Camp convened with perhaps only one roster spot genuinely open and available among the top nine forward spots (second line center) (or is it first?). It was pursued by a small assembly of center ice men who came to be known as ‘The Bubble Boys.’  But even with this storyline the drama didn’t build greatly, as Mathieu Perreault emerged early and decisively as the top performer. He led the Caps in scoring during the preseason. And after Sunday night’s camp-concluding exhibition game against Chicago, Bruce Boudreau said of no. 85, “I think our best player all of camp was Perreault. I think he played with energy every night.” On the radio last night, Mike Vogel was similarly impressed: “He’s been consistently good throughout the preseason regardless of which line he’s been on.”

The forward ranks offered this camp its exclusive intrigue, and that was muted drama. On the blueline, the top six were set before camp started, and likewise, the Capitals’ net was set before training camp’s first conditioning whistle blew.

This drama-free state of affairs was by design. In the middle of the offseason the GM overhauled his roster heavily for size and grit and experience up front on the wings, some character and a former captain’s experience and leadership to center the fourth line, and then the ultimate offseason coup — Tomas Vokoun. Offseason changer, that.  Training camp quickly became more a dress rehearsal than an audition.

Camp’s top storylines:

• As important as McPhee’s offseason roster moves were, it was what the GM did at his office keyboard while the wounds of another short postseason were still raw that likely set in motion the business-like tenor of this training camp. At camp’s dawning the Washington Post reported that early in the offseason that Capitals’ players were issued a written warning about changed expectations for fitness for duty come September:

” . . . players received letters early this summer warning them to expect an Albert Haynesworth-like timed fitness test with controlled recovery intervals at the start of camp.’

That was George McPhee the enforcer enforcing a culture change for his hockey club. Overdue, in my opinion. May it be the last time Albert Haynesworth’s name is evoked in connection with the Capitals.

• More on the conditioning/work ethic/maturation front: Ben Raby, writing for the Toronto Star, got captain Ovechkin to concede that his 2010-11 showing wasn’t up to par on a number of fronts. He approached last season looking past its regular season toward the postseason, and sacrificed his conditioning in the process. His owner took note:

“He tried something different,” Caps owner Ted Leonsis said. “He wanted to work his way into shape so that he would peak during the playoffs.”

Indeed, Ovechkin admitted that all year he “just wanted to be ready for the playoffs.

“I was starting, like, in the middle (of the season) to be in shape.”

• Vitally important testimony attesting to the Capitals fall-time fitness arrived at the dawn of training camp, from team strength and conditioning coach Mark Nemish.  “I already know [Ovi's] in shape; I can tell. “We’ve worked several times on the ice and, without a doubt, he’s in the best shape I’ve ever seen him.”

• The kiss or death . . . or well considered wooing?: The Hockey News tabbed the Caps as 2012 Stanley Cup champions.

• The GM sure likes his hockey club. At CapsCon, he told the assembled thousands that this year’s squad reminded him very much of the ’97-’98 club — the one that advanced to the Stanley Cup finals. “It’s going to be a hard team to play against. Maybe not as offensive, but more physical.” Superb coverage of CapsCon from the Examiner’s Michael Hoffman here.

• If the Caps hoped that Vokoun would inspire Michal Neuvirth it appears early on to have worked. Neuvy was especially strong this preseason. There may not be the 60-20 split in games between the two that a lot of folks thought about three weeks ago.

• McPhee also chimed in on realignment, all but stating that 2011-12 would be, mercifully, the final season for the Southeast division. What it’s looking like now: two 15-team conferences with 8- and 7-team divisions within. Apparently a popular plan would see the Capitals reunited with the New York clubs and the Flyers in a division. I say, why go halfway — get the best rivalry in all of hockey, and one of the best in all of sports, rekindled as well. Anyway, when it’s official, OFB I think will host a realignment party in town, where we’ll give away NASCAR posters and coupons for Waffle House. And certainly we’ll have a Gary Bettman pinata.

• Netgate.

• Camp standout: Dmitri Orlov. Still with the team partially because of John Erskine’s rehab, but also because he’s played with poise and impact that belie his years this preseason. Stock seriously on the rise.

• Camp standout, on the air: John Walton. If you haven’t given much thought to following Caps hockey on the radio in recent years, you should now.

• One of the biggest stirs in camp perhaps came with the team in Chicago for a game, and when red, white, and blue old timers returned to Kettler for the organization’s first-ever alumni game. Old timers Alan May and Kevin Kaminski drew blood from dropped gloves. I got a good chuckle from learning that Killer had earned the first-ever Alumni Game’s first-ever first star of the game designation.

• Don’t overlook this sidebar to the new season: the trading of Semyon Varlamov delivered to the Caps Colorado’s first-rounder next June. McPhee really likes the ’12 draft — it’s much stronger than this past June’s, he intimated at CapsCon. You might want to take a look at where Adam Proteau has the ‘Lanche finishing out West this season.

What might this season’s lines look like?

Ovi – Backstrom – Brouwer

Semin – MJ90/Perreault – Knuble

Chimera – Laich – Ward

Hendricks – Halpern – Beagle

Love those third and fourth lines.

OFB: At what point in the 2010-11 season did you realize that the season you were chronicling in normal fashion merited book-length treatment — was there a proverbial “light bulb moment”?

Ted Starkey: I actually came up with the idea back in March, as the regular season was wrapping up. I had a season’s worth of material, ranging from the Calder Cup finals the season before with three key players — Karl Alzner, John Carlson and Michal Neuvirth — playing a big role in the team’s second straight title, to the “24/7″ series chronicling the highs and lows of the team’s psyche, to the Winter Classic. I thought it was a unique season and deserved a treatment in what has been termed a unique work.

This work tries to capture the long journey of an NHL season, from the work that begins in September that winds across the continent through a six-game preseason, an 82-game regular season and what turned out to be nine playoff games. The team saw the highs of taking the Winter Classic and the top seed in the Eastern Conference to the lows of an eight-game losing skid and a four-game sweep at the hands of the Lightning, so even with the disappointing ending for the club, I decided the book was going to be about the ride, not the result, and pressed ahead with the project.

OFB: Where do you see the Capitals in the District’s sporting landscape today? And is there any danger for the team in failing to seize on the remarkable up-surge in popularity of late, by bowing out of the postseason early spring after early spring? Put another way: are sellouts an inevitability for Ted because enough D.C. sports fans appreciate who he is as an owner relative to one or two of his less beloved owner peers in the region?

Ted Starkey: Right now, the Capitals are a strong second team to the Redskins, but the team has seen a spot like this before — although not quite to this degree.

During the 1980s, the Caps quickly became the No. 2 team in town thanks to a roster that featured four Hall of Famers and recorded three 100-point seasons. But playoff disappointment dampened what was a very enthusiastic fan base, and certainly, if this current edition of the Capitals suffers another notable playoff failure — meaning not a long run for the club — it will be interesting to see if some of the ticket demand begins to wane.

Of course, this time around, unlike the three-time Super Bowl winners, the current version of the Redskins are part of the reason the Capitals have closed the gap, and with the struggles of the burgundy-and-gold, as well as the Nationals and Wizards, the NHL franchise is the city’s best shot for a title. But to really solidify their hold on the market, they likely will have to deliver on the big promise this roster has given fans.

OFB: Everyone who follows the Caps almost certainly agrees that the team’s participation in the 2011 Winter Classic was a net positive, but in writing this book, did you get the sense that management probably couldn’t have anticipated the extent to which HBO cameras would scrutinize — as in almost annual-physical exacting detail — the overall health of the franchise?

Ted Starkey: I talked at length with the Capitals’ former VP Nate Ewell about the “24/7″ experience, and specifically the demands on the team, and he said it was “shocking” to see cameras where he didn’t expect they’d be.

According to him, the team had a plan to deal with injuries that would be shown on the show — such as Mike Green’s — but even some of the small elements of the show, such as the interview with Ted Leonsis or the now-infamous talk with Bruce Boudreau, certainly became talking points around the league.

I got the sense that while the “24/7″ experience was overall seen as a positive, it certainly magnified some of the growing pains as the team was shifting towards its defensive style in the midst of a losing streak.

OFB: Two-part followup: You and I were a party to more than a few discussions in the press box last season related to Bruce Boudreau’s struggles. First, do you believe, as the owner wanted us all to believe, that the Caps’ November-December swoon could have continued significantly longer without any repercussions for the head coach? And secondly, given how poor the team looked against Tampa in the postseason, however much the team’s second-half surge cooled Gabby’s hotseat, isn’t he pretty much back on it this fall — can the team get out of the gate with say a marginally better than .500 record in the first 25 games and Bruce be in good standing with management, do you think?

Ted Starkey: It certainly seemed at points that Boudreau himself was worried about his future with the team, both in the “24/7″ tape during the eventual comeback win in Ottawa where he alluded to wanting to stay in Washington to his players, as well as his growing concern during the Tampa series and having to face questions about his future.

Ted Leonsis certainly has been patient with his coaches through his Capitals’ ownership, certainly holding on to Bruce Cassady and Glen Hanlon too long during struggles. But with the heightened expectations of this franchise — as well as the high payroll for his players — you wonder how much of a leash he would have had if the losing skid had reached nine or ten games with the HBO cameras rolling.

George McPhee has maintained that Bruce was his coach — both during the losing streak and the eventual sweep by Tampa Bay — but I certainly feel that a disappointing end to the upcoming season certainly could mean some deeper changes to the front office.

OFB: Is 2011-12 a genuine referendum season for anyone in management — or everyone in management?

Ted Starkey: I think the window is certainly not open for as long as some may think, as one thing the Capitals have been fortunate to have is their top player healthy — or at least still in the lineup.

At some point, the team really needs to take the next step and elevate its game in the playoffs. One of the themes from the past season was an inconsistent effort over a game’s 60 minutes, from slow starts to slow finishes.

One thing the Capitals found out in the second round is that playing that way against talented teams can certainly lead to a quick exit. Washington had a chance to seize momentum in overtime of Game 2, but lost with a bad line change. In Game 3, they held a one-goal lead heading into the third period, but were flat in the third and lost any realistic hope of winning  the series.

While Ted Leonsis has certainly been patient, at some point, with the amount of money being spent, if there is a lack of progression, you wonder if there will be the type of changes there were in the roster in the front office roster next summer.

OFB: You and I have had discussions with other members of new media all offseason, and I know that irrespective of some impressive improvements in the lineup, you share some concerns I have. What are they?

Ted Starkey: The biggest weakness of the past year’s team was at the second-line center spot with the departures of Eric Belanger and Brendan Morrison, and part of the overall struggle offensively of the club and the power play ties into the lack of production at that spot.

Marcus Johansson had a nice rookie season, but the second-line spot isn’t one where you can have occasional production — you need to have someone capable of feeding the important second line and keeping them a threat to score. Mathieu Perreault has shown flashes of being an NHL player, but he certainly has had trouble sticking with the big club for long stretches of time. Jason Arnott’s value to the late stretch run was evident, as the team finally had some consistent production from the second line when he was in the lineup.

While the addition of Tomas Vokoun was a big surprise, the tandem of Michal Neuvirth and Semyon Varlamov — along with Braden Holtby when needed — was certainly not a weakness.

The Capitals picked up Jeff Halpern for the fourth-line center, but in reality he was just one point shy of Johansson’s 2010-11 point total. The Caps certainly will need either Johansson — who has the inside track for that second spot — or Brooks Laich to produce on a regular basis or else despite the other additions, they still will be missing a key element.

OFB: Another fascinating front with this club: leadership. Is 2011-12 a referendum to any degree on Alexander Ovechkin’s captaincy? Gabby spoke to this topic this summer.

Ted Starkey: I think in some ways wearing the “C” adds to the spotlight Ovechkin operates under, as while he usually is one of the teams’ hardest workers, he certainly is blamed for the team’s playoff failures.

Ovechkin certainly would be of the mold of leading by example, but the personality of this team certainly might call for a more vocal leader. However, with Ovechkin being anointed the face of the franchise, it certainly seems that it would be difficult to make a change at this point without bringing in a proven leader from another club.

OFB: I thought one of the most important moments of the offseason came when both Matt Bradley and then Dave Steckel called out the culture of this organization. Your thoughts on the tempest created by the departed players?

Ted Starkey: During his time here, Matt Bradley was certainly was one of the more well-respected guys in the locker room, so when I had heard reports out of Ottawa he had called out Alexander Semin on local radio, I tracked down the link via Neil Greenberg and listened in.

His interview was certainly quite forthright and honest — even the radio hosts seemed a bit stunned by his candor — as Bradley went out of his way to call out Alexander Semin for not showing up at certain times, and also questioned why some of the struggling players weren’t left on the bench during the team’s playoff exit. Obviously, people around the team have heard privately the concern over Semin’s effort level — and I do address the enigma that is No. 28 in the book — but this was certainly a direct shot at him. While Joe Corvo had taken a shot of his own last summer at the team’s commitment to winning, this certainly carries a ton more weight than a rental grumbling after going back to his old team.

While Bradley certainly didn’t seem happy about the ice time, he also defended Bruce Boudreau, saying that he was in a “tough position” of having to use his most talented players instead of those — he noted Jason Chimera by name — who were playing well. But when Bradley, one of the rocks in the Capitals’ locker room is questioning some of the players’ effort level, you obviously have to be concerned.

OFB: Lastly, as exciting as your book project is, you’ve recently received doubly exciting news about a new project. Tell us about it, and what readers of your first book should expect with the next project.

Ted Starkey: I am in the process of singing a book deal for a second work, tentatively titled “Red Rising,” which will chronicle the rise of the Capitals from the pre-lockout fire sale of 2004 to one of the league’s top attractions and a contender for the Stanley Cup. While some of the themes certainly will resonate between the two books, it will be a much broader look at the recent development of the Capitals in the market and their quest for the franchise’s first Stanley Cup and what makes the Washington area such a unique place in the National Hockey League now.

It’s always been a goal of mine to do a Capitals-related work, I’m just thrilled to be able to not only do one, but two. I expect to finalize the deal in the next few days, then conduct interviews over the next two months, and turning in the final work by the end of October, with release sometime in 2012.

Indeed.

Maybe the Bruins ultimately make a series of it, maybe they don’t. But down 2-1 after 20 minutes last night, against the hottest team in the NHL postseason, and confronting the harrowing reality of dropping the series’ first two games on home ice against the Bolts, just as the Caps did two weeks ago, the Bs went Commando on Tampa in the second frame, scoring five times. Gut check. Series on.

The deeper we get into the 2011 postseason in Washington, which of course affords us additional context with which to compare the Capitals’ shortcomings, as more accomplished organizations play on, all the more that troubling questions related to team leadership arise. “Team leadership” here encompassing the captaincy, the coaching, and the management. I’m ok with the equipment guys.

Now it seems almost preposterous to ponder the preoccupation some in media articulated back last autumn: that by virtue of youth and inexperience in net, the Capitals could have their spring short-circuited. The Capitals didn’t lose prematurely early this spring, or last, or the spring previous to that, because of their goaltending. They did lose because they’d been out-worked, out-coached, and out-led every spring. They consistently confronted teams in possession of superior leadership. In an era of parity, that’s certainly a differentiating quality.

Conventional wisdom, as recent as perhaps just a few years ago, was that a team needed a star stopper between the pipes to get it done in spring. To be sure — and you need just ask Flyers’ fans — you can’t go Johnny Pedestrian in net. But there are probably 20-plus netminders around the league today more than adequate to the task of guiding a team through three or four postseason rounds, and one or more of them is likely already under contract in Washington.

But what does it matter if you’ve talent and poise in net if your hockey club has a deficit of leadership everywhere else?

• In the spring of 2009 virtually everyone in hockey recognized that warrior right wing Bill Guerin was a coveted commodity likely to be moved by the Islanders to a playoff-bound team serious about contending. The Capitals then had serious production deficiencies on the right side of their lineup, and they were a young playoff team. There was rampant media speculation, especially in Washington, that Guerin should have been a primary acquisition target for George McPhee. Instead, Guerin ended up in Pittsburgh. The Penguins of course beat the Capitals in seven games that spring. The Penguins of course went on to win the Cup that spring. Bill Guerin played a significant role for the Pens.

• Does it mean anything that Dan Bylsma came in from the American League and immediately enjoyed notable success in Pittsburgh, and does it mean anything that Guy Boucher came in from the American League and immediately enjoyed notable success in Tampa, while our American Leaguer behind the bench has spent the past four springs underwhelming us?

• Does it mean anything that literally 40 minutes into his Washington Capitals career Jason Arnott was so troubled by the culture he surveyed in his new room that he felt compelled to stand up and . . . lead?

• Those HBO ’24/7′ cameras were rightly lauded for taking us on the innermost inside of hockey last December, and when they captured the Capitals’ inner sanctum at the season’s most vexing moment, what was, for you, the leadership portrait offered? Were you, like me, more than mildly surprised that it was Mike Knuble standing up and blowing a gasket in the Boston visitor’s locker room? Perhaps more revealing moments of player reaction were left on the cable outlet’s cutting room floor, but I doubt it.

• Another curious ’24/7′ snapshot: The head coach and GM meet one morning at Kettler to post mortem the extraordinary losing streak, and the GM states that the team’s prolonged losing could actually be beneficial in the long run. I remember reacting in that moment: ‘WTF???’ Interesting that other managers don’t typically pursue that as strategy for long-term success.

• The GM also responded to critics, particularly in local media, who were appropriately questioning the team’s leadership in late December with the snide and derisive rejoinder that were such voices qualified to weigh in on hockey personnel they’d be employed in the game. The hirer of Bruce Cassidy probably ought to have brought greater humility to that moment.

My new media colleague and friend Ed Frankovic of Baltimore WNST, in his latest blog entry, ‘Caps Off-season Focus Should Be on Leadership,’ tackles terrifically the Capitals’ deficit of leadership: “There is no doubt some on the ice upgrades are necessary to improve [the Caps'] chances for success. But to me, what this organization seems to need more than anything, is an infusion of leadership. Simply put, they need to add personnel with Stanley Cup winning experience at the management level [emphasis OFB's] and on the ice. The role of those additions would be to help Ovechkin and many of the talented younger players on the team to understand the process of what it takes to capture a Stanley Cup, the hardest trophy to win in all of sports.”

I really admire what Frankovic next does in his narrative: he traces the leadership bona fides of previous Cup winners, noting that even the lavishly talented Edmonton Oilers clubs of the 1980s were laden with Cup-winning resumes from the ’70s. He then goes ’24/7′-inside the 1999 Cup-winning Dallas Stars team with former Stars executive Craig Button, now of the NHL Network. Lots of talent on that Stars team, but it was carefully acquired veteran leadership that ultimately allowed Dallas to break through a formidable Western conference and win the big prize.

“Washington has seen firsthand . . the impact of what a proven winner like Steve Yzerman can do to help turn around a struggling club,” Frankovic concludes. “With the Wings former #19 at the helm in Tampa Bay, the Bolts added some key people with leadership experience (i.e, defensemen Pavel Kubina and scout Pat Verbeek) and Yzerman was also able to get one of his existing star players, team captain Vincent Lecavalier, to elevate his game to a level he hadn’t really been at since the Lightning’s 2004 Stanley Cup victory. As a result, a team that relies on key young players Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman is still very much in the running for this year’s Stanley Cup just one year after finishing 41 points behind the Capitals in 2009-10.”

I was struck at the ferocity and domination with which Detroit skated in periods two and three last night in San Jose. Especially in the third, Detroit simply imposed its will against a terrific Sharks club, and did everything but tie up the game. San Jose triumphed principally because Joe Thornton, heretofore a postseason no-show in big games, skated the game of his life when his team needed it most.

Like every club in the NHL’s postseason, the Wings are battered brutally, and last night they lost Todd Bertuzzi and Dan Cleary to the medical ward as well. But it just didn’t seem to matter. To the Wings, injuries are an obstacle but never an excuse.

Detroit is an “old” hockey team, too, but did you see how energized and fleet of foot they looked when their season was on the line last night? And when you compare that with how our Capitals looked in every third period of the second round, what conclusion do you draw?

This week the Washington Post’s Dan Steinberg reminded us that the offseasons of sports are what we in sporting Washington do best. And so the headline-grabbing news relates to hockey coaches and GMs staying put, and the hoops team getting a nifty new look but not a badly needed name change. Again: it’s middle spring, and nothing of consequence is transpiring for D.C. sports. We are a horrible, horrible sports town, still, not because our residents lack passion or commitment as with those in great sports towns, but because of the rank incompetencies of the men who are the stewards of our teams.

The early hours of every hockey offseason in Washington are grotesque because they are always arrived at prematurely. But I am finding this offseason uniquely vexing, for it is forcing upon me a confrontation with a new and unpleasant consideration of our owner and his management team. Our owner, the executives surrounding him, his coach, they are all fine men, and quite competent at their jobs. They are better than average, I think. And because they are merely better than average they loom as exemplars among their local peers. But what concerns me this spring is that we’ve no evidence that Capitals management possesses what might be termed a Special Forces mindset for securing a coveted target.

And in the world we live in, I think, truly coveted targets require Special Ops.

The Detroit Red Wings strike me as a Special Forces operation within our sport. Notable obstacles are ever placed in their way — amid all the heightened talk of franchise relocation this season, we’re reminded that the Wings would very much like to move to the Eastern conference, to address their longstanding travel ardor. They are, annually, a road weary hockey club. It just never seems to matter. And given their now decades-long reign of success, they ever draft late in each round of each entry draft, after all the bluechip talent seemingly has been selected. It just never seems to matter. They lose a Scotty Bowman and replace him, after a brief dalliance with Dave Lewis, with a Mike Babcock. They just go Special Ops on the opposition as the occasion mandates. The San Jose Sharks defeated a special adversary last night.

What about our Washington Capitals would you identify as Special Ops rival to the Wings? Its Marketing? Its web ops? Anything?

A few years back, there was frenzy over allegations that the New England Patriots, another outfit deadly serious about winning, was engaging in illicit, outside-the-sanctioned mode of football operations: that they were cheating. I haven’t much interest in the NFL, but for some reason this week I thought back to that moment and that team. I don’t know that much came about those allegations against the Patriots, but today I find it interesting that it was the Patriots — and not say the Redskins — who were forced to defend themselves against such attack. I guess today still a lot of football fans outside of New England believe that something sinister and covert was executed by Bill Belichick.

The warfare-sports mix of metaphor needs to be executed, if at all, with limit and care. But this spring in Washington, with the stunning news of the remarkable mission of SEAL Team Six, I can’t help but wrestle a bit with the notion that when it comes to hockey in my hometown, we are badly in need of the equivalent of a SEAL Team Six running things, when at present, relative to a club like the Wings, we have McHale’s Navy.

I’m hardly alone in such thinking. Again I reference the recent post mortem of the Post’s Tom Boswell:

“[George] McPhee respects his players’ pain. His face darkens as he describes Mike Knuble playing with a shattered thumb that required four pins and pain-killing shots just so he could take the ice. He knows which man can’t open his own car door after a game, which may never play again and which could hardly get off the ice unaided after one game.

“Attuned to such sacrifice and 100-hour coaching weeks, McPhee transmits that appreciation to Leonsis, a man defined by loyalties. If you bleed for them, they find it mighty hard to slit your throat [emphasis OFB's]. And that’s wrong?

“In a sense, the Caps are trapped by their own culture of decency, self-regard and optimism. They want to give everybody a second, and sometimes a fourth chance, even the coach. They don’t want to act in haste and repent at leisure, even if it means soft players aren’t traded and get to repeat their spring failures. They don’t want to blow up what they’ve built because they believe in sound foundations. But the Caps also flatter themselves that what they have created is a notch better than it actually is.”

As it relates to the real serious news of this spring, of covert warfare and military unilateralism, I am intrigued by what’s followed the initial awe and celebration of our nation’s feat over its greatest foe. Just in the past few days, a segment of our culture, clearly flanked left on the political spectrum, is articulating something akin to buyer’s remorse: Did we really have to go hitman? For these thinkers, there seems something elementally and intrinsically indecent about such a world.

And they’re right. And it’s this harrowing indecency which requires Special Ops.

On a far less important scale triumph in pursuit of sports’ greatest prize — securing the coveted target — surely requires something akin to a Special Ops mindset. Tampa Bay under the guidance of Steve Yzerman, a good many in hockey today believe, is closer to executing that mindset than we in Washington with our team. Yzerman of course was bred in Detroit.

My kingdom for a competent line change! A horrific line change ended game 2; game 3′s first power play, which produced an ever elusive goal for the Caps with the extra man, ended prematurely because of . . . a poor line change. Which of course washed out Mike Knuble’s goal.

Naturally, Bruce Boudreau, in his postgame reflections, focused on how Alexander Semin’s unsanctioned presence on the ice then didn’t really impact the play. Here’s a relevant area of inquiry, coach:  How is it that for a third consecutive game in this series your team didn’t show up for the third period?

How many poor line changes have you seen from Tampa in this series? This is a symptom, somewhat small but oh so telling, of why regime change must follow this series. The good ones get the little things right, the fundamentals of the game — always.

More than a few observers, including some inside the Capitals’ organization, weren’t comforted by what HBO cameras revealed of the Capitals’ head coach, especially relative to the portrait of the Penguins’ bench boss. That, too, is worth meditating on this rainy Washington Wednesday morning.

At OFB we change lines just fine. Our Young Guns reflect on another sour night in spring for the team in red:

Alex:

• I am as clueless as Mike Knuble, the rest of the Caps, and probably all of you as to how this ended the way it did. Weren’t the Caps supposed to be a composed and formidable defensive team? I thought, just as Joe B pointed out at the end of the second period, that this was probably the best 2011 playoff game the Capitals skated this season.

• It’s amazing what a gifted goal can do to a team’s spirits, as not only was Eric Fehr’s third period clearing attempt picked right off the boards but Scott Hannan lazily attempted a poke check instead of separating Steven Stamkos from the puck or getting his body in the way of the shot. Michal Neuvirth, despite brilliant play throughout the game, should have had that one; it just wasn’t a playoff goal. Three mistakes by three players in the span of about three seconds is not playoff hockey, and that play is why the Caps lost this game.

• Bounces? Yes, Tampa has had their fair share. But those bounces are created by hard work down low and strong board play, which in this blogger’s opinion has decisively been Tampa’s strongest asset, not the 1-3-1. The 1-3-1 is a preventative strategy in hockey — one variation of the trap — but it’s not a play to rely on all the time. When the Caps are in the offensive zone after hurdling the passive Tampa trap, they have to go to the corners, the boards, and behind the net, where they are simply ineffective. Tampa, meanwhile, has worked immaculately in the corners and quickly moves the puck towards the net.

• The Caps could lessen their perimeter play a lot more and send pucks on goal as soon as they get the puck below the circles. When a team is settling into their defensive formation on a given play, they are at their most vulnerable. The Caps seem to want to establish dominance in their zone and throw Tampa’s defense off balance. Their composure, however, has been the Caps’ undoing.

• Examine the Caps’ goals from last night, not counting the Ovechkin 5-on-3 PP goal. Carlson’s goal was scored by a rushing Jason Chimera, who beat the trap and rushed the puck down low and around the net. He saw a screen develop in front and fortunately flipped it out high to Carlson for the screened shot. Knuble’s goal was almost identical except Ovechkin, after beating Hedman wide, threw the puck on goal and a fortunate bounce leveled the score. All of Tampa’s goals except Stamkos’ were scored right around the blue paint from plays developing below the circles (St. Louis’ assist on Lecavalier’s goal, Thompson’s assist on Malone’s goal) and because of some very sloppy exits (Fehr on Stamkos’ goal, Erskine/Laich on Bergenheim’s goal).

• All that said, why aren’t the Capitals getting more pucks on net? They are simply getting outhustled and outworked in this series, particularly Semin and Backstrom, and particularly along the boards. These guys have yet to show up in the series and Semin is especially due for some positive streakiness against the club he torched in the regular season.

• On the topic of the regular season, Tampa was a minus goal differential the whole year until the last week or so of the season. I am baffled, as bewildered as Mike Knuble, by Tampa’s system working so effectively against Ovie & Co. Teams adapt and Boudreau should have only needed that Game 1 loss to solve Guy Boucher’s men. If DC doesn’t push this a la 2011 Chicago or 2010 Philly, there will be no hot saucy shirts to joke about come October. Maybe come the weekend.

Andrew

Excuses. They are what separate the championship caliber teams from the championship pretenders. Unfortunately for the Caps, they are in the second category.

The time has come for answers in Washington, not more questions. After their catastrophic Game 3 loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning, Head Coach Bruce Boudreau brought up that he thought a Tampa goal should have been disallowed. That is a hollow, vacuous excuse, and saying “we lost because they had a goal that shouldn’t have counted” is nothing more than saying we have no explanation for what happened. There are any number of answers that could have been given as to why the Caps are down 0-3. None of them have to do with one Lightning goal.

• When looking at the game as a whole, really the series as a whole, how does a team with the skill level of the Caps allow a line change to cost them Game 2 in overtime? Beyond that though, how do they then let a line change cost them a huge goal in the early going of the very next game?

• Expanding on these coaching points though: how does a team like the Caps, a team that has played the Lightning more than any other team in these playoffs, not look prepared coming into one of the most important playoff series in their history? Tampa Bay is certainly a good team, but they should be nowhere close to the Caps in terms of overall team strength. Tampa of course has an Elite Three if you will, just as Washington does. Is there any doubt who among St. Louis, Stamkos and Lecavalier versus Ovechkin, Backstrom and Semin is bringing more to their respective team in this series?

• Guy Boucher never seems satisfied, never seems content with the status-quo and always seems like he knows his team can do more. And you know what? I think his team likes that and respects that.

• In the first half of this series — of which there appears there will be no second half — Boucher has spoken in glowing terms of forward pairings he’s relied upon all season: Lecavalier and Purcell, St. Louis and Stamkos. What a novel concept — maintaining cohesion and chemistry among your line pairings.

• He has also spoken of the “great character” his core guys possess. Me = envious.

• The never-ending story of the last three springs has been that the Caps have underachieved. Well, from looking at what was said after Tuesday’s loss we can all see why. Instead of saying the team can play better and needs to perform up to their pay grade, Bruce Boudreau is talking about a goal that should have been waived off.

• Amazingly, with nearly a week off to prepare, the Capitals in this series have looked unprepared, from the get-go, not rested, not ready and just plain bad. Washington looks like a barely .500 team. Meanwhile the Lightning look like world beaters and have taken the mighty Capitals and made them the just a stepping stone to the Eastern Conference Finals.

• How did Tampa Bay get where they are this morning, you may ask? I’m not sure it’s the stuff of Special Ops secrets. Likely reasons: lots of hard work, dedication, cohesion, faith and trust in their systems, and certainly astute if precocious coaching.

• How did the Caps get to where they are down three in a series many picked them to win in five? Through deficient work ethic, a sense of entitlement rivaling that we saw against Montreal last spring, the core (excepting Ovechkin) coming up small, and a ridiculous lack of desperation, all things Bruce Boudreau has never seemed to work to fix. Now they are on the verge of the end of their season if they don’t win tonight, and the end of an era if they don’t win the series.

One last thought: today brings yet another optional practice for the Caps. It would be interesting to go back over say the past three seasons and inventory the number of days taken off by this team’s stars — especially with respect to optional skates — and compare the tally against stars from clubs who prosper is spring.

Through about 50 games into 2010-11, there was plenty of ground-gaining, you’ll recall. For instance: the Caps, having won the Southeast division title just a year ago by 40 points, trailed the Tampa Bay Lightning in the Southeast in late February. That’s ground-gaining alright. And it’s not as if Tampa in the offseason acquired Bobby Orr and Mr. Hockey in their prime.

I continued my critique: the handling of Marcus Johansson (overmatched in the season’s first half; solid to superb for most of the second), which stood so conspicuously apart from the manner in which the rest of the Capitals’ important young prospects had been developed. The Capitals addressed the conspicuous gap at center on the second line by going young and cheap, and it showed. As the season approached game 60 and the team up to that point made the biggest news by nearly ruining an HBO special and adopting a godforsaken-on-the-eyes trap (“Trapitals” they were called at one point), I began drinking more. (On that latter point, the Caps seemed to acknowledge this dire situation for me with a marvelous adoption of marvelous technology. By middle February, this truly was a season-long highlight for me.)

More: You heard of Fat Elvis? Through 50 games we had Fat Ovi.

Then, magic happened at the NHL trade deadline. George McPhee acquired a legit second-line center, with Stanley Cup pedigree, who not only established instant chemistry with Alexander Semin but forged a notable off-ice bond with captain Ovechkin. The GM also stole Dennis Wideman blind from the Panthers (in last place for a reason) for a pick and . . . Jake Hausworth. Wideman, up until his injury, had been the best defenseman to wear a Capitals’ sweater in years. McPhee also plucked another able and fast-legged vet (Marco Sturm) off the waiver wire. It was as if the Hockey Gods, having dealt us Eric Belanger and Joe Corvo and some other junk last February, felt obliged to atone, big time, this spring.

Winning suddenly seriously followed: 15-2-1 with all the new bodies brought in since February 28. That’s a slightly different winning percentage than say December through February.

Something far more important than adding talented players transformed this lethargic, underachieving Capitals’ club, I allege. Something special happened in the room. Guys who looked old (Knuble) soon thereafter looked young again. Brooks Laich suddenly became an impact player — up front and on the power play point when injuries necessitated his move there. New voices in the room were raised, and underachieving ears seemed to listen.

And so this is what I call the Capitals’ 2010-11 regular season campaign: The Tale of Two Seasons

One was spirited and committed to absorbing a wholesale new system and defiant of ravenous injuries, standings-surging and uplifting. The other . . . markedly less so. Today, understandably, the owner wants you to forget the fact that his team was shut out ten times in about 80 games and instead focus on a third consecutive Southeast division crown. (Those Southeast banners, along with a $5 bill, will get you a cup of coffee at Starbucks.) What I wager he won’t acknowledge on his blog any time soon is that my read of the roster last fall was largely right, and that his general manager was forced into an aggressive mandate at trade deadline time to fix some serious shortcomings.

All of which is dandy this morning, when it counts, but is dismissive of the wallet-letting by the Red Army who weren’t pitched to renew their ticket plans last summer with a pledge to fix things come March.

But this morning, rather than reckon, let’s celebrate a season of so much sour so well righted by such extraordinary mid-season re-engineering. The team remains battered as the regular season’s final weekend dawns. But if Mike Green (skating in Sunrise Saturday night, per John Walton) returns healed and with hop in his stride, if Dennis Wideman can return in late April, the sky’s the limit for this club. It’s fast, it possesses an enviable blend of precocious youth and cagey veterans, it’s deep — and reliable — in net, and it has springtime MoJo.

And for all this, let’s give credit where clearly credit is due: One achievement by this Capitals club stands above all others, for me, this regular season. Bruce Boudreau, under such intense pressure and criticism in late December, rather courageously jettisoned the system that had come to define him in his pro hockey coaching career in favor of a more conventional thwart first, counter-attach next approach — and he got 25 skaters to buy into it. You didn’t hear a peep of complaint from all the highly skilled millionaires about it. You know what system the skill guys would have preferred — the one that fattens their stats and thereby fattens their contracts. Instead, you saw total buy-in by Bruce’s brigade. No grumbling. No doubts. Some growing pains with it to be sure, but taken in total, the dramatic transformation was remarkably efficient and successful.

Oh, and lastly, with such charitable impulses behind the scheme of last summer, Mr. Owner, why didn’t you accept my wager? : )

At the risk of selling the sizzle before the steak, here’s the point of all this: I don’t know. People who make their living by watching this team don’t know. No one knows.

Better defensively. Penalty kill — much improved. The power-play can’t score. They’re dirty. Or they’re not. They’re
physical. Or they’re not. Too young. Too slow. Too old. Too wild. Not wild enough. Is a notable shakeup coming?

Rather than go over the obvious questions, let’s figure out if we’re even asking the right ones:

• George McPhee’s defining characteristic in the rebuild has been patience — but when does the patience change to imperative-of-the-moment aggressiveness? Should it? Does that translate well into the Caps’ current cycle? Is it time to ‘go for it’? Is it time to face hard truths about the team’s viability as a Cup contender? It seems unseemly to question it, but McPhee has stated the past few years that the organization has thought that it had a chance to contend for the Cup. Considering the results, does that thought process need to be revisited?

• How flawed are the teams at the top of the Eastern conference? Is this setting up to be an especially ripe time for management to make a bold roster move, precisely because the East lacks a thoroughbred at the top, and one key addition (let’s just say for the sake of argument an impact second-line center) could catapult the Caps to legit conference finals contender?

• How would you feel, generally, about this hockey team’s chances this postseason absent any notable acquisition by management this weekend?

• A defensive state of mind. The Caps are much better defensively, likely better than most national media realize. Shutting out teams  once in a while, even. Blocking shots. But not scoring. Not scoring a lot. Getting shut out a ton. Not a lot of offense, and a lot of defense. Will the Caps be able to win the 1-0 games in the playoffs, when things are even tighter? How much better would this team be if the power play converted on a 20 percent basis?

• What do you most want to see from this hockey club over the final 20 games of the regular season? More scoring generally? The emergence of a true no.1 netminder? A heated up power play?

• As far as you’re concerned, is Ovi enough of the Ovi of old to instill confidence in you that he’s poised to lead the Caps to a reasonably lengthy postseason run? Do the Caps need the Ovi of old? Is Ovi 2.0 where he should be as a hockey player, ready to stake a credible claim to Cup aspirant? How exactly would you describe Old Ovi and how would you describe Ovi in 2010-11? Perhaps most importantly: is it necessarily the case that Alexander Ovechkin had to radically adapt his game — individually, and radically — to advance his hockey team’s postseason ambitions?

• In the same vein, Mike Green, too, has significantly modified his game this season, subsuming individual offensive stats in pursuit of a more complete game. Is it your view that the reigned in Mike Green is a net benefit to this team’s postseason viability, or like Old Ovi, is the experiment with Green another instance perhaps of the team cutting off its nose to spite its face?

• In your view, is there any notable identity crisis with this hockey team? Put another way, can a tiger change its stripes — can this club built for speed and scoring and an up-tempo attack re-engineer itself, and reliably, for the duress of the postseason?

• Play GM for a weekend. Give me one move — any move. Who and what is going, and who’s coming?

• The Room. Who owns it? Who is accountable to who? Being a good interview is nice, but it doesn’t follow that it gives you clout when the doors are closed. Bruce Boudreau is capable of screaming at the team, as we amply saw on cable television, but what Caps player can raise his voice (if need be) and get results? Can this group of players take the challenge? The team’s style has changed significantly, but it’s been very slow to adapt/embrace it — the effort is there, no doubt. When will they fully adapt to the new system to take advantage of the chances their commitment to defense is creating?

Just a few questions, almost every one of which opens a can of worms. The Caps are young, they are changing their style, they are dealing with injuries, and certainly they are being questioned in the media. If they get through it, it seems like they will be tougher, stronger, and more resolute. But almost certainly they need to score more, and almost certainly they need to be more threatening on the power play. If not, it’s hard not to wonder where this group of players is next year.

Heck, even when this team practices outdoors it takes those paces at the posh Chevy Chase Country Club.

But from where I blog, a change in culture is badly needed for the Washington Capitals. Opulence and pampering and coddling, I allege, do not make for pit bulls in Bauers.

Herewith, in the first of a two-part revolution-intervention, I present a ten-point plan to radically reorient Washington’s country club hockey culture. On Wednesday I’ll bring you part II.

Understand, please: changes in cultures require shock therapy, boot-camp-style makeovers. These suggested intervention-remedies should be adopted in the short-term, and are not conceived as conditions to be carried forward (necessarily) through say the entirety of a player’s multi-year term with the club . . .

Although at this stage I am open to hearing otherwise from my readers.

• New paces at the Puck Palace. There will be no returning to Piney Orchard or Mt. Vernon for practicing and training by this club, and in a sense, that’s a shame. Those over-refrigerated, decrepit barns, while rough on shivering media and spectators, reminded Capitals’ players of hockey’s primal conditions. Lay an egg one night in an NHL rink, and Caps’ players could promptly expect locker room blackboard word of penance skates at their training ice box early the following a.m. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the greatest blue-collar ethos and lunch-pail sensibilities in Capitals’ history were forged during the neighborhood, rustic rink years.

Kettler-Capitals, on the other hand, is a puck palace. Capitals’ players can have their dogs groomed there while they practice; their girlfriends can get pedis and spa treatments a few floors below. We can’t take a literal wrecking ball to the palace, but we can remove a bit of the debutant-beau out of the hockey player while he’s in there.

Effective immediately, all 10:30 practices at Kettler are moved to 7:30 a.m. Practice skates the mornings after Eastern time zone road games will take place at 8:45. Cots will be purchased by management and placed in the locker room for players wanting to maximize their rest upon late-night arrival at Kettler from the airport. This will dis-incentivize a bit the team’s nocturnal social habits (more on that in a second). This is hardly cruel and unusual punishment; the region’s high school hockey players are typically on ice sheets at 6:00 a.m. for practice skates before classes. This will prove a bit of a hardship for local media, but they’re soft, too; it’ll be good to toughen them up a bit as well.

7:30 morning skates will strike many as punitive, and that’s fine. However, hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians are roused and already on Metro or en route to their labor at the Department of Labor, or some 60-hour-a-week software shop, by 7:30 each weekday, and so our newly inspired Capitals will with their new skating schedule be more in synch with their community. Wearing ‘Washington’ as crest on your sweater necessarily means you’re a Washingtonian; our guys in skates are gonna work like we do.

• Last call. Effective immediately, the very next Capitals player photographed at a bar the night before a game is fined $1,500, and the day following confirmation of the transgression, the team skates at 5:30 a.m. No need to go subpoena about the social past; perception in this town is reality. This is hockey; the sin of one is the sin of 20.

• Also effective immediately, second-offender bar sippers are fined $5,000, and a bag-skate — also in 5:30 a.m. darkness — will accompany. In-season, there will  be only one top shelf pursued by Capitals’ players so long as they perpetuate mediocrity on the ice upon Washington’s severely stressed fan wallets, and that’s behind opposing netminders. The Flyers, you know, had a similar cloud of alleged bar-fly booze haze dog them not long ago. A regime change remedied that rather swiftly, and the results ever since speak for themselves.

• Citizen-governance. No figure in hockey history was as effective at demolishing complacency and deficient work ethic as Herb Brooks. Unfortunately, we don’t have him around any more. But we can learn from his richly chronicled pedagogy. Effective immediately, Capitals’ season ticket holders will be invited to a novel participation in all bag-skates deemed necessary by the Capitals’ coaching staff. The evening before the skates, the Capitals head coach will, via email, invite a season ticket holder of duration out onto the ice the following morning for the retribution session, introduce the VIP to the entire team, and hand him or her a whistle. You know the rest. Ultimate accountability.

Legacy season-ticket holders unavailable to attend the skates will also be able to Skype-in their suggested discipline.

• Lunch-pail/brown bag nutrition. Team officials have described to me the in-flight meals afforded Capitals players on their charters. Suffice to say, they’re not the spartan sustenance of pretzels and lukewarm Folgers you and I receive on our commercial air excursions. More like the Palm at 30,000 feet. We’re changing that, effective immediately. In lieu of filets seared in cabernet-cherry, our new in-flight nutrition will be more in line with line workers: Sloppy Joes, spinach, and gelatin. And an apple.

Obviously, no Amstel Light.

You beat the Habs up there on a Saturday night, one bottle of Labatt’s per player for the flight home.

Shock therapy, remember.

[Coming up in tomorrow's Part II, we take our pampered pucksters for a little bus ride.]

(Like those in Tampa January 12, and Philly a week later.)

And so I braved the extreme elements in pursuit of televised, big-game puck. Might not have been the wisest course of action, but I regard myself as a hearty winter soul.

In ordinary weather I’ve merely a three- or four-minute commute to my local Chili’s, but Wednesday evening was anything but ordinary. The roads were madness, chaos, quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen in my hometown in winter — even last year’s anomalously snow-buried one. Ill-informed or belligerent drivers of small, rear-wheel-drive cars had no chance. None. And because of stranded and abandoned buses I had to navigate a 4-mile, highly circuitous  route to the restaurant. I made it, finally, and was thrilled to be seated in warmth smack in front of a 50-inch flatscreen, all to myself, tall draft beer before me. I’d missed only the opening couple of minutes of the game. (Obviously, no scoring.) The evening at that moment felt quite special; I rather enjoyed the adventurous ardor by which to view the big game.

Then I watched it. Well, tried to.

The next time you read or hear a prominent hockey commentator — particularly one up in Canada, one who isn’t tasked with watching Washington Capitals’ games night in, night out — blather on about all being just dandy in D.C. these days, that the Caps are merely dress rehearsing for the big springtime production, shoot him a quick email that informs:

• The Washington Capitals have won a grand total of nine of their last 25 games. Does that strike you as the mid-season form of a champion-in-waiting?

• Also, if the game goes to OT, they’ve no chance.

I was appalled by what I watched Wednesday night. Again. In another “big game,” the Capitals came up incredibly small. There’s far more power outage among the Capitals’ forwards than any Montgomery County neighborhood serviced by Pepco. And it isn’t accidental. Not only didn’t the Caps score, again, really they didn’t even come close to. Again.

More and more this is a hockey season of unfathomable waste in Washington. So little worth preserving on the DVR. New Years Day is less a grand feat in the context of the whole season because we now realize that the game’s swamp conditions greatly aided the guests. The Caps’ most impressive games this season came way back in the fall, when the Caps were the Caps of old: exciting. Now they’re the Devils of the past 15 or 20 years. What I really need from Pepco this hockey season are outages from 7:00-10:00 on Capitals’ game nights.

I was filled with disgust at the game-ending horn Wednesday, and I immediately rang my buddy Michael in up Maine, who I knew was watching like I was. I didn’t even get a hello in to him before I heard these words from his mouth: “Uninspired and unwatchable.”

Utterly perfect synopsis.

The Washington Capitals this winter are unwatchable — particularly from the vantage of those laying out large coins to be seated down low in Verizon Center, having responded to the offseason marketing cry of, Washington’s most exciting sports brand — the only winning game in town!

At the end of my 20-minute telephone catharsis with Michael Wednesday I realized that my outrage wasn’t directed merely at another lousy result in a “big game” but what the Capitals’ surrender meant in a macro-philosophical sense. Remember the adage “The new NHL”? It represented an evolution away from the clutch-and-grab, drab trap and dump NHL hockey pre-lockout. The one that ESPN rightfully abandoned. In the new NHL hockey was to be played . . . with flow and creativity, with scoring consequently elevated. In other words, as it’s supposed to be played. In capitulating as the Capitals have this winter, in playing away from their roster strength, they’ve basically dropped the proud flag of up-tempo thrill that actually made Washington a hockey town.

Our last great hope perhaps is to have the Vancouver Canucks win Lord Stanley this season. The brand of hockey they displayed at Verizon Center a few weeks back was captivating — fast and synchronous, quality scoring chance after quality scoring chance generated, hard-hitting, hockey the way it’s supposed to be played. The Caps did everything they could in that game to uglify it. Naturally, they lost. Because they’re impostors.

George McPhee this week announced the resigning of Alexander Semin. A part of me wondered why he pursued such a skilled player to play in this slop of a system. But then I realized: McPhee and Bruce Boudreau genuinely want a 0-0 result in 5-on-5 play this season, especially in the postseason — that’s what these new-look Caps seem to be able to consistently generate, after all — and hope that Semin or Mike Green can tally on a power play, and then they’ll hold on.

How thrilling.

Two weeks ago, when I went up to Philly for that other big game, I joined Lisa Hillary for a between-periods radio segment with WTOP’s Jonathon Warner. Warner asked Lisa if she was surprised by what she’d seen from the Capitals on the evening. Lisa turned and looked blankly at me, a bit fearful I think of her instinct to be blunt and frank on the air in that moment. But she replied, “Jonathon, I don’t recognize the Capitals’ team I’m seeing tonight.”

You know, there remain 10 more contractual years of Alexander Ovechkin’s NHL career in Washington. What if you knew that all 10 were to be played in a system such as this season’s? Wouldn’t you hurl yourself in front of the next available snowplow?

It is uniquely the NHL that soils the intrinsic beauty of this great game. George McPhee this week acknowledged there being a lot of “copy-catting” by teams in the league. It’s a copy-catting of the lowest common denominator: take highly skilled hockey players and suffocate their instincts and skillsets within a soporific system that stymies. It’s socialized hockey. When have you associated socialism with creativity and inspiration? It’s the old ways versus the short-lived, tantalizingly exciting new. I understand the need of many European pro teams, in leagues in nations whose best players have come over to the NHL, to play neutral zone suffocation — there’s a dearth of talent there. But watch our Americans who’ve come up through the USNDTP, in any international tournament today, in any age bracket. The Red, White and Blue develop young guns of great gallop, and they attack in waves and pressure the puck in every inch of the ice. It’s so beautiful to watch. It’s hockey as hockey should be played. It’s also the hockey the NHL promised us it was returning to.

Label this surrender style the Caps are playing whatever you want, but most assuredly, if you are a lover of hockey as it should be played, you can’t call it inspired. Or watchable.

Mitchell destroys Toews

We’ve all heard the laments simmering not only on this site but all over the NHL’s mediascape persuading George McPhee to swoop for a rock-solid rear guard. The word on the street, if you didn’t know already, is that if the Caps pick up a shutdown defenseman they would be true title contenders, if not odds-on Stanley Cup favorites. The problem is the man in charge has left that pan on the backburner despite going into the playoffs last season with an overstock of useless (in the literal sense of the word) trade-deadline acquisitions (even though I was on board), plus millions in cap room, minus a player like Willie Mitchell.

Last summer I was desperate for the Capitals to lure Matthias Ohlund from free agency land, but through his misguided approach he sailed on to beautiful Tampa Bay to the tune of $3.5 million per year long term. You’ll remember the Canucks were also his last team as was Mitchell’s. Vancouver has been quite successful in picking up fantastic defensemen either through draft (Bieksa, 2001 and Edler, 2004), free agency (Mitchell, 2006 and Hamhuis, 2010) and trade (Erhoff, 2009 and Ballard, 2010). Those six players in the same pot steams success, but Mitchell is not guaranteed to be an ingredient despite his recognition as the team’s top defenseman in 2008 and 2009. Vancouver breeds seriously good d-men and it would have been an error had this meeting never occurred.

Mitchell is perfectly suited to play top four minutes for the Capitals and George McPhee is the perfect suitor for a player with Mitchell’s ability. He’s the kind of guy McPhee has been unable to sign in his long stint as Caps headhunter. Mitchell’s ability to handle a superstar like a ragdoll, his size and stamina and his desire to rebound from a concussion sustained in the early part of this year could really add the Fuhgeddaboudit attitude to the Caps defense that has been absent for a long time.

But is he worth it? Mitchell’s last contract was a four-year $14 million deal with Vancouver. While the Caps have room to accommodate a similar contract, GMGM is not going to give him more than two years and it would be wise if it was for half the money he made in Vancouver. We are all aware how precious cap room is in terms of personnel mobility, so non-core, long term deals like Martin’s, Hamhuis’ and Michalek’s must be avoided.

Following the demolition of Chicago’s roster and Vancouver’s relatively recent playoff experience, it is likely the Canucks have the most formidable blueline this year, more so than the Windy City and Toronto, whose reconstruction from goal out is now concentrated on a top six forward. Adding a blueline spike strip to DC’s roster puts the Caps in the same class as those teams that have added grit to their blueline this summer like New Jersey, Pittsburgh and Vancouver. If the Caps can land a defensive product of the Canucks named Willie Mitchell, that tingling sensation I mentioned… yeah that can last a lot longer.