There’s standup, and then there’s what Gabby offered the Washington Post’s Tarik El Bashir Wednesday morning — actually agreeing with Capitals management that it was time for a change behind the bench. He actually told General Manager George McPhee, “You’re doing what you have to do.” A company man in this sport if there ever was one. He’d just been terminated from his dream job, and still his thoughts were with what was best for the team.

On November 17 the Caps were in Winnipeg, and after they’d fallen behind 4-1 after 40 minutes, most listlessly, I sensed, really for the very first time, that we were watching the onset of destruction. The very next morning I took to Twitter and made explicit my concern: “The biggest indictment of this team was the final frame. Teams with pride and character make it 4-2 or 4-3, to build on for the next outing.”

I reference this moment because when Tarik yesterday morning asked Boudreau when he sensed that things might be slipping from his control the coach pointed to November 17 in Winnipeg.

Way back in January I published a highly unflattering, highly critical two-part read on the struggling, soft and identity-challenged Caps, calling them out for operating in a what I regarded as a “country club” atmosphere of luxury, comfort and precious little accountability that, from where I blogged, undermined an ethos of night-in, night-out hunger and drive — most particularly relative to the lunch pale Capitals rosters of 15-plus years ago. You know, the types of teams Dale Hunter played on here. And last season I also pulled no punches with respect to commenting on the increasing frequency with which Washington hockey fans were taking to social media to share photos and accounts of nightclub encounters with members of the team at troubling hours, and with troubling frequency. And so it was most interesting for me to take in the NHL Network’s coverage of Monday’s drama, Monday night, and hear Billy Jaffe suggest that under Dale Hunter there could be no serious commitment to winning when it mattered without the Caps mending their “clubbing” ways, while Joe Beninati not long later alluded to a “country club atmosphere” taking hold in recent years. The Washington Post’s Tom Boswell authored what I thought was the most severe indictment of the Boudreau era, but taking pains, to his credit, to also assign blame to upper management.

“During the offseason two ex-Capitals went public about the country club atmosphere that undermined discipline on the team. Once you’ve tolerated a star system for years, how can the same coach possibly reverse the trend?”

About a week ago, right as I began sensing that things were truly boiling over, I sent email to some reporters here suggesting that Jason Arnott would be in a unique position to comment on troubles that festered last season and perhaps metastasized this. Arnott had been afforded an inside look at the team last spring and then departed town — having arrived here with great fanfare at the trade deadline as a coveted leadership asset — with nary a word said about it, and having landed quite well in St. Louis this season. To his credit again, Tarik button-holed Arnott out at Kettler on Monday. You might say that in D.C. Arnott saw a loose ship being captained.

“It’s very hard. When you let guys do what they please, what they want [emphasis OFB's], then you come in and get hard on them, it’s pretty tough.”

But by no means should Bruce Boudreau alone be scapegoated for the country club atmosphere — and Boswell emphasizes this in his column. Boudreau wasn’t in D.C. when the Caps drafted Ovechkin and subsequently devised elaborate and clever and highly successive marketing campaigns for him his first two seasons. The coddling and deification of the extraordinary talent began from day one. With Alexander Ovechkin the Capitals, for the first time in their history, had an opportunity to create their Elvis (thin and fat), and they did.

There were no larger-than-life figures on that ’98 Capitals club, captained by the legend, that made it to the Stanley Cup finals, were there? Just food for thought.

So you know that my concerns with the Caps date back deep into last season and you should know too that I opened this season with a renewal of them — I titled my season preview ‘Questions for a Hockey Club at a Crossroads.’ In it I identified Bruce Boudreau as a figure who had to demonstrate marked improvement at his job: “Much as the Capitals’ core roster has experienced growing pains in its path toward legitimate contention, so too has Head Coach Bruce Boudreau. Put bluntly: he’s underwhelmed a lot of observers with his handling of the Capitals’ recent postseasons, and in fact in the judgment of many been out-coached by less experienced bench bosses of lower-seeded clubs.”

I didn’t write this sentiment for that preview file, but I did suggest to a few of my blogger chums here that it was not at all beyond the realm of possibility that the Caps could can Boudreau at about the 25-game mark. I specifically wondered how McPhee would react if, for instance, the Caps were behind Tampa Bay in the Southeast division then. Like I think everyone else, I had no idea we’d see what we have this season from the Panthers. Anyway, my hypothesis occasioned a torrent of email protest back from my chums: “No way; he’s years left on his deal; Ted’s too cheap.” (They really wrote me that.) The Moral: When a team goes bad any GM who values his job will pull the trigger, no matter (within reason) the financial fallout.

* * * * *

I’m closing this file with a very personal feel-good story. Last night the Buffalo Sabres recalled Joe Finley. In the summer of 2010 Fins kept a diary during Capitals’ Development Camp for OFB. It was a really fun project, and I enjoyed most that Big Joe had a lot of fun with it. Meeting him for that project remains one of the great rewards I’ve derived from this blogging gig. Big Joe is a true gentle giant, truly one of the friendliest people I’ve met in the sport.

During his development time with the Caps Fins suffered injury after injury, and finally, at the end of last season, the team did what most teams do after a first-round pick fails to show some durable glimmer that all of that development investment was paying off: they cut ties with him.

Buffalo invited Fins to training camp this fall, and he showed well enough to earn an AHL contract with the Sabres’ American League affiliate in Rochester. With the Amerks Fins has been what the Buffalo News this week termed “a revelation.” Through 18 games this season Big Joe has seriously thrown his weight around (57 PIMs), and played so strongly that he’s earned a shut-down designation with the top pairing on the Rochester blueline. His +10 is best on the team. It’s a terrific story, capped by his earning this week a three-year, two-way contract with the Sabres and last night’s callup. I sent him a congratulatory note the other day, in which I somewhat jokingly expressed remorse that the Caps hadn’t held on to him one year longer, given the arrival of the new sheriff in town. He agreed.

For nearly two years now I’ve had a recurring wonder related to righting the frustrating and infuriating underachievement by the Washington Capitals of this era: What would happen if this band of multi-millionaires suddenly had to share a room with a legend, an authentic legend, who wore the team crest; a true warrior whose number resides in the rafters of Verizon Center, whose honor mural conspicuously adorns one end of the team’s training facility; the scorer of what most Caps’ fans regard as the biggest goal in team history, a luminary who once lifted the Prince of Wales trophy high over his head? That for me was what was biggest about Monday’s stop-the-presses news — we’re about to watch my dream scenario play out.

It’s a dream scenario that hardly belongs to me alone. By noon Monday I’d received a text from a chum in Ashburn, Va., who reported seeing not one but two Dale Hunter Capitals sweaters adorning shoppers in his neighborhood grocery store. We had unseasonably excellent weather Monday for sweater exhibition, but still I found this anecdote, taking place in a single enclave of our region, remarkable. We awoke Monday with the post-holiday dread of return to our life of labor, only to spit out our first sip of coffee as the wire (The wire? I meant to type Twitter) broke word of the Legend’s return.

Bondra is a legend, Kolzig is a legend, but this is the Legend of Washington hockey. Captain Legend. Coming home. To help. When we need it most.

Remarkable.

Millionaires, all too accustomed to having their hockey hearts questioned, on Monday morning met the biggest hockey heart HockeyWashington has ever known. Christmas, indeed.

The Dale Hunter Era begins in Washington this week as an experiment, and I say that not with any overriding sense of doubt attached to the announcement but rather out of acknowledgment that nothing remotely like this has ever been tried here before. We’ve never had one of our own, an oh so distinguished alum, return home to help out in a leadership crisis. The Caps are Cup-less perhaps partially because theirs has been a bench populated, for nearly 40 years, by merely good and decent bench bosses, mostly very mediocre ones, and one or two less than mediocre men. Washington has not been a cradle of great hockey coaching. Far from it. Pittsburgh has enjoyed Badger Bob Johnson, Scotty Bowman, and now Dan Bylsma. We’ve had the Murray brothers, Shoeney and Wils and Gabby and Glen. . . and Butch Cassidy.

We won’t know for years where Dale Hunter falls in the litany, but at this moment this hire seems quite more than special, quite more than novel. To no small extent it seems to represent a vindication of Washington’s hockey legacy, modest though that be. It also seems like a terrific tonic for these troubled times; these Washington Capitals seriously need boots meeting their behinds, and the Dale Hunter kick ought to occasion some giddyup alright.

Monday at Kettler seemed especially about the Legend offering testimonials to his love affair for his Caps. “This has been my team — I shouldn’t say my team, it’s Ted’s team — but it feels like my team because I played here so long and had good memories here,” the Legend said.

‘Have you been able to follow much the team since you’ve been gone,’ a reporter asked the Legend. Only in the sense of taping and watching every Capitals game played since he left. Long bus rides in major juniors, you know; good way to kill all those hours, watching every game for the team you captained and left . . . the decade before last. “I’ve been cheering for the Caps since I left here,” Captain Legend admitted.

‘Were you a tough sell?’ another scribe wondered. Well before this moment word was in wide circulation among the Kettler hockey press that Huntsy had turned down overtures from other NHL organizations, out of fidelity to ours.

photo by OFB

“It would take the Washington Capitals to get me to stop doing what I was doing [in London],” the Legend said.

“This is the only [NHL] team he’s ever wanted to coach,” George McPhee told the mass of media enveloping him.

It didn’t come up during any of the press conferences Monday, but it’s part of the Hunter lore, and I remember it as much as any play in his remarkable career: Dale Hunter never hired an agent during his 19-year career, or at least certainly not while in Washington. Instead, once a year, at the end of each hockey season, he sat down with Mr. Pollin, briefly discussed his value to the club, quickly reached an accord, and made a new pact . . . on a handshake.

* * * * *

The St. Louis Blues are in the midst of their own honeymoon with new leadership. They’re hot under Hitch: 7-1-2 since he took over three weeks ago. I thought it remarkable that the Blues took to Kettler ice opposite the Capitals right as Dale Hunter was taking his first paces in his coaches warmup. Talk about a team seemingly walking into a Chinatown buzzsaw this week. A couple of Blues players even poked their heads in the other side of the rink to behold the spectacle of the Legend’s return.

* * * * *

Monday also delivered a brutal bittersweetness the likes of which I doubt I’ll ever encounter again. Bruce Boudreau’s dismissal necessarily delivered a deep bruise to that great hockey community just to our north. NHL rookie John Walton believes he’s in the big leagues today because of Bruce Boudreau. So you imagine his emotions on Monday. JW got to share about 10 weeks of the Dream with his advocate-friend, before having to say goodbye. On Monday he brought important perspective to the Boudreau legacy in D.C.:

“I learned of Bruce’s dismissal this morning around 8:00 a.m. As I drove into Arlington, I listened to the coverage of the coaching change on WTOP when a sad irony hit me. On Washington’s most listened to radio station this morning, the coverage of the coaching change was wall-to-wall. News at the top of the hour. Fan reaction on the talk back line. Sports at :15 and :45 was almost all Capitals. Joe Beninati on in the 9:00 a.m. hour . . . This happened on a Monday during football season. The Redskins won a football game yesterday, and there was almost no mention of it today. Has that ever happened around here?”

No, it hasn’t. Bruce Boudreau helped build this hockey town. Dale Hunter is elated to be here because he remembers well Washington’s ordinary status in this league of 15 years ago, and how extraordinary our standing is today. He’d be the first to acknowledge Gabby’s role in getting us there.

“Fat fuck!”

Most unfortunate words to measure by. But measure we must, especially now. They represent, I wager, a point of no return for this Capitals club — under this leadership regime.

One thing about wearing hockey no. 8 in Washington — you know the high-definition cameras are ever on you, from numerous angles, and on November 1, late in the evening against Anaheim, the Capitals’ captain, unceremoniously benched for a game-deciding shift, knew full well his obscene reaction would be captured for all the world to see.

The conventional interpretation at the time was that the fiery captain was merely giving vent to frustration. His competitive combativeness just got the better of him, you know. Certainly the Capitals would have you believe that. Problem is, this is not a fiery captain. Also, not an accomplished one. In fact, this season, he’s largely a lethargic, very minus-skating, very ordinary looking captain. Another problem with that initial interpretation is that the Capitals and their captain had already started their standings descent under this coach, again, and the circumstances that have followed the remainder of this November fairly beg for a reconsideration of that remarkable moment. Prior to November 1, when did you ever encounter a moment of such insolence from the guy wearing the ‘C’ on your beloved team’s sweater? Not in this town, not with this team.

This morning, we could look back on November 1 and Ovi’s outburst and deem it a moment of contempt . . . a mutinous moment, in fact.

And if the captain isn’t all in, what’s the likelihood all his teammates are? It would be interesting, would it not, to poll all those Hockey News writers and editors who fancied the Caps the Cup favorite back in late summer, this very morning, and see where they stand now.

* * * * *

For me, the very first serious warning sign arrived early in April 2010, just days before the start of that season’s postseason. The Capitals, running away with the Southeast division en route to a 121-pt. regular season, went to Columbus and held off an under-manned but tenacious Bluejackets team, winning 3-2. After the game, Bluejackets center R. J. Umberger told the Columbus Dispatch that the Capitals were a bunch of floaters, that theirs wasn’t a game ready for the prime time of the postseason. In the humility-laden sport of pro hockey, this was a serious callout.

“A good defensive team is going to beat them (in the playoffs),” Umberger told the Dispatch. “If you eliminate your turnovers and keep them off the power play, they’re going to get frustrated because they’re in their zone a lot.” Umberger’s comments proved prescient; about three weeks later the Montreal Canadiens would author one of the great shockers in the history of NHL postseason hockey, eliminating the 121-pt. Caps in the first round, executing with unwavering discipline a bunched-in box of a defensive shell against Gabby’s floaters. Bruce Boudreau’s postseason ledger in Washington fell to 1-3. For me, that series was a serious warning sign.

* * * * *

Aside from the particulars of Umberger’s critique, in a larger sense he was calling into question the Capitals’ identity. Failure, which Umberger forecasted a fait accompli for the Caps, would render Bruce Boudreau’s finesse attack a fad. There are few critiques more derisive of a hockey team than being branded “floaters.” Umberger played a key role in the Flyers’ team that dispatched Gabby’s Caps in round one in April 2008.

Saturday night in Buffalo, facing a Sabres team ludicrously beyond depleted by injury — nine regulars missing from the Buffalo lineup — Capitals skaters opted to sit back and attack their wet-behind-the-ears adversaries with a patient, largely forecheck-free strategy of counter-punching. In its conclusion the 5-1 debacle — the second consecutive Saturday night massacre against a slightly better than average American Hockey League outfit — occasioned a near aneurysm from Comcast’s Alan May on ‘Capitals Postgame.’  “This is a hockey team without an identity,” May sternly lamented.

May’s in-studio broadcast partner, Al Koken, was left similarly crestfallen and rage-filled by the shocking showing. He directed a very big-picture question to the very unsuspecting game call team of Joe B and Craig during the postgame, asking the duo to reflect on “where this organization is” right now. Not a question merely about a seriously struggling hockey team, but an interrogatory directed at the heart of the organization as a whole. A commendably gutsy bit of journalism on Koken’s part. Watching on television, a viewer in that moment felt the discomfort it caused the game’s broadcasters. Joe B was able only to stammer out something about the Caps needing better goaltending, as if this team was merely a Band-Aid between the pipes away from prosperity, then followed with speculation that things may be so dire that Gabby would have to return to his now infamous trap of a season ago. Imagine.

Question: How is it possible that four years into Gabby’s tenure we are at pains to identify an identity for this $60 million hockey club?

This is quite literally the case: on any given night, no matter the standing of the opponent, and certainly no matter the volume of regulars potentially missing from the foe’s lineup, we have no idea what Capitals team will show up. We also have no idea what Capitals team will show up from period to period.

I consider this a gravely serious warning sign.

* * * * *

Much was made in the preseason of what was perceived to be savvy veteran additions brought in during the offseason by general manager George McPhee. In hindsight, too often the Capitals competed in the postseason in recent years with too inexperienced a lineup, the theory went. This fall, we are learning that this notably more experienced team is mentally, psychologically fragile. Karl Alzner addressed this trait head-on in the aftermath of last Friday night’s blowout loss to the Rangers.

Mentally weak hockey clubs reflect poorly on that team’s leadership. Put another way: How often have you heard it said of Babcock’s Wings or Bylsma’s Pens that they yield a goal or two at inopportune times and . . . turtle?

I consider this yet another warning sign.

* * * * *

That 7-0 start to the season seems positively aberrational. We were startled by the commitment the Capitals showed then to crashing the opposition cage, to getting goals in the proverbial ‘ugly’ fashion — the way you need to in the postseason. It didn’t last. This month, most often, when the Capitals prevail it’s been in a white-knuckle affair, no matter the caliber of opponent. When they lose, which is often, often they’re blown out. This, too, I consider a dire warning sign.

* * * * *

More gutsy journalism: Saturday night the Washington Times‘ Dan Daly directed a tweet my way in which he alleged that the Capitals are big on marketing and branding but conspicuous under-achievers with what really matters. What’s amazing is that the Caps go to such great lengths to create a “brand,” and yet they have no “identity,” Daly tweeted. Again with the identity issue. I hadn’t truly reflected in such fashion until prompted to by Daly. I confess, painfully: I am 100 percent in agreement with him.

* * * * *

By no means is this viewpoint meant to scapegoat Bruce Boudreau. In fact, whether he stays or goes, there remain gravely serious questions about Ovechkin’s fitness for team captain. And what of this fragile team psyche meme that Alzner honed in on? Maybe it’s a byproduct of an organization spending years overly catering toward, and coddling, it’s $10 million dollar man. “Branding” rather than competing especially well, as Dan Daly puts it.

I chatted about this whole mess with my father last night. He and I enjoyed an amazing father-son weekend for the Winter Classic up in Pittsburgh almost a year ago. I told him, Pops, you know what I enjoyed most about that weekend? As magnificent as the Red Army was in that football stadium during the national anthem, as euphoric as our victory walk out of it was at night’s end, what I enjoyed most was the thoroughly unexpected performance of the Capitals’ alumni against the vaunted and much younger and much more star-studded Pens alumni. It was just like old times. We out-worked them. We out-hustled them. We battled til the end. We stunned them.    

I want that Capitals ethos back. Do whatever it takes to secure it.

And Boudreau said accountability for those who took penalties when the score was tight would be enacted through limited ice time, observing that Alexander Semin, despite a power play goal in the first, was held to only two shifts after he cost the team two penalties in the game. As Boudreau’s comments suggested, Semin doesn’t move his legs, and chooses the penalty rather than the hard work.

The behavior by Semin really isn’t shocking or anything new—it’s been status quo in Washington for several years for 28.  The observation isn’t meant to rekindle any “Semin has to go” conversations. But comparing that style of game Tuesday to that of two of his teammates is a solid illustration of what Boudreau means by winning individual battles. It doesn’t mean playing a perfect game, but it means owning your time on the ice for however long your shifts are.

Look at Matt Hendricks’ play Tuesday. Hendricks had far from a stellar game—in fact, he was out on the ice for a shift that could only be described as the Shift of Shame, when the Capitals literally stood in their own end, made no effort to clear the puck, and watched Dallas score as if the boys in red were sitting in the press box like the journalists.

But that was one shift in the first period. Instead of letting his focus slip in and out the whole game, Hendricks redeemed himself battling for the puck. And, even when there was a 3-goal deficit with only 10 minutes left in the game, he dropped the gloves and got his team to care more in the final moments than they had for much of the game.

“That’s the type of guy Hendy is,” defenseman Dennis Wideman said after the game. “If he can’t give us a boost with scoring a goal or getting ahead, then he gets involved physically or gets involved any way he can. We needed to be playing a lot better than that before that, but it was good to see him get in there.”

Or take Wideman himself. Wideman didn’t have a perfect game, either. He failed to register a point (unusual for him this year), and he took a delay of game penalty in the second.  He was also on ice for Dallas’ third goal. But at least he fought for the puck consistently, and often helped change the flow of the game in the Capitals’ favor. He followed up a major clear on a penalty kill in the second by drawing a penalty that negated his team’s disadvantage. He’d bat down an airborne puck and make sure it stayed in Dallas’ defensive zone.

On some days—and sometimes for a longer stretch of time—a player’s shot just won’t work. He’ll go through scoring streaks that could make a volcano melt and droughts that would make the Sahara seem pleasant. That’s why work ethic has to be there—to fill in the gaps.

Going forward, the Capitals are going to have to take more pride in possessing the puck and fighting for it if they don’t want more performances like Tuesday’s.

Still, this fall we don’t know what we most need to about this hockey club — and necessarily we can’t: How much heart, courage, confidence, and history-defying swagger will it possess next spring, when the ghosts of Washington Capitals playoffs past will want to haunt again?

So what’s to preview? What we all want to know in October 2011 is what the collective state of our hockey hearts will be next spring. We all want to know that roster adjustments and hard offseason training and finally, at long last, an exasperation with failure has settled in, and in the aggregate these factors are driving the Capitals toward a more glorious fate — one befitting their other-worldly skill, one quashing four consecutive sour endings to spring. But we can’t know that right now. So instead, we saddle up for another long season (but likely a final season of Southeast division hockey!), hoping for better things on the power play, more goals, a returned-to-form Ovi, elite goaltending, good health.

And also this: night-in, night-out character and commitment, regular occurring 60-minute efforts, pride for the crest, an identity of hard work and an earned reputation for being tough to play against. Achieving that, we in the Red Nation could pretty well allow the chips to fall where they may.

When I wonder about the fate of this year’s Washington Capitals I find myself asking questions, identifying about 10 big-picture, perhaps defining queries, the answers to which I believe will determine just how far this team will go next spring.

(1) To what extent will the Capitals successfully implement a “hybrid” system relative to the preceding two seasons, one that better utilizes the prodigious skill sets of the team’s elite talents while also bringing more lunch pail ethos and thump and snarl for the season of ugly hockey (spring)? To what extent will there be “player buy-in” for this new system, and to what extent will the team adhere to it within the cauldron of high-pressure playoff puck?

(2) Will readily identifiable leadership develop under Alexander Ovechkin — on the ice and off? There are many superstar talents in many professional sports ill-suited to roles of extraordinary leadership. In his seventh NHL season Ovechkin not only has to recapture the game-breaking production he lost last season but he must embrace the responsibilities that come with wearing the ‘C’ in his sport, and inspire his teammates in the process. They already respect him; they already acknowledge his stature in the sport. Beginning this season, Alexander Ovechkin must look the part of mature warrior, and the Capitals must look like Alexander Ovechkin’s hockey team.

(3) How big a statistical rebound will we see from Ovi? His 65 goals in 2007-08 seem an outlier, highly unlikely to be replicated ever again, but last season’s 32, relative to his talent, seem even more aberrational. In better shape, and healthier, and a lead part on an improved power play, it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t significantly improve over last season’s numbers. But by how much?

(4) Will power be restored to the power play? It was inexplicably pedestrian (16th, 17.5 percent) last season. When it slumps this team’s extra-man unit still shouldn’t fall outside of the top 10. Roman Hamrlik, a healthy Dennis Wideman and a healthy Mike Green, and a more experienced John Carlson ought to deliver a big jolt from the point. And will that bolstered blueline allow for Ovechkin to be moved back to the half-wall, where he’s clearly done more damage on the PP in his career?

(5) Will Tomas Vokoun’s longstanding regular season excellence (career .917 save pct; 2.56 goals-against) translate to the postseason, for which he has but two series’ experience (11 games total) back some years with Nashville? It’s perhaps the lone area of uncertainty with this enormous and hungry talent, who apparently turned down better offers in July to try and win a Cup in D.C. this season. His postseason numbers (.922 and 2.47) are actually stronger than his regular season ones, but he went 3-8 in those 11 games.

(6) Who will reliably win faceoffs here this year? The Capitals late last season and in the offseason bid goodbye to two of the better draw men in the entire league in Dave Steckel (62 percent in ’10-11) and Boyd Gordon (58 percent). Both Marcus Johansson and Mathieu Perreault are notably inexperienced in the art. Jeff Halpern (56 percent) should help. Two quality draw-takers need to emerge, and it would be helpful if one skated in the top 6.

(7) Is there a realm of more mature and more reliable excellence that Alexander Semin will display in what is clearly the most important year of his NHL career? He is the longest-tenured Capital today; if he fails to make improvements with respect to discipline (offensive zone and generally ill-timed penalties) and emerging as a productive scorer when the team needs it most, this is likely his last season in D.C.

(8) Much as the Capitals’ core roster has experienced growing pains in its path toward legitimate contention, so too has Head Coach Bruce Boudreau. Put bluntly: he’s underwhelmed a lot of observers with his handling of the Capitals’ recent postseasons, and in fact in the judgment of many been out-coached by less experienced bench bosses of lower-seeded clubs. This season Bruce Boudreau, too, needs to earn new regard when it matters most. Will he mature and improve as he expects his core skaters to?

(9) This hockey club’s conditioning was a hot topic during the offseason. Will this Capitals club look physically strong generally, and most especially in third periods?

(10) Don’t overlook the impact of an NBA lockout/lost season on Verizon Center especially, long a home, due to its heavy use, to one of the league’s poorer ice sheets. If there’s no NBA hoops, just how good can this ice sheet become — for a hockey team boasting many exceptional skaters and assembled to contest a fast-paced game?

Beagle, playing on the fourth line with Matt Hendricks and Jeff Halpern, didn’t score a goal. But by the end of regulation, Beagle had a little bit of everything else: he got shots on goal (4), he gave out hits (4), he blocked shots (3), and he got an assist on a Hendricks goal that tied the game at 3 in the third period. Beagle even won the two faceoffs he took.

Going into yesterday’s game, Beagle had played four of five preseason games and had a plus-2 rating. Friday, he was never on the ice for any of the Sabres’ three goals against the Capitals.

Beagle said he particularly focused on hits during that game.

“We didn’t get that many hits the last game we played, so I wanted to bang the body a little bit, and start kind of getting into that groove and that grinder style of hockey,” Beagle said. “It’s always weird transitioning from shinny hockey in the summer to actual games. Tonight felt more like a game that I want to play and a style I want to play.”

It’s also the kind of game a coach is looking for in a player like Beagle. When asked about Beagle’s performance, Caps head coach Bruce Boudreau even threw in a few more items to Beagle’s resume.

“He’s energetic, and he kills penalties, and he brings life to the team, and in every practice, he makes it very difficult for our team, because he practices so hard all the time,” Boudreau said. “And that’s … one of the reasons he’s here.”

Beagle admitted after the Caps’ win Friday that he gets his competitive streak from–of all people–his grandmother.

“Surprisingly, my grandma is very competitive, and she would kill me if she knew I said that,” Beagle said. “She’s actually the hidden competitor in the family.”

Beagle said his grandmother is usually quiet, but the competitive streak comes out when she watches her grandson play hockey.

“She wants me to do well, and she wants the team to do well,” Beagle explained.

Defenseman Karl Alzner at the beginning of training camp gave reporters a peek at how competitive Beagle, his workout partner, is and how hard he trained during the offseason.

“I just wanted to do everything he did, pretty much,” Alzner said about his trips to the gym with Beagle, adding that Beagle was always the guy who would want to fit in that extra set of reps. Beagle didn’t want their trainer to put the two NHLers’ workouts online, in case his competition for an NHL roster spot could then find out what he was doing (Kings of Leonsis also talks about it here).

Whatever plan Beagle adopted over the summer seems to be working. And after his performance against the Sabres Friday, one thing is for sure: his grandmother should be proud.

If the Caps are going to make it to the Stanley Cup finals this year, it’s likely part of the impetus will come from greater acceptance of the playing philosophy set or adopted by head coach Bruce Boudreau. Last year, there was buzz about a serious shift to defense on the team. And the team, despite winning a lot of low-scoring, ‘ugly’ outcomes in the season’s second half, never seemed wholly comfortable with so radical a change. This year, Boudreau discussed with the Washington Post a hybrid system, combining the quick-break elements with the sense of defensive responsibility.

The Capitals’ Brooks Laich has played under Boudreau for almost five full seasons. He says the element or underlying characteristic that defines a Boudreau system or team’s style of play is pressure -– all over the ice.

“He always emphasizes moving your feet and moving the puck, but even when you don’t have the puck, taking time and space away,” Laich described it. “I think if you want to put a term on it, maybe try and ’tilt the ice,’ so that it always seems like we’re going downhill, ’cause we always want to put pressure on and make it very difficult for other teams to play against us.”

Laich said Boudreau isn’t the only coach he’s played under who followed that mantra, but other bench bosses haven’t emphasized it as much as Boudreau.

“His emphasis is always about taking time and space away when you don’t have the puck, and then when you do have the puck, move your feet, move the puck, and attack the net,” Laich said.

“It’s pressure defense,” Boudreau said, who also discussed the theory in his 2009 autobiography, Gabby. “We want to be the dictators of the way the game is played, I think. In the perfect world, we’d like to have the puck in their zone. So I believe that you don’t get that by having them bring the puck to you. So we’ve proven we can play that game if we have to, but it’s more fun playing it the other way.”

And, judging from Laich’s response, the players have a similar opinion of Boudreau’s pressure cooker system.

“Players love it. We love it. When you don’t have the puck, be aggressive, and get it right back. And when you do have the puck, attack and try and score,” Laich said when another reporter asked how the players under Boudreau respond to the style. “I’ve been on the other side of it –I’ve played against Bruce, and it always seems like his teams are bigger, stronger, faster, in better position, and it always seems like somebody’s in your face.”

Still: no summer has proven to be as ill-equipped to heal a previous hockey season’s hurt as this past one was for me. Time is supposed to heal all hurt, but as recently as August I listened closely to reflections from departed heart-and-soul Capitals’ veterans, hardly axe-grinders, and longstanding concerns I had were renewed from their views. Still, this morning, there is something healing in the air.

Hockey returns in full force this weekend, with the start of training camp, and it brings a host of hotly talked about questions related to the state of the Capitals. For the Hockey News, at least, all is well. We though who’ve lived long in Washington know better.

The Washington Capitals drafted Alexander Ovechkin no. 1 overall in 2004. That summer, I never imagined that seven years later we’d be where we are today: still disappointed.

Not just unsuccessful, but profoundly disappointed.

No one member of a hockey team, not even one of the sport’s richest captains, is singularly responsible for the premature demise of his club, but Ovi himself knows — and embraces — the unprecedented role he plays as Ambassador of Hockey in the nation’s capital. The draft lottery luck that delivered this franchise-altering talent was meant to alter miserable springs in these parts, and to date that hasn’t happened. We’re still wrestling with why, and suddenly an athlete’s calendar seems of essence.

Ovi celebrates his 26th birthday this weekend. To most observers, he’s lodged in the prime of his professional hockey career. Only twice in his six NHL seasons has he failed to record 100 points, but 2010-11, he bottomed out: 32 goals and just 85 points. By his own admission he wasn’t in shape, and for most of last season he looked slow. In 2007-08, Ovechkin scored 65 goals. We do have to ponder the possibility that we’ve seen already his very best hockey, that it’s behind him. If that’s true, what are the implications for the Caps?

Capitals’ players report for the start of training camp this weekend, and there are for me five overriding questions confronting this hockey club as it enters what may be the most important season in franchise history. I say that because one more season of conspicuous failure is virtually certain to inaugurate sweeping changes to the Capitals’ core (and perhaps beyond), the very core most of us believed would lead the team toward Stanley Cup contention.

Season-defining questions, in order of importance:

• Will we see the return of Ovi 1.0? I think we know the brand of hockey Ovi likes best to play, and here I’m not talking about systems and such. If this team fails again I’d at least like to see Capitals’ opponents pay a heavy price in victory. The Capitals of especially the past couple of seasons haven’t been all that tough to play against. They were, comparatively speaking, when Ovi was a one-man wrecking ball, dishing out thunderous, glass-shaking (and clean) hits. And opponents — even big-bodied blueliners — gave him deference. By about year five of his career it became vogue in media circles to opine that Ovechkin’s brute physical style wasn’t suited to last in this league. Well, I’ve seen the alternative — Ovi in a trap, Ovi in a hybrid trap, Ovi floating, Ovi manning the power play point, and I’m underwhelmed. Ovi is at his best (and most exciting) when he skates as the proverbial bull in a china shop. Bruce Boudreau suggested this summer that he will again tweak his system to allow for a greater attack ethos. So: free Ovi in the process, I say, and make our opponents pay. And roster additions on the order of Troy Brouwer and Joel Ward bolster the hopes for a more physical brand of hockey in red this season.

• Is Ovi truly ready and fit to lead? There is the risk of making too much of the parting comments from Matt Bradley, ones echoed in their entirety days later by Dave Steckel, but there is also the risk of ignoring them altogether. Brads intimated that Ovi’s leadership — on and off the ice — required maturation. We ought to see if there’s been any if he reports fit for duty this weekend.

• Will there be a culture of accountability? Elusive in recent seasons: Sixty minutes of committed, character play. The bench got shortened, Brads suggested, even when front-line performers weren’t performing. Perhaps worse: there was a tiered system of accountability with practices, too — big-money guys were gone from grunt-work under suspicious circumstances. The head coach has to address this, beginning this weekend. Call it a lunch-pail ethos, call it crafting a blue-collar identity — I call it skating nightly with pride for the crest you wear — but the Capitals this season need to intimidate with work ethic and passion. They need to give Washington hockey fans 60 minutes of effort. I’m of the school that suggests that such commitment bears directly on what hockey in spring looks like. Accountability, too, confronts the coach. Perhaps Bruce Boudreau, unlike a few of his younger new coaching peers, has had to learn on the job in the NHL. His evolution into a quality bench maestro must arrive now. There simply can be no more game-costing screwups with line changes, no more deer-in-headlight looks as momentum sways the other way in the postseason.

• Is the Capitals contending core tired of failure? Are these highly skilled guys through talking tough with training camp t-shirt slogans and willing to pay the price required of NHL success? If they are, I suspect we’ll see fewer Tweet pics of night-before-games jaunts about town slinging back the Jagermeister.

• And last but not least, the ever-enduring enigma, Sasha Semin. We know what Matt Bradley thinks of him — the same as a good many Capitals’ fans. I listened all summer long to friends in media swear to me that Alexander Semin had to be traded for this team to prosper. I swore to them that (1) even if they were right, his contract (and reputation) is untradable; and (2) that George McPhee, aware of how difficult it was for this team to score last season, and how conspicuously it struggled with the power play, was going to cast his lot one last time with the world-class but oh so infuriating right wing. Alexander Semin is one of hockey’s greatest mysteries. But in the fall of 2011, it’s clear the Caps are going to live with that mystery at least one more season.

These are my big-picture wonderings heading into a new season. What are yours?