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.

Alumni game pride drives Killer in his daily training regimen

Probably about two  months ago, reading something on this blog, I first learned of the first-ever Capitals Alumni game. I fly into town this week to participate, and I’ve been looking forward to Friday night pretty much all summer. As soon as I learned about the game I knew that wanted to come right away, but I wasn’t sure of my schedule at the time. I’m coaching the Louisiana Ice Gators. I am so grateful it has worked so that I can come back and play and see all the old Caps fans. So thanx OFB for tipping me off! I’ll get in town Thursday night. I believe the Caps have some stuff going on for us old timers both before and after the game; am waiting on an email about that.

It’s actually going to be a very special weekend for Caps alumni. I will be at the Caps Convention all day Saturday to meet and greet all the fans, old and new. Whatever the Caps want me to do, I will do it.

You might wonder what we old timers do physically to get ready for a game like Friday’s. I know we’ll have hundreds, maybe thousands, packing Kettler-Capitals, and there’s a lot of pride at stake with a skate like this. Currently I skate three days a week here in Lafayette, Louisiana,  and get to the gym six out of seven days a week for spin class. But sure I’ll be winded. Hockey is always a competition for me.

I’m looking forward to seeing all of the guys — it’s been awhile since I’ve seen them. It’s always great to see former teammates . . . Bonzai, Locker, Langway, Cote — it’s going to be a blast to catch up with everyone, including the fans. I’m not sure who’s going to be on the bench as coaches. All I  know is the captains so far — Laughlin and Langway. There will be a lot of PRIDE at stake! I think it’s going to be a special night for the players but an equally special one for the fans in the stands.

I did skate with the Boston Bruins alumni back in Portland, Maine, last year (in Portland we won the Calder Cup as the Caps’ farm team), and that was COOL. But this one is SPECIAL cause this is where I played most of my NHL career and where I met so many great friends, and it’s is always special to come back to the city/organization that gave you that opportunity.

Last March I made my first visit back to Washington since I left the Caps, and I not only took in two Caps’ games that weekend but got a tour of the team’s training facility. So impressive. I’m sure it will be packed at that unbelievable facility. I’m just gonna go out there and play with the ‘Pride and Passion’ that has always been in me. I will make it exciting as always — a Gordie Howe hat trick would be the icing on the cake. I did that at a Bruins Alumni game not long ago, incidentally, LOL. It will be a BLAST.

I’m sure I’ll be full of “piss and vinegar” as always when I get a chance to play, but I’m hoping to stay out of the box . . . (maybe) : ) Problem is, Bill McCreary is officiating! Oh,well.

The OFB teams asked me about pranks from my Caps’ playing days that I might discuss. I was never a prankster, but there were some great ones . . .  but none I could share . . . Sorry! 

Even though I’m in Louisiana during the hockey season I do get to follow the Caps a decent bit on TV. It’s a huge year for the guys, obviously. Gabby wasn’t coach of the year for nothing. He’s a great players’ coach. He came in and gave that team confidence and let them play to their strengths a few years back. It was an amazing turnaround to watch. As a coach, I’ve tried to pay close attention to what Gabby’s been doing in D.C. They have been so close, and I believe the defense will be a great attribute. (As long as everyone is committed.) I was always told “offense wins you games and defense wins you championships.” Gabby has a great knowledge of the game and knows what to do and how to adjust to situations . . . Go Caps!

This weekend I’m looking forward to meeting fans who remember the good old days at Capital Centre but also the newest ones — especially the kids. When I meet the kids this weekend I’ll tell them I was a player who cared about the team. I was going to do whatever it took every night to sacrifice my body for my fellow teammates. To sum up: Heart, Passion, entertaining, physicality and Relentless work ethic. And I ENJOYED my job and I had FUN doing it.

The first time I spoke with OFB I told John about having a fight tape from my pro career, and I joked (maybe) that I’d pop it in the video player every time a guy came by the Killer house calling on one of my daughters. I have three beautiful daughters. I do have a 4-hour fight tape . . . perhaps fortunately I haven’t played it yet for a young fella. But it’s ready, they will have to come 4 hours early to watch the tape before any date . . . along with the double barrel shotgun that’ll be above the mantle or perhaps it will be getting cleaned that day on the kitchen coffee table . . .

Have fun on your date, fella.

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.]

The Capitals are rightly credited for extending — before all others in sports — a welcome mat of access to bloggers. But Nate Ewell has been singularly responsible for the architecture and maintenance of that access. I have so many wonderful Nate Ewell stories to tell, but what’s most important about them I think is how in every instance his media policies broadened and bettered hockey’s storytelling here. Over the past five years I’ve used this blog to try and tell some of the stories about hockey I didn’t think were being told by traditional media, or approach them from differing angles. Nate Ewell wanted precisely that, and to the extent that I had any success in the endeavor, I have to give credit where credit is due.

Without Nate Ewell here for me the past five years I’m probably a proverbial blogger in pajamas prattling on about power plays and puck sodas. Instead, OFB has an archive of diaries from pro hockey players, photo slideshows requested by players’ mothers, chronicles of weekends with in-kind access to the parent club’s American League farm club, and perhaps my favorite OFB product, a snazzy Christmas card or two. But best of all we have new and lifelong-lasting friends in pucks. There is no greater reward from immersion in a passion-hobby than that.

Nate did so much more than merely open doors for bloggers here. He had, it seemed to me, a vision that was made manifest by the attributes of cutting edge technology, and nobody in hockey knew how to leverage that like Nate. It’s no accident that Nate’s media team was a mortal lock each year to win his industry’s top performance award, and it’s no accident that the Capitals’ stable of new media personalities is regarded as the most accomplished around the league. You reap what you sew.

One of the things I’m most proud about in being a Capitals’ blogger is that over the past five years I’ve made a minimum of 500 requests for inordinate access to Capitals players, coaches, and scouts, and Nate Ewell and his team have said yes to the requests about 98 percent of the time.

Once I made a request of Nate that the team couldn’t oblige, but rather than merely saying no Nate shared with me the email of denial that came from very high up in the organization, because it included some flattering words of reflection for OFB, and he wanted me to see that.

Last April the press contingent for the Montreal Canadiens, numbering nearer 100 than 50 in individuals, famously overtook the Verizon Center press box for the Caps-Habs playoff series. Live radio calls back to Quebec were carried off not in enclosed broadcast booths up there but from ordinary, open seats typically used by the print and digital press. I remember this because I, a silly blogger, was seated next to many of them. Ted Leonsis famously promised that when the day arrived and media interest in his hockey team swelled he wouldn’t forget about the commitment by his bloggers. They’d always have a seat of access, he said. Nate Ewell made sure of that.

Last year I approached Nate and suggested we work together to organize a bloggers’ summit of sorts at the Capitals’ training facility, in the offseason, when things were slightly less hectic in his workday, because while I knew that the Capitals appreciated the commitment and quality of local bloggers’ work generally, I personally wanted to try and get better, learn more, and most especially afford us a forum for dialogue. We carried off that summit last July, and we filled a Kettler conference room with bloggers and Caps’ communications pros. It was in that forum that Nate shared with us startling data about the breadth of reader reach we in our Washington hockey bloggers’ collective have; you better believe this techy team knows about that. It was a detailed data run that Nate didn’t have to do for us, but he wanted us to have a tangible appreciation for our commitment from the team. I will always remember that.

At Kettler the Capitals have an archive of print media coverage for the team that actually dates back prior to the very first puck being dropped for Capitals hockey in D.C., and on a whim one day a few years back I asked Nate if I could access it.  Of course he said yes. That access helped me immensely; I was able, for instance, to write about the Capitals’ first-ever training camp, back in 1974, in all of its disorganized and resources-challenged glory. For a greybeard like me, it’s actually quite an emotional experience being in that archive, paging through hockey’s history in my hometown. I’ve got a time- and energy-consuming real-life job, and so getting over to Kettler and immersed in that archive for research didn’t always occur in times convenient to Nate and his staff. That of course didn’t matter.

If I had to identify a lone defining association of my very fun run with Nate from the past five years it would be with the team’s midsummer Development Camp and our interest in live blogging the camp’s concluding scrimmage. Annually Nate fairly commandeered the team’s kitchen and break room above the Capitals’ practice ice sheet to get us set up with tables and extension cords for the live blog, but there was one summer when media interest was such that we couldn’t set up there. So Nate simply took us down to his office, which also overlooks the Capitals’ practice sheet of ice, and set us up there. We literally booted him out of his office for three hours. But he wanted us to tell you a story.

Tables with hockey equipment were set up outside the rinks for attendees to see and try on the gear. Some actually did so.

Caps’ strength and conditioning coach Mark Nemish explained to the ladies what fitness routines the players go through and had them try some of the moves. One attendee said that she had done more in five minutes than her typical 1-hour workout.

Bruce Boudreau gave his famous film talk again. This was one of the most popular sessions, thanks to Gabby’s ability to give great quotes, such as, “Most hockey players are Canadian and don’t really finish their education. I didn’t make it past grade 11 myself.” He took questions from the crowd. One woman asked how he keeps Semin motivated. Boudreau answered, “Well, you show him a lot of love.” Someone else asked about Semin’s omission from the All-Star ballot.  Boudreau responded, “I don’t know. It’s pretty stupid.  Write him in.”

The last session was a photo in front of a locker set up with the Winter Classic uniform and equipment, which was a nice way to get everyone excited about the big game.

As usual, it was a fun, informative event.  Because it’s so popular, there’s a good chance that the Caps may host another Hockey ‘N Heels event early next year.

I really want to travel up to Hershey on a few winter weekends this season and see my fellow Little Hoya play big-time pro hockey.

When I was at Prep, a few years ago, not only was there no hockey being played on campus, or off it, there wasn’t high school hockey being played by schools anywhere in the Metro region. Last week, at Capitals’ training camp, I watched Kashirsky toss the biscuit around with his best friend, the greatest hockey player on the planet, and not look a bit out of place. If you’re perusing this file expecting an objective profile of Nikita Kashirsky, stop now. I’m profiling my fellow alum, fellow survivor of the Jesuits, who just happens to excel at hockey and who just happens to call Alexander Ovechkin best friend, and no matter what happens with the remainder of his pro hockey career, what he’s already achieved as a partially Bethesda-bred rink rat is astounding.

Ovechkin, Kashirsky told me, actually centered their line in the Dynamo program. Kashirsky was the promising left wing at age eight! By the time they were both 14, they were best friends.

“We played on the same [Dynamo] line, all the time, we spent weekends together, living together during training camps, during summer training,” the greatest Little Hoya hockey player ever told me after a training camp skate at Kettler Capitals Iceplex last week.

But how, I wondered, did a hockey player in Moscow make his way to my high school, and go on to be this type of hockey talent?  Prep’s hockey program, like most others in the region, isn’t even 15 years old. Practice ice is hard to come by.

Turns out Nikita had an older brother who came to the U.S. to attend the University of Colorado. In exploring the American education system a bit, Nikita’s brother reported back to his family that the hockey star little brother could both play hockey and attend school full time. And Prep, which has long housed international students, was keenly interested in hosting a student from Russia — and willing to award financial aid for this student’s special athletic talents.

Like Jeff Halpern before him, Kashirsky skated with the Washington Little Capitals as well, so he got plenty of ice here during his four years at Prep. Still, his rising to the level of earning an American League contract, and an invite to an NHL camp, speaks volumes for the caliber of hockey competition the Washington region has cultivated in just the past decade. And there’s a terrific story about that Little Caps sweater that Kashirsky wore.

photo by OFB

“When I played for Prep, I also played for the junior Caps, and they had the same uniforms as the old Capitals,” the less famous left wing from Moscow told me. “When I came back to Moscow in summer of 2004, before the [NHL] draft, I gave my jersey to Alex, just as a present, cause it was like a real Washington Capitals’ thing. And a month later he gets drafted by the Capitals.”

Kashirsky graduated from Prep in 2004 and went off to play a year of junior hockey up in New England. That 2004-05 season the NHL locked out its players, so Ovechkin was not yet in D.C. In 2005-06, Kashirsky enrolled in Norwich University, and as a freshman he scored 19 goals and 23 assists in 29 games with the Cadets. He would go on to earn All-ECAC East honors and be named an RBK All-American while skating for the Cadets. You know who else enjoyed a standout hockey career at Norwich? Keith Aucoin.

At the end of Norwich’s 2008-09 season, Kashirsky’s senior year, he signed with the South Carolina Stingrays. The Capitals’ organization knew of his ability from a few summers of Development Camps at Kettler, and Kashirsky was a member of the 2009 Kelly Cup-winning Stingrays. In fact, his Kelly Cup sweater today is lodged in a trophy case on Prep’s campus. Last season, in 39 games with the Rays, Kashirsky put up impressive numbers: 19 goals and 16 assists.

Kashirsky played a big role for his buddy in Ovechkin’s early days in D.C. They telephoned one another a lot. Nikita attended Alex’s NHL debut here, against Columbus, and he also saw his best friend in person when he scored his 100th NHL point that rookie season — an overtime tally against the Bs in Boston. He also made visits to D.C. when their respective hockey schedules allowed. They’ve been best friends since the age of 14, and they both would like nothing better than to be teammates again.

“My dream is to play with the Capitals, because I have so many family and friends in this area, who helped me a lot,” Kashirsky told me.

Half seriously I suggested to my schoolmate that he could perhaps one day return to our campus as a member of a Stanley Cup winning Capitals’ club, hoisting the Cup up in the air in front of the student body, and bring along his pal, what’s his name, his linemate from his days with Dynamo. That would cause a bit of buzz on campus. But as exciting as that would be, it’d be tough to top what my Prep classmate, Brian Cashman, New York Yankees’ General Manager, did back in June, I told him. Brian brought along the 2009 World Series trophy on his visit, and posed for a picture with the entire student body with it.

photo by OFB

Kashirsky will visit Prep’s campus with or without any hockey prize. He holds special memories of it. He went back in the days immediately before July’s Capitals Development Camp, just to say hello to teachers who helped him transition from life in Russia to life in the American capital.

Then I suggested to Nikita that a big bus of Prep alums could make the drive up to Hershey one winter weekend night this season and attend a Bears’ game, and watch him play.

He smiled widely at that suggestion.

“I would like to arrange the tickets for that,” he said.

Training camps can be trivialized into a who’s in, who’s out end game. Capitals training camp this fall renewed a special friendship bred in 1994, out on ice in the Russian capital, a friendship that somewhat magically migrated overseas years later and, this summer, reconnected out on the ice together, in the American capital, at hockey’s highest level. Nikita Kashirsky needs a lot more hard work and a big break to one day skate with the Capitals, but if he does I hope it’s his pal Ovi who awards him his Capitals’ sweater.

* * * * *

After his practice skate Friday morning Mike Knuble obliged a youth’s request to part with his stick, which he signed. But of course one youth’s lottery winning with an NHLer’s stick is another’s loss out at kid-packed Kettler. Knuble, taking notice of the disappointment that accompanied his generosity, looked down at the disappointed lad and said,”Next time, I’ll remember you. The kid with a cut on his chin.” The wager here is that indeed the Caps’ right wing comes up with another stick soon for the kid with the nicked chin. Maybe even today.

* * * * *

Craig Laughlin made his maiden appearance at training camp, having just returned from Canada and a summer-long hosting of his summer hockey camp. His thoughts related to the few open roster spots were the popular topic of the morning in the media work room. The long-time Caps’ broadcaster doesn’t see much in the way of competition remaining — if there ever was any. The forward lines are basically set, he suggested, with an extra body perhaps slated for the fourth line, and there’s little doubt about one through five on the Caps’ blueline. I think he’s right. Of Marcus Johansson, who’s had a solid camp thus far? “No way,” said Laughlin. Too much to ask of a kid making the transition from Europe to North American pro puck, the broadcaster claimed. Maybe he’s been reading this blog.

I also had a chance to ask Laughlin about the Southeast division in 2010-11. I suggested to him that few observers believe the Caps are weaker than they were a year ago, and so subsequently a division foe would have to make a dramatic improvement just to halve the Caps’ nearly 40-point division title margin of a season ago. He predicted the Caps winning the division by 20 points, with Tampa improving significantly. That does seem to be the conventional wisdom this preseason.

* * * * *

My sample set is admittedly small, but for my digital recorder there is no more engaging and thoughtful and pleasant an interview in all of hockey than Andrew Gordon. After his workout Friday, still in his gear and soaked with sweat, he obliged a Washington Post interview request, and when that ended I approached him. “I’ve got just two questions for you, Andrew,” I said. “And I’ve got two answers for you,” the right wing replied, beaming. Always he’s smiling and good-natured and blissfully free of cliche and canned response in every encounter with media I’ve observed, here and in Hershey.

* * * * *

Cody Eakin is impressing, no question about it. “He hasn’t looked out of place, I can tell you that,” Gabby said of Eakin. “It’s not like you can tell he’s an 18- or 19-year-old. His maturity is I think beyond his years.” He’s pushing some older guys for a job, the coach added.

* * * * *

Training camp of course is a great deal of work for its participants, filled with scripted drills, lots of conditioning, lots of off-ice workouts. It’s a real grind. Especially for veterans. And so I was curious to see if guys at camp would identify the experience as also affording any moments of genuine fun. I got some interesting reflections on Friday about this.

“It is all about conditioning and preparation and all about business to make the team,” Tomas Fleischmann told me. “But you always get fun if you are spending time with guys in the dressing room. Seeing guys every day and making jokes . . . it’s a way to relax.”

Gym rat Andrew Gordon would have none of my suggesting that conditioning and weight training wasn’t fun. “I think all the preparation and conditioning is fun, for me anyways. I like going to the gym, I like being in shape. Andrew Joudrey and I take [fitness] very seriously all summer long. He’s my workout partner at home.

“It’s fun to come out and have the coaches try to work you into the ground and then you’re not that upset about it. When you work hard you know it’s for a reason and that it’s going to translate to game situations.”

I asked Gordon what he enjoyed doing away from the rink during camp to give his body a bit of a break from all the rigor. This week, he told me, he’s been helping Tyler Sloan “lug furniture up to the 19th floor” of the defenseman’s apartment building. Note to self: Don’t R&R with Gordo.

The ultimate rink rat in the Capitals’ organization, I’ve learned in recent years, is Mathieu Perreault. No surprise: he fairly detests off days, and he spends them wishing he was playing hockey.

“I enjoy playing so much, even the drills,” Matty told me. “I love the game so much that even on the days off, at my house, I’m like, ‘What am I going to do today, I want to play hockey.’ To me being here just to practice is fun.”

For nearly 90 minutes yesterday media of all hockey backgrounds — from first-time skaters to under-practiced beer-leaguers — laced ‘em up and earned a good sweat. There were lots of goal celebrations and even more smiles. Last night on Facebook I saw updates from at least a half dozen of yesterday’s shinny skaters, all united in one sentiment: the outing made them feel like 12-year-olds at play again. That’s the recreational version of our sport at its best. WUSA-TV’s Brett Haber and I met at center ice to get the showdown started:

Bruce Boudreau stopped by to take a look at the proceedings, but like the literature professor who dreads the crude prose of stacked freshman composition essays, recoiled at the spectacle and quickly sought refuge in the coach’s film room.

And Comcast Sportsnet’s Michelle Scalise was on hand to capture our collective, underwhelming efforts at securing 10-day Amateur Tryout Contracts: