Puck

This, The New York Times reported last week, was her first hockey game. He was a New York Rangers fan who had sat several times in the cheaper seats near the ceiling at Madison Square Garden. But when somebody gave Laszlo Tokolyi two tickets in the seventh row near one of the nets, he persuaded his wife, Gyongyi, to go see the Rangers play the Detroit Red Wings on March 17. A handyman, Tokolyi does not often get $120 seats to see the Rangers face the best team in the NHL. "OK, let's go," she said she told him. "I'll see how it's going to be. I don't really like hockey, but my husband said, `Oh, you should come because it's going to be good.

WASHINGTON - Jaromir Jagr fought hard for position and puck possession behind the Buffalo net, with Sabre Rhett Warrener hanging all over his back and poking at the puck with his stick along the boards. Adam Oates was there, too, blocking another Sabre. Finally, after what seemed like minutes of determined work, Jagr emerged with the puck and made a pass in front of the crease. The puck hit Buffalo's Jay McKee and bounced to Peter Bondra, who backhanded it into the net to give the Washington Capitals a one-goal lead with 4:18 remaining in the third period.

WASHINGTON - The Washington Capitals and Montreal Canadiens have been playing the same kind of hockey over the first half of this NHL season, with both teams struggling to reach .500 and muscle their way into playoff spots. Last night at the MCI Center, the Capitals were in control early, but lost, 5-3. Every time they seemed about to build a lead, Montreal came back and came back until, finally, two former Capitals, Joe Juneau and Jan Bullis, teamed up for the game-winning goal with 3:23 to play.

WASHINGTON - Jaromir Jagr's legs were churning and his eyes were searching. The final seconds of overtime against the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team he had been a member of for 11 years until this season, were ticking rapidly off the clock. He knew it was a two-on-one breakaway. He knew this could be the storybook finish. But he was relatively far ahead of Frantisek Kucera and closing fast on the Penguins' net. On the bench, Pittsburgh coach Rick Kehoe watched and held his breath. "I've seen that move so many times," Kehoe said.

WASHINGTON - After going 133 minutes and 11 seconds without a goal, the Washington Capitals finally scored, and it was Jaromir Jagr who broke the ice. The Caps had suffered back-to-back shutouts and had seen the Phoenix Coyotes take the lead again last night before Ulf Dahlen won a battle along the boards and fed Jagr the puck for a power-play goal that tied the game the first time. But that goal wasn't enough to open the goal-scoring floodgates. It took nearly all of two more periods before Dahlen would score in the last 71 seconds to earn the Caps a 2-2 tie. A supportive crowd of 17,027 at MCI Center stuck with the Capitals through overtime and left the building with a lump in its throat after seeing Jagr take a hard hit from the Coyotes' Brad May with 1:58 left and crumple to the ice. Jagr, already recovering from a severe right-knee strain, suffered a further slight strain to the knee and will be day-to-day as Washington (5-6-2)

Ten years ago, fishbowl programming as we now know it began with a simple premise - stick seven attractive young people with strong personalities in a cool apartment. Then start the cameras rolling, sit back and watch. Sure, the strangers in the first cast of MTV's reality show "Real World" in 1992 seemed more hip and artsy than most people we knew in our real worlds. But the interactions in their very public petri dish rang true enough that we watched anyway. "This is the true story of seven strangers picked to live in a loft and have their lives taped.

WASHINGTON - The Washington Capitals had never beaten a defending Stanley Cup champion three times, and they still haven't. The Caps combined some great hockey with some terrible hockey last night and lost to the streaking New Jersey Devils, 6-4. Washington had beaten the Devils twice this season and was hoping for another notch on its belt as the regular season dwindles to an end. But more than that, the Caps wanted to return to their winning style...

The hiss of the skates, and the thwack of the sticks. The glare off the ice and the din of the crowd. If you long for the sights, sounds and action of hockey in a big-league arena, why wait for the next home game? It's possible to experience the same prolonged adrenalin rush that builds over three periods of fast-paced hockey by loading a game into your PlayStation 2. The big contenders this year are EA Sports' "NHL 2001" and 989 Sports' "NHL FaceOff 2001." Each sells for $50. The games' developers have brought their old franchises onto a new system, carrying with them a tradition of quality NHL simulation games.

As thousands of boaters this summer take to Maryland's waterways, from the lazy Susquehanna River to the sprawling Chesapeake Bay, many will surely find their bilges fouled by stagnant water, gunk and oil.That raises a delicate question for those sensitive to the damaging effects oil and fuel discharges can have on marine life: What to do with bilge oil?"

After running into a River Hill defender -- sometimes two -- for much of last night's game at the Gardens Ice House in Laurel, Howard winger Rob Ross must have been shocked to find himself with the puck all alone in front of Hawks goalie Joel Ord.Ross simply wristed the puck past Ord's stick with 31.8 seconds left in the third period, tying the game at 3 and sealing a probable high seed for the Lions in the Maryland Scholastic Hockey League Tier II playoffs.The...