On Frozen Blog

In there anybody in the East a reasonably healthy Caps’ club should waive a white flag of surrender to? I wondered about Boston before Wednesday night — 19-4-4 is the stuff of stud teams. The Bs came out flat, and Johnny stoned them pretty good, and I still believe all things being relatively equal, they’d be the favorite in a playoff series. Nonetheless, I see some significant indicators portending, potentially, a special second half of the hockey season ahead for the Caps.

Start in net. For me, at this point, Jose Theodore’s modest accomplishments as a Cap are an afterthought. Because I’m mesmerized by what BJ is doing. He isn’t just winning, he isn’t just putting up stellar stats, he isn’t just staking a damned strong case for a new (starter’s) contract for next season, he’s actually leading by example just as his predecessor, #37, did. There were about 15,000 of us in Verizon Center Wednesday night who thought that he was done for the night, if not longer, when Chuck Kobasew crashed into him in the first period and added more soreness to an already sore hip.

I was seated next to the Sporting News’ Eric McErlain, and I told him, “There’s no way [Johnny's] back out in period two.” And BJ was well tested in the opening frame’s concluding moments, getting the better of all Bruin blasts while shrugging off his aches. If he’d called it a night during the first intermission there wouldn’t have been a fan in the stands who’d have thought him soft. But this was a big game for the home team, against one of the league’s best teams, and the sweater with no. 1 on it, having known only no. 2 status in this town since his arrival, seemed to will himself and his team to victory. Think Johnny’s teammates will be forgetting his effort Wednesday any time soon?

BJ seems on a mission this season, an “I’ll show you” personal vendetta against all those who viewed him as nothing more than a career backup. It’s one of the most compelling performances in the Caps’ net I’ve seen since Olie’s ‘98 postseason or Jim Carey’s Vezina effort of ‘95-’96. It’s beautiful and inspiring.

Wednesday also saw the return of Alexander Semin, and that was some rust he had about his game. He didn’t score; he just maintained possession of the puck seemingly as long as he wanted to. Semin’s emergence this season as a slick scoring stud means that the Caps will enter the postseason bearing holsters full of world-class guns, making 5-on-5 matchups a worry for opposing coaches and power plays a full-on nightmare. Gretz had Mess; Bossy had Trottier; Lemieux, Jagr; Forsberg, Sakic. Ovechkin has Semin. And it’s scary good and a thrill to watch.

But what has impressed me most about the Caps thus far this season is the resiliency this team has showed through an unfathomable litany of injuries. The Caps have more than persevered through the staggering tally of medical misfortunes — they’ve actually managed to gain ground on the rest of the Southeast. Front office mayhem in Tampa and Carolina hasn’t hurt the Caps’ cause; still, the home team has dressed twenty nine different skaters since opening night. That’s obscene.

And it hasn’t been third- or fourth-line grunts going down but the team’s non-Ovechkin core. Tom Poti, indisputably one of the Caps’ most important defenders, has missed 11 of 29 games. Mike Green, the no. 1 blueline gun, has also missed 11 games. No forward was playing better than Sergei Fedorov when he went down; he’s missed 16 of 29 games. And all Alexander Semin was doing at the time of his injury was leading the NHL in scoring. He’s missed 12 of 29 games.

Since November 12, a month of play during which much of the Caps’ skilled core was missing from the lineup each night, the team has gone 8-6-1. Management and the coaching staff like to credit an organizational philosophy of system, practice, and development, shared and carried out between parent and affiliate in the American League. But something special also must have taken hold in the team room; perhaps it’s a carry-over from last spring, and without question the current Jack Adams holder has something to do with it.

Soon perhaps all will be returned to the lineup, and here’s an interesting thought: that healed up core, relative to their counterparts on other postseason clubs, ought to have a lot in the tank deep in spring if need be.

There’s also a new 20-minute-a-night man in town — Karl Alzner — and those minutes may not diminish much even when the team’s blueline is healthy. He is improving with every game, and his level-headed play and elite instincts could be a huge addition to the Caps’ top 4 on the back end throughout the stretch run and the postseason.

But I go back to Gabby in assessing the potential for the terrific when warmth first arrives in Washington in 2009. Last weekend in Toronto I had a chance to suggest to some hockey television broadcasters that Bruce Boudreau’s work late this autumn may be more impressive than that which earned him the Jack Adams last season. Imagine what he might do with a lineup that management envisioned back in training camp.