On Frozen Blog

On this the morning of the final home game of the Capitals’ 2008-09 season, it’s an apt time to reflect on how far this franchise and this city have come, in relatively short order, in reorienting hockey’s status in the region. Capitals’ General Manager George McPhee did just this with media out at Kettler this week. The arrival of the Frozen Four here this week was the occasion for his reflection, but he could just as easily convened the media to point out this startling fact: the Capitals will sell out every game they play next season. All 41 home games, and of course the playoffs.  

“Our market is as good as any market in the country,” the general manager told reporters.

He was asked where he thought this team’s ceiling was points-wise in the immediate years ahead — 110, 115, 120? McPhee wants to see what kind of damage the team can do in this postseason, and while he admits that he believes very strong seasons can be durably forecast given the Caps’ young stud nucleus, for him success as the architect of the rebuild will be judged solely on the Caps’ winning the Stanley Cup. And it was on the topic of the rebuild that McPhee seemed his most reflective, most philosophical.

“I don’t know that people understand how difficult it is to do what we did,” he noted. “If you don’t get [the rebuild] right, you don’t have a franchise any more.”

You don’t have a franchise anymore.

Were we really on a puck precipice here? McPhee seems to believe so. (Washington Post sports editors surely did.) I’d never heard McPhee or anyone else for that matter frame the Capitals’ overhaul earlier this decade in quite that stark an assessment. Today with fannies in every Verizon Center seat and Capitals’ home games more resembling heavy metal rock concerts in atmosphere it’s relatively easy to forget that not all that long ago moving hockey tickets in this town was like selling ice cream on the street in January.

The heart of this astounding turnaround story is the team’s amateur scouting. McPhee was asked by reporters for his assessment of Nicklas Backstrom’s meteoric rise to the rank of elite NHL playmaker. McPhee noted that his second-year center was, in terms of hockey smarts, “as good as you can be.” At the draft in June 2006, while the rest of the hockey world tried to forecast correctly the ordering of the very top of the NHL draft, McPhee and his scouts knew 15 minutes before selecting that they’d leave the lottery with Backstrom. That’s a sign of a mature and adept scouting regime, keeping their powder dry while talking heads and rival GMs bark, beg, and badger in draft floor frenzy. The Penguins selected Jordan Staal with the second pick, Chicago tabbed Jonathon Toews third, and then the Caps had to choose between Phil Kessel and Backstrom. The Backstrom selection seemed the “safe” route at the time, to draftgeeks and TSN talking heads. But not to the Caps’ scouts.      

McPhee has talked before about “getting it right” when your team is drafting as high as the Caps were while rebuilding. They are where they are today because they got it right. The Hockey News published its annual ‘Future Watch’ edition a couple of months back, wherein it identifies what it regards as the 50 hottest hockey prospects. The Capitals had two prospects included in THN’s top 50 — Simeon Varlamov at no. 12 and John Carlson at no. 27. But this is wrong. At the time the edition went to press Karl Alzner was skating with the Caps and was believed by THN to have matriculated up to the big club. He has not, and his 2008-09 season should be regarded as one comprised largely of development in the American League. There isn’t a scout in the league who wouldn’t identify Alzner as ranking among the 50 best players not yet in the NHL, and so the Caps more accurately should be thought of as having three youngster young guns among the very best.      

More are almost certainly on the way. This week the Caps signed and assigned Joe Finley and Braden Holtby to Hershey. The Caps were interested in Finley turning pro a year ago. Of Holtby McPhee said this week, “He’s gonna be a real good one.” Holtby could have played another year in Canadian Major Juniors, but the Caps saw so much in his game already they wanted him slotted in the pros with the likes of Varlamov and Neuvirth. Bears’ head coach Bob Woods, on a visit to Verizon Center earlier this season, told me that he sees NHL careers in store for both Oskar Osala and Mathieu Perreault.

I’m not sure Yogi Berra knew a great deal about hockey, but being informed of the Washington Capitals’ player acquisition and development the past few years, he might have said anew, “We have deep depth.” I’d add: the winning has only just begun.