Hockey luminaries Gary Bettman and 2007-08 Jack Adams Award winner Glen Hanlon loom large these days. Knowing the commissioner as I do, it’s virtually certain he’ll insist on senseless redundancy, and not cancel the remainder of the NHL season and instead mandate that the Caps complete the remaining 79 games on their schedule. Insanity is famously defined as the repetition of the same act while expecting a different outcome. At least in the absence of competitive drama this hockey season the Caps can showcase their impressive new threads in arenas across the continent.
How am I supposed to work up any hatred of the Caps’ opposition when they can’t even score?
Here’s one directive I do expect out of the league office, perhaps as early as today: the Caps will be required to wear thermal versions of Reebok’s uniform systems, ones made of Northern Ireland sheep wool, for they are unable to work up a sweat in their current garb. Especially the goalies. I am an admirer of the team’s first television ad of the new season, one featuring a sultry brunette being tattooed with the new logo. But I’d modify the ad’s slogan to: “Perimeter kicksaves by yawning netminders, in True Colors.”
Hanlon, few would have guessed a month ago, is today on the short list for Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year Award — at least if it’s bestowed for exemplary acts of good sportsmanship. Knowing he had all the weakspots from recent years filled on his roster coming into this season, he’s chosen to sit Alexander Semin in two of the season’s opening three games, affording the appearance of competitiveness in the games. I know Semin’s ankle is sore, but I also know that he’d be playing were we in April instead of October. Or if there was any doubt as to the outcomes.
Approximately two-thirds of the Caps’ top line is in synch, the power play isn’t, and a stud is missing from the lineup, and so far no one in the East can compete. Speaking of tattoos, long ago I made a promise to my hockey chums that when Lord Stanley is hoisted here by my guys I’d permanently etch the occasion on my hind quarters. Herewith, I’m accepting estimates from the region’s parlors, with quivering buttocks.
Imagine the disquiet that must be settling in on the team’s general manager and scouts, knowing that soon, by virtue of a hostile NHL Board of Governors decree, they will be restricted to drafting hockey players only from Maryland and Virginia. You don’t really think the league is going to give Ross Mahoney et al a crack at another Mathieu Perreault — (he’s not allowed to play as many games as other forwards in the QMJHL, to keep the scoring race competitive) — do you?
Lindsay Czarniak sure didn’t pick the right hockey season to go to the dark (Burgundy) side, did she?
We have a Roll Call of the Rocks-in-Their-Heads to conduct. First up, ESPN’s John Buccigross, who pegged the Caps for 14th in the Eastern Conference this season. That was with Alexander Semin in the lineup he prognosticated so. Another last-place-in-the-Southeast forecast came from Sports Illustrated’s Sarah Kwak. “Their offseason moves failed to address the defensive shortcomings that led to their surrendering 3.35 goals a game,” she opined. The Caps have defensive “shortcomings” only if the barometer was holding all 82 opponents scoreless for the entire season. Let’s see if we can get Eric Staal and Erik Cole and Ryan Whitney to get the shot counter above 5 midway through a game against the Caps before we wring our hands over “defensive shortcomings.”
Here’s what Kwak should have written: “Ditched in D.C. this summer: Kris Beech. Standings value? Five slots, minimum.”
This dynasty-audition by the Caps is breeding in me rational but nonetheless exuberant sentiments. Check out the exchange I had tonight with the shepherd of both lonely and swelling hearts on radio each evening, Delilah, on FM WASH:
Delilah: “On the love line, pucksandbooks . . . that’s a distinctive name. So you want to dedicate Paul McCartney’s ‘Silly Love Songs.’ Tell me Pucks, who’s stolen your heart this Monday night?”
Me: “Don Koharski.”
There’s good news for Leafs fans. The Maple Leafs will be playing in June … in a new 
For better or for worse, there are, commonly, comparisons between sports and war. The players “going to battle.” The game was “a war.”
Somewhere on the path to the Rose Garden perhaps 10 or 15 years ago the unending parade of championship-winning sports teams visiting the White House became rote and cliched. The visits have lost all of their novelty and pizzaz  they’re as inevitable as the setting sun and recorded greetings at federal agency phone numbers. The athletes themselves, I’m sure, still get a kick out of the gig, but for the rest of us, they’ve become the twelfth season of ‘Cheers’ or ‘Friends’ . . . and worse, yet another government entitlement. It’s time to mercy kill them out of existence.
