{"id":4898,"date":"2025-04-21T08:50:28","date_gmt":"2025-04-21T04:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=4898"},"modified":"2025-04-21T05:57:17","modified_gmt":"2025-04-21T01:57:17","slug":"title-defense-seven-years-in-the-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=4898","title":{"rendered":"Title defense seven years in the making"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With all the hoopla surrounding Alex Ovechkin&#8217;s breaking the all-time NHL goal-scoring record (deserved hoopla, by the way), one might forget that hockey is a\u00a0<em>team<\/em> game, and the Great Eight happens to play for one of the best teams in the league. The Caps finished with the most points in the Eastern Conference, worthy of a #1 seed and home ice through said conference playoffs.<\/p>\n<p>Game One against the Montreal Canadiens (they used to dominate the sport) is tonight, and I couldn&#8217;t be more excited to see this &#8220;title defense,&#8221; seven years in the making. Yeah, let&#8217;s just forget the past few seasons of exactly zero playoff series wins and wipe that slate clean. I&#8217;m rockin&#8217; the red today, and it&#8217;s hockey time around the DMV again.<\/p>\n<p>Game on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With all the hoopla surrounding Alex Ovechkin&#8217;s breaking the all-time NHL goal-scoring record (deserved hoopla, by the way), one might forget that hockey is a\u00a0team game, and the Great Eight happens to play for one of the best teams in &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=4898\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4899,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4898\/revisions\/4899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}