On Frozen Blog

If you’re of the opinion that an end-game/standings resolution is required to render a positive judgement on this edition of the Washington Capitals, you’ve most assuredly arrived at the wrong blog. To sorta quote the Cure, It’s Friday and I’m in Love, with my hockey team.

Back in early February I published a cup-a-joe post titled “25 Panic Attacks in 25 Games,” forecasting a stretch run heavy on antacids for the fanbase. I was right about the season’s final quarter being white-knuckled (and haired)-contested. I was accurate, too, in my tally of panic attacks — if you apply them to last night’s third period and overtime. But I severely under-estimated the number of therapy sessions, toupees, and hair dye kits that’d be procured by hockey fans across the region this spring. EMTs were on high alert all about the region for last night’s third period.

For all intents and purposes, it’s now a nine-team race for eight postseason spots in the Eastern conference. If you don’t consider the Caps a team of destiny you are either (1) a Washington Post sports editor or (2) orphaned from the team’s third periods and overtimes the past three weeks. Now 9-3 in their last 12 games (and very, very close to being 11-1), the Caps are finding all manner of methods toward victory. Last night, on a night when the world’s greatest hockey player was hard-pressed to complete the most basic of passes, his subordinate teammates picked him up. No NHL team from October 2006 through December 2007 was as futile as the Caps in shootouts, so naturally, now, in the crunch, they are winning them. They are winning, too, in 4-on-4 OT. A pesky last-place Tampa team well neutralized Ovie last night, so Brooks Laich, Matt Bradley, Alexander Semin, and Tomas Fleischmann get the job done offensively.

Tomas Fleischmann? Prior to last night, Flash’s points total for the month of March was zero. From zero to hero.

Now that’s Bucky Dent. That’s destiny.

The Caps have adopted, fully, the personality of their head coach, who saw only opportunity for prosperity in a closing stretch of schedule that had his youngins on the road for six of the season’s final nine games. The Caps have completed five of those road games, with a record of 4-1. Just how are they doing it? The answer may reside in ordinary dimensions made most un-ordinary by the chemical composition of these Capitals. The square footage of their locker room and players bench is identical to that of 29 other clubs, but what’s transpiring within them isn’t. The answer just may be in the alchemy of these Cardiac Caps.

Weeks back regular readers here first began noticing and commenting on an exuberance they witnessed associated with big-goal scoring and victory with this Caps’ club — one that they’d never seen before. It eminates from Ovie and permeates through to the owner’s box. A theory about its genesis:

The necessary and correct coach arrived late in 2007, and his charges answered change’s call in its immediacy; a starkly different new system required patience and growing pains; most importantly, when newness transitioned to normalcy and the adjusted chemicals were placed on the burner of urgency, early in spring a victor’s will was also instilled. Not just any victor, either: he of championship pedigree.

A swagger seems to have settled in on this team — not quite cocky but rather an overwhelming unity, an unyielding spirit — and that’s hockey’s most potent weapon. With that in your room and on your bench, it matters little whether you’re at home or on the road.

Jeff Halpern told the Washington Post on Wednesday, “I don’t see many teams better than [the Caps] in the East. It’s just a matter of making the playoffs.” This morning it sure looks like Halpern’s right, but will the Caps’ fanbase survive the stress-attacks of this month to see any postseason games?

Speaking of the Halpern family, Jeff’s father Mel, a Caps’ season ticket holder since the early 1980s, traveled to Tampa for last night’s game to see his son play. I wondered a bit about dad’s allegiance last night. Obviously, he wanted his son to tally a hat trick, and surely play the finest game of his career, but did he also want to see his home team lose? Might he not also have wanted the Caps to score 4? There was, truly, that much at stake last night — just as there has been with every game the Caps have played in what we should now call our Month of Follicle Greying and Recession.

Blog democracy at its finest — a keeper comment left for us here last night:

“After watching the Tuesday game against Carolina, I realized I needed a haircut. Eighteen dollars and No. 2 clippers later, I was able to watch [last night's] game without being able to grab any hair and pull it out, no matter how hard the Caps made me try!”

It’s a conspiracy, I tell you, by the head coach to get all in the fanbase shiny on top.

Near 10:15 last night I adopted the view that March 2008 has to rank among the most dramatic of months in Washington Capitals’ history. Also, one of the best.

It’s a Friday for a sun-splashed spring cruise on an open highway, listening to a soundtrack selected for euphoria. Don’t worry about the destination. Savor the journey and the beautiful views along the way.

Ventura Highway in the sunshine

Where the days are longer the nights are stronger than moonshine

You’re gonna go I know

‘Cause the free wind is blowin through your hair