When goals are scored by the home team in hockey, in large numbers its partisans leap to their feet, throw up their arms in unrehearsed glee, pump their fists, pepper stranger's palms with high-fives, and with shifty and punchy gestures recreate the virtuosity they just witnessed to their companions. Boys kiss their girls. Occasionally, Brooks Brother-suited lobbyists shake their hips in K Street shuffles. In my section, the men are even known to hug. Even on Military Appreciation Night. Every arena blares its own siren song of success during this explosion of emotion, and in these 10-15 seconds -- even when our team is hopelessly behind -- we luxuriate in the novelty that is the hockey goal scored. I'm not sure even Gary Bettman could violate the sanctity of this euphoria with one of his hair-brained reforms.

More so than with other arena sports, hockey's public address personality plays an integral role in the evening's atmosphere. It's with this distinction in mind that not just any Johnny Vocal is accorded the duty. And his most sacred duty is to galvanize the arena's immediate post-goal glee: three or four or five times a night the home crowd needs a public address pied piper to marshall our celebration's frenzy into a lone, collective oration that encapsulates this emotional apex. And in order to do this, his scoring announcement must occur . . . in timely fashion.

The Caps have a fine and able PA guy in Wes Johnson. He's been at it for years. His voice is rich and resonant. It bears an appropriate fluctuation. OFB's Gustafsson, who in his spare time provides his own professional voice-over talent to commercial businesses across the country, awards Wes a grade of "A-" as PA guy.

But beginning last season, in the return from the lockout, I began hearing from hockey patrons in the building a curiosity related to the delay with which Wes would announce Caps' goals. There was no public address climax to the home crowd's celebrations. And this season the pattern has worsened. Last night Chris Clark scored the Caps' third goal of the game with more than eight minutes left in the second period. Wes called the goal only after more than six minutes of playing time elapsed. Then the Kings scored late in the period to tie it up, and their goal's call came some 40 seconds later.

We are being denied a time-honored culmination to good news.

And it isn't happening anywhere else. Not in any other rink anywhere in North America. Watch a Caps' road game and chart the time that lapses between goals scored -- by either team -- and their announcement over the public address system.

Last night was Military Appreciation Night at Verizon Center -- as an aside, it was managed magnificently by the organization; Ted Leonsis' telescreen tribute early on was poignant and perfectly pitched -- but a fair number of military personnel in attendance saw their commissions expire in the time it took Wes Johnson to announce Caps' goals after they were scored.

What is going on?

It's as if by policy the Caps want home team goal announcements to replicate the glacial pace of legislation passing on Capitol Hill. Probably 50 percent plus of Verizon Center's patrons are Blackberried; they are able to retieve updated box scores from the game in front of them sooner than they can get one from Wes Johnson.

Maybe you want to claim that as with Clark's goal last night there can be some issue with accuracy of scoring, creating a delayed announcement. But scoring corrections are commonly made by public address crews. This has ever been the case. And I've been in Verizon Center and seen easily identified goals scored by the Caps, and during the minutes of PA silence that followed, the opposition pot a pair of markers.

Of course I'm not suggesting that this is a matter of importance close to rivaling the organization's need to secure a productive second-line center. But credible and respect-worthy outfits first get the little things right.