Well, I suppose it’s worse to be in Cleveland, where their star hoopster apparently is making love-eyes at the Big Apple. We know for sure where Alex Ovechkin will be in 2012. And 2018. Then again, one more goalie to play in front of like Jose Theodore, and the Gr8 may rethink the merits of that new pro hockey league in Russia. Could you blame him? When you’re a hockey town in training and you’re looking down on Cleveland, things ain’t so swell.
It’s almost criminally cruel to have seen vanquished what we did yesterday in mere hours’ time. Namely: the Capitals’ Stanley Cup aspirations for the next two years. Or perhaps — and here I’ll channel my inner Puck Daddy — you think a journeyman netminder is somehow guiding the Caps to glory between now and 2010? Please, pass me a little of the crystal meth you’re consuming. Or perhaps you believe Capitals’ GM George McPhee, who’d have you believe there’s precious little difference between Cristobal Huet and Jose Theodore, despite the fact that the Caps offered their new no. 1 netminder — in the 31-year-old prime of his career — the lavish term of two years. And if not sub.-no.1 money, mediocre no. 1 dough. That term is code for: Simeon, get your game on, fast, in Hershey.
The point isn’t that Theodore and Huet are about the same age and have won the same number of Stanley Cups (zero). Or that their respective numbers aren’t all that different. It’s that Theodore has been in the league a lot longer, has been booted out of cities for his play, has broken a lot of hearts, and requires an oppressive trap to try and hide his inconsistency. Which the Caps won’t be playing.
It’s that one has been an All Star lately. It’s that one would have made a real run at the Vezina had he arrived in D.C. earlier this past season. Huet got UFA-to-be dealt out of town by the Eastern conference’s no.1 team, donned a strange sweater and played behind stranger defenders in a crisis-every-night environment, for a rookie coach recently promoted from the ‘A,’ and . . . dominated the league.
Forgive me for wanting to sign up for a few more years of that. And while the Caps made a spirited attempt to do it, the cold hard reality is that there was no safety net for failure. More on that in a moment.
In Gabby’s get-up-and-go system, netminders get tested all right. It’s wise to have a talented and consistent netminder facing the necessary barrage when it arrives. Of Theodore, it can be said that he possesses talent.
Theodore’s claim to fame was winning the Vezina and the Hart in the same season, a while ago, in 2001-02. The next season his goals-against average ballooned up by almost a goal a game. Almost a goal a game. He was allowed to wear pads that season. Then in 2003-04 his goals-against plunged back down into elite status. Then, post lockout, it skyrocketed back up — well over a goal-a-game up, this time — to the point where a second Montreal Riot was fomenting before he was shipped out. The sigh-inducing numbers litany can be found here.
Let’s put it this way: news of the signing was about 45 minutes old yesterday when an MSM reporter who shall not be named emailed me and said, “We’ll take in an Ovechkin 5-goal game next season — in a 6-5 loss.”
I have a rule for playing the Because-he’s-now-wearing-our-sweater-unprecedented-consistency-and-elite-performance-will-miraculously-emerge game: with your wager go instead with the 10 years’ performance pattern you know, hedging on its hard lessons.
It is positively true that Cristobal Huet treated the Capitals’ organization shabbily during the prelude to and opening of summer free agency. It is also likely that the Capitals were in no position to match or beat the term and largesse Huet agreed to in Chicago. Be all that as it may, it’s nonetheless hard to deny the profound sense of something great and magical irrevocably being lost in yesterday’s stunning reversal of city-enveloping puck fortune — really the first such in the Bruce Boudreau Era.
It’s also hard to avoid recognizing this increasingly disturbing trendline: the planet’s greatest hockey talent really has yet to be accorded a netminding talent, in durable fashion, commensurate with his status. Gretzky had Fuhr. The Flower had Dryden. Lemieux had Barrasso. Bourque at the end had Roy. Ovie gets a geezing Olie, a smattering of backup BJ, a cup of coffee with Huet, and now JT the Propecia spokesman in pads. The hope inside the organization is that perhaps in two years’ time — after Ovie’s labored some five NHL seasons — one of Michael Neuvirth or Simeon Varlamov is ready.
Yesterday was the culmination of years of failure by the Capitals’ organization to adequately address an heir for an aging Kolzig. You cannot blame management for not trying — they obtained, for aging Adam Oates, what they reasonably thought would be a worthy successor (first-round prospect Maxime Ouellet). By 2006 and Ouellet’s clear failure, they went into desperation mode, selecting two goalies among the first 34 players drafted in 2006. It appears as if those were strong selections. It also appears as if they occurred about four or five years too late. The rebuild, in front of the net, is over.
Late yesterday afternoon George McPhee attempted to equate the replacement of Huet with Theodore akin to that of Dainius Zubrus with Viktor Kozlov. But second- and third-line wingers are absolutely replaceable, every summer, every week of the calendar year. No. 1 netminders, not so much. Get it wrong in goal and every other move you make is academic.
Something truly magical happened to the Capitals late this past February when Cristobal Huet arrived here. In their negotiations with him, the Capitals clearly believed that. But in those they weren’t ready for business failure.
At least, not Rock the Red ready.
Get ready for firewagon — and abbreviated postseason — hockey.
This morning the Capitals welcome 
Monday, July 7 - Group A on ice at 10 a.m.; Group B on ice at 2:30 p.m.
The Capitals have announced another free agent signing, but it’s not the center you might think. Keith Aucoin was signed to a two-year contract.
