So, what has Nic Dowd been doing for the last couple weeks as the Caps were on a break during the 4 Nations Faceoff?
“My wife had ankle surgery the day before break; everything’s going well, but she was on the mend, so I was at home trying to do my best impersonation of all the things that she does when I’m gone,” Dowd told the Junkies when he returned to their airwaves Thursday. “Just like getting out the door on time in the morning for school – I think I could get up at like 4 a.m. and I'd still be late for like the 9:15 drop-off somehow! Gotta get ‘em up and moving, make ‘em breakfast, make sure they look acceptable to go out in the world…I’m just not used to it all, but my wife’s a pro!”
Suffice to say Dowd’s ready to get back on the ice when the Caps’ season resumes on Saturday, but he’s also had a chance to watch some of the 4 Nations Faceoff – which is different for him because he admits he doesn’t watch many games besides his own – and he had this rebuttal to Greg Wyshynski’s comment to the Junks that the US/Canada fight had some underlying juice, as Canadian players tend to look down on the skill level of US-born players:
“I was probably relatively shielded from a lot of that growing up in Alabama; our travel rivals were in Nashville, Atlanta, Memphis, and we didn't have a lot of run-ins with Canadian teams just because we didn't play in any of those tournaments,” Dowd said. “But there were a couple of times where we went to Canada for tournaments, and I remember being there and thinking like, wow, we're just kind of visitors at this game, this what they grew up doing and we're just kind of enjoying ourselves.”
And as the Junks continued their thought that having Tom Wilson on Team Canada might have changed the dynamic of things in the big USA/Canada fight, well…
“Willie brings an element to the game that not a lot of guys bring. He’s probably Top 5 toughest guys in the NHL, maybe, and he can play that game,” Dowd said. “You could probably put him on any line on that team and he's effective.”
Which led Dowd to an interesting thought on the roster construction for this tournament, which includes exactly zero Washington Capitals:
“Honestly probably a really hard roster to choose, because you’re trying to find the best players, but at the same point, you're thinking, well, we got to find the best fits,” Dowd said. “You're basically asking top line guys from every team to come in and play different roles that they're not used to playing, particularly, so I think you got to build a team and not necessarily sometimes take the absolute best players at times. I think there’s kind of a stigma about that; there’s been a lot of times in my career where we add a player, or I join a new team, and when you’re with a player every day, you realize how good of a hockey player they are.”
And Dowd, too, could’ve held his own in that USA/Canada fight, even though his only big fight in the NHL was one the Junkies reminisced in a game against Tampa Bay.
“As an older guy, I’ve played enough to understand, like, if you're getting challenged by like one of the top heavies in the NHL, and in your head, you kind of feel like this is a little risk versus reward, I don't blame guys for turning that down. There are some real tough guys in the NHL, but there’s a code to it,” Dowd said. “I can only speak to my experiences, but in that situation, he drilled Nick Jensen and he was unconscious on the ice, so there has to be a rebuttal for that. And hats off to him, too, because I asked him if he wanted to fight and he said yeah – but me and him took care of it, and then you wash it and move on. You gotta kind of look for your moment, too, so it’s based on the game.”