the official review waived it off.

Earlier in the game, Niklaus Hagman was whistled for allegedly firing the puck into the crowd.  But as Hagman stepped into the box...

"Hey, what's this..."

"The puck!  It didn't go into the crowd, it went into the penalty box!  Hey! Hey, Ref!"

"I'll take that puck..."

"Piss off, idiot lineman.  Hey! REF!"

Of course the ref refused to listen, and after about a fifteen second game of keep away between the lineman and Hagman, Hagman's penalty put us two men down and led to the first goal.  But all's well that ends well.

Something that can't be said in St. Petersburg.  SKA played two games under their interim coach after firing Milos Riha for not being in first place good enough, and lost both.  They dropped the first to Donbass 3-2, and then got blasted by then last-in-the-conference Spartak 6-1 yesterday.  Before the game, SKA announced that their new coach, effective after the Spartak game, would be Team Finland coach Jukka Jalonen, who will do his TF duties simultaneously.  At least he's got a day job.

With Dynamo Moscow getting a 4-2 win over Donbass thanks to Alex Ovechkin's hat trick, Dynamo now has a 6-point lead over Loko, SKA, and Avangard (who just passed Traktor in the Eastern Conference.

___________________________

Finally, here are the lineups for the 2013 NHFFL All Star Game, to be played right after the Super Bowl (ours, not theirs):

GOLD DIV.

QB- Tom Brady, Elks
RBs- Steven Ridley, B2s; Tony Richardson, Porkchops; Alfred Morris, State Ducks.
WR- Eric Decker, Buzz; Victor Cruz, Porkchops; Kyle Rudolph, Clock BBQs; Vincent Jackson, State Ducks (replacing the injured Rob Gronkowski).
K- Lawrence Tynes, Porkchops.
D- New England, Porkchops.

PURPLE DIV.

QB- Robert Griffin III, KCAs
RBs- Arian Foster, Aguas; Doug Martin, KCAs; Adrian Peterson, Rangers.
WRs- AJ Green, and Santana Moss, KCAs; Brandon Marshall and Jimmy Graham, Beagles.
K- Matt Bryant, Angels.
D- Chicago, Aguas.

Three rookie running backs make the all-stars!  Robert Griffin and the Angels' Drew Brees had the most points for QBs with 102; Foster's 84 led RBs by 15 points; Green beat out Gronkowski for the WR title by 9 (69-60); Tynes' 118 led the kickers by a wide margin; and the Bears easily won the D title with 111.