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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

Turns out, as a sports town we’re somewhere in the middle — not real good, certainly not awful. Steinberg offers a bit of a comparative continuum which posits cities such as Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Buffalo as distinctly passionate about their teams — the very civic identity of those towns is directly related to the teams, Steinberg suggests — versus a set of sports apathetic outposts found in Atlanta, Tampa, and Miami. We’re somewhere in between on that continuum. Sounds about right to me.

Of course, I’ve been one who’s long suggested that big media in these parts have played a lead role in limiting — undermining, actually — the perception of Washington as a sport town. Tourists and business visitors to our city are fairly forced into the perception that D.C. only cares about one team each morning they pick up the big paper or tune in to the local television sportscasts. To some extent — especially with respect to NHL hockey — this self-fulfilling myopia bred a countering, insurgent new media alternative.

If there’s a shortcoming to Steinz’s piece I’d point to its deference to a longstanding (cliched, really) scapegoat for our perceived inadequacy: that the cultural foundation of D.C. is the federal bureaucracy, bringing with it, among other traits, unavoidable transiency. For one thing, D.C. has become a high-tech haven over the past 20 years, delivering high-income, durable, roots-planting occupations, which in turn has helped drive dramatic development across the region. Concurrently, there has been exponential growth in federal contracting, and contracting careers, and the only thing that outlives death is a federal contract. But I’m not sure it matters any more whether you’re in D.C. four years with an administration or 40 with a lobby shop. The ubiquity of digital media, the voracious information consumption via hand-helds — and Washington is as wired as any city in the world — renders occupational consideration in this discussion, I think, moot. And doesn’t it say something that we now have two around-the-clock sportstalk radio stations operating here?

I think there are very specific features unique to D.C. that damn us as a sports town, separate and distinct from a one-trick-pony media. Up at the very top — and Steinberg certainly captures this, if in somewhat muted tones — is the conspicuous absence of winning. And not just winning, but winning as a well-managed sports entity. The Pittsburgh Steelers don’t win the Super Bowl every year, but isn’t it commonly accepted that they’re an especially well-run outfit, competitive every year? And further, that the Redskins are not much run like the Steelers are? Interestingly, Steinz amplified this sentiment in Tuesday’s Post, in responding to readers on line. “[A]t some point, I think ownership needs to accept some responsibility for repeated failings over years and years,” he wrote. “And I mean more about the Abe Pollin-led Wizards than the Daniel Snyder-led Redskins, although both would qualify.”

Snyder. To me — and I speak as one who in his Washington youth slept in Redskins pajamas, and toted a Redskins lunchpail to school — Snyder is a plague. We are rightly mocked by the fans of other NFL teams for giving him safe harbor here. I wish I had a dime for every instance I heard a Washington sports fan email me or address me at the rink with ‘If only Ted [Leonsis] owned the Redskins.’  There are two constants to Snyder’s reign of error-terror: His team will lose, and somewhere along the way he’ll freshly speak or act in a manner that gravely offends the sensibilities of our civilized community. Like suing a financially strapped grandmother or creative, civic-minded journalists.

The hope — the expectation — is that now that the pro basketball team is owned by Leonsis better days are ahead. (Of course, they actually have to play for that to happen.) But Ted inherited a spectacularly dysfunctional, decades-long-in-decay entity with the Wiz. That was Abe Pollin’s doing, and Steinz is right to remind Washingtonians of it.

Washington, too, has a physical infrastructure problem with its sports teams, in my opinion. Verizon Center is fine (spectacularly located, turns out). But FedEx Field might be the most reviled big stadium in the entire country. It is a monument mostly to the ineptness of D.C. government, in forcing the Redskins to flee the District to find a much-needed new home. It takes forever to get out to, forever to return from, and while you’re there you’re fairly pilfered out of your retirement savings in attempting to feed your family or wet your whistle.

I’ll raise some eyebrows and provoke some rebuke with my thoughts on Nationals Park, but I maintain that the Nats, in going cheap and with a cookie cutter design, have cultivated, durably, below average attendance on nights when the ace isn’t pitching. It’s not so much that Nationals Park is bad — it isn’t; it’s that to me it suffers comparatively by virtue of its proximity to one of the finest baseball stadiums in all the world, Camden Yards. Put it this way: If I’ve a chum in from out of town who’s a real seamhead, and both the Nats and O’s are home and I’m seeking to deliver to my buddy the more memorable stadium experience, I’m taking him up to Charm City. Note that Camden Yards opened in 1992 and took all of one year to secure Major League Baseball’s All Star game. I’m sure the Nats will get that game one day; it’s just that there’s little clamor from seamheads around the country to fly in and take in a game in our new baseball stadium. For good reason. Again, it’s not a dump. It just suffers as alternative to a classic design up the Beltway. I’m really surprised the Nats didn’t give that greater consideration on the drawing board.

Anyway, we have a bunch of pro teams, but only two of them compete in a stylish home. And we really only have one owner in town who stands as exemplary with respect to earning fans respect and placing proper management in place. In sports, as with so many other things in life, you reap what you sew.

Take note that you can visit the Post here and leave comment related to how D.C. could become a better hockey town. I think a little more springtime winning would take care of that just fine.

The book tells the stories of 50 players and their first NHL goals. Some of the players featured include Ron Hextall, Bobby Clarke, Bobby Orr, Jonathan Toews, Brendan Shanahan, Jean Beliveau, Colin and Gregory Campbell, Brett Hull, and Phil Esposito.

I’m not a huge Phil Esposito fan, but the part about his first goal was entertaining. Among other great anecdotes, Esposito said: “My first shift, I had to take the faceoff against Jean Beliveau, and I nearly crapped my pants. It was like, ‘Wow, Jean Beliveau!’ He was an idol of mine.”

My favorite part of the book was about Dave “Tiger” Williams. He’s a natural storyteller, and his tales are hilarious. When he scored his first NHL goal, it was against Montreal.

“It was a Saturday night game, and I’ll never forget after the game, getting on the pay phone that was outside the dressing room in the old Montreal Forum and calling an old friend, Bernie Jordan, who was a die-hard Montreal fan and who used to let me come over to his house and watch Saturday-night hockey on his colour TV, and I said, ‘How do you like your Habs now?’”

Seriously, the whole section on Williams is terrific- he also tells a great story about him and Bob Probert sneaking the Stanley Cup away from Mike Bolt, the Cup keeper, and taking photos with it.

If there’s one thing I didn’t like about the book, it was the section on Sidney Crosby. It wasn’t that it was about Crosby- it was the inevitable comparison with Ovechkin that was unnecessary:

Crosby finished his rookie season with spectacular numbers- 39 goals and 102 points in 81 games- but was not named the league’s top rookie. The Calder Trophy instead went to Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals, while Crosby was named runner-up…There are a couple of things Crosby achieved, however, that Ovechkin is still aiming for: winning a Stanley Cup (Crosby led the Penguins to the Stanley Cup in 2008-09) and an Olympic medal…

Other than that, I really enjoyed the book. Because it’s broken up into 50 short sections, it’s easy to read a few pages at a time- perfect for riding the Metro or waiting at the doctor’s office; no big time commitment needed. The stories were entertaining to read and I learned quite a bit; for example, I never knew that Gregory Campbell was the last person to wear the equipment that Wayne Gretzky wore in his final game. I would recommend the book for someone who loves hockey and history and who wants a fun, quick read.

Disclaimer: Random House provided a copy of the book to OFB for review.

The latter portion of the summer of 2011 has delivered credible and troubling assessments about the Washington Capitals in a macro sense, bringing to surface a facet seldom analyzed in failure’s shadows. Two recently departed Capitals addressed these concerns — ones of organizational culture.

With the passage of Labor Day weekend I was closing in on an authentic missing of hockey, my frozen spirits close to being rejuvenated. This was the toughest summer for me to date in quelling concerns I’d long suspected and developed about the core of this hockey team, and Tuesday morning brought about a renewal of them. I hopped aboard my Metro train this morning with a copy of today’s Washington Examiner. The newspaper informed me of the manner in which no small number of Washington Capitals inaugurated the holiday weekend here:

On one level, it’s patently unfair for me to react to the story as I instantly did (“Great, the barflies are back at it.”). Problem is, there’s a context for consuming this account, and it’s unflattering: these Capitals Young Guns are no strangers to hard partying — it’s been richly illustrated in social media snapshots by hockey fans patronizing the watering holes at the same time as the players. A few bartenders read this blog, too. If Lord Stanley had christened a chalice for the hockey team that annually celebrates the best, these Washington Capitals would be dynastic in winning it.

At issue here isn’t some tee-totaling sensibility relative to millionaire professional athletes. My own opinion is that when it comes to puck sodas and pucks, beers aren’t the exclusive prerogative of beer-leaguers; I’m well versed in the role that spirits have played in locker rooms and player gatherings across generations in our sport. The Boston Bruins went on a big-time bender early this offseason — but after they’d won the Stanley Cup.

Additionally, there seems something manifestly healthy about a hockey team regularly hanging out socially with one another. And heck, given the chance, many of us probably would love to buy our hockey heroes a beer if we saw them out and about in Georgetown or Arlington. (Though for a few of them, Michelob Ultras.) But I probably speak for at least a few fans in suggesting that we’d really like to buy them a round after they actually won something.

With respect to this past Friday night’s party outing as alluded to in the Examiner, I’ll stipulate that everything was carried off in moderation (the roll call of the depleted bar shelf notwithstanding), that no player left the nightclub unsafely impaired. Still, because this is the Washington Capitals, winners of nothing, ever, and because this band of Young Guns really does know how to put playoff disappointments behind them real fast, and get about the business of partying, I have an issue with merely the optics of this moment. Show up for training camp fat, as some millionaires in red did a year ago, and yes, going top shelf to the tune of four figures (or more) is fair game for criticism, at this moment, with this underachieving bunch. Put another way: This is probably not quite the offseason activity proscribed by Gary Roberts. (A champion)

(Why don’t we ever hear of a single Capitals player training with Roberts, as Tampa’s Steven Stamkos does, in the offseason?)

When our Elisabeth Meinecke chatted up Brooks Laich this summer about his offseason training regimen, she didn’t get the sense that he was devoting many evenings to the top, middle and bottom shelves of booze at bars. And it was with that account also in mind that I got ticked off by this morning’s story. I’m tired of reading about the underachieving Washington Capitals in our newspapers’ society pages, building up barfly tabs. Instead, as with Lis’ piece on Brooks, I want to read about barbells being lifted, not shotglasses. A legion of losing — and most especially looking seriously out of shape while being vanquished — will breed such cynicism. Beginning immediately, I want to hear no more discussion from national television announcers about problems with Nick Backstrom’s skating. There’s nothing wrong with his skating — he looked quite mobile while amassing 101 points in 2009-10. But he also looked quite fit then.

To address in greater detail another important context for this story: In addition to more than a few local hockey fans taking to Twitter with photos and accounts of encountering Capitals’ players out partying hard about town at conspicuous times — like the night before a matinee game — this summer we also learned of some insiders’ perspectives about the culture of the Washington Capitals. A couple of the team’s top-line performers last season were, relative to preceding seasons, conspicuously out of shape — claims supported by departed Capitals Matt Bradley and Dave Steckel. (At a media availability today Alexander Ovechkin told reporters that the team had already been instructed not to discuss the Bradley comments.) There was discussion of players missing practices (more than a few) with “dubious” injuries. Talk to any old school reporters who’ve covered this game a while and that’s often code for hung over.

I was one who in the middle of last season identified what I regarded as a troubling culture that had formed around this hockey team: they weren’t shy about being seen out celebrating life lavishly; they talked a good game about winning when it mattered — most particularly with training camp t-shirt slogans; and when more springtime shortcomings followed always there seemed, from management in particular, a fixation on injuries as excuse. I also thought way too much attention was paid to the Alexander Semin component of Bradley’s remarks and way too little to his indictment of team culture. The Capitals may or may not thrive with Semin a member of the club; they most assuredly will not if what Bradley intimated about preferential treatment, Ovi’s conditioning, and dubious practice absences is true and allowed to continue. This team badly needs a change in culture still, I maintain, and that begins with optics.

I think we could all agree: there’s a real difference between blowing off steam with your office mates with a few cold ones after work and ordering not merely top-shelf liquor on an outing on the town but all of the booze on the shelves below as well. No one who has closely followed the Capitals in recent years could profess to be surprised by the Examiner’s account today. That in and of itself is troubling.

If I were the head coach of the Caps, I’d have introduced the team to Blue Moon — warm — on the plane ride back from Tampa this spring. They probably would have hit the wagon the entire offseason.

Thaler and OFB's resident beauty queen, Tara Wheeler, on the Comcast set

As summer comes to a close we learn of another important and impassioned media voice for hockey leaving Washington for an exciting career opportunity. Comcast Sportsnet’s Russ Thaler begins the on-air portion of a new chapter in his broadcast career with NBC Sports next week, having worked as an original talent at Sportsnet Mid-Atlantic since its inception more than 10 years ago. His departure is bittersweet for the region’s hockey fans; from my vantage there was no local television sports anchor who brought as much heart-felt passion for pucks to his broadcasts as Thaler.

I never asked Thaler about the genesis of his love for hockey, and I’m not sure I needed to. With his Caps’ coverage he saw the same caliber of human being that characterizes the athletes in our sport that we all quickly come to cherish, and I’m sure he was drawn to the sport to some degree by that. But at home Thaler has a full forward line of young Red Rockers — the perpetually red-clad, oh-so photogenic  Thaler boys, very much a Facebook testament I think to a lot of families in these parts who’ve fallen hard for our guys in red in recent years. And Thaler, for me, represented something especially important: a mainstream media personality who personally led a charge to incorporate a fan’s passion into contemporary sports media coverage. Bloggers initially were criticized for their fan-passion; as time has passed we’ve pushed that passion, crusade-like, into coloring traditional media coverage. And it’s all for the better.

This blog, and especially this blogger, got beyond lucky in befriending Thaler. When Russ hosted ‘Washington Post Live’ for Sportsnet — and it has to be said, the highpoint of that program came with Thaler as host — he took it as his mission to expand hockey’s coverage by incorporating blogging voices in the live program. No one else in town was doing anything like that. Looking back, it was fairly adventurous on his part. Perhaps that’s a part of the reason he’s now taking off for cutting edge national television. I like to think we bloggers delivered what Thaler sought with those segments. I just know we all had a blast doing them.

There are two other qualities I would have you know about Thaler as I got to know him. One, there is no more modest, less ‘TV-pretentious’ personality among broadcasters in this town than Thaler. He loved and valued the panorama of blogs covering hockey here, and he regarded many of us as full-fledged contributors not only to quality coverage but to nurturing this region’s love affair with the game he, too, had fallen hard for.

This is so Thaler: he invited me to his going away party in Bethesda earlier this week, a spacious and stylish party spot clogged with leading sports media luminaries. I felt more than a little out of place as a lone blogger among all these TV stars and big dot com columnists. (But the beer was free, so I quickly got over that.) He made a point of introducing me to a number of his big-name broadcast peers, and heaping warm words for my work in our conversations with them. On his night, he was helping me out.

So he’s a terrific talent in his profession and a first-rate human being, but I also adore him because he knows how to rock. The Hershey Bears helped me score some prime seats to a Rush concert at Giant Center back in April, and Thaler was part of our Caravan to the Friday night show. On the ride up we sipped beers and swapped stories that can never see publication and then lost ourselves in rockers’ delirium for three hours. I think we royally pissed off JoeB — another Rushie whose schedule precluded his own middle-aged, in-arena air drumming — with our reckoning of that first-rate show at the next Capitals’ home game.

Not looking back but taking time to look around . . .

* * * * *

OFB: Your one-hour, nightly gig on NBC Sports — what’s the scope, and how prominently would you like hockey to be featured in it?

Thaler: I would think that hockey and specifically the NHL will be featured often and enthusiastically on NBC SportsTalk.  The host, I hear, is quite a fan of the game!  Also, on nights when Versus/NBC Sports Network is carrying a game, most of the second half of the show will be devoted to the NHL.  I can tell you that I’ve already lined up two prominent young NHL stars for significant interviews. Neither of them Caps, mind you, but that’s all I can say at the moment.

OFB: For years Caps’ fans benefited from your coverage both in studio and from remotes at the rink. Will your new gig afford you a similar variety of vantages, or is this a high-profile studio slot exclusively?

Thaler: My responsibilities will begin with the nightly show.  NBC SportsTalk will be, and needs to be, my focus. I absolutely loved the pre- and postgame shows I did with Alan May, Al Koken, Joe. B. and Locker, and my experiences doing the rinkside work were some of my favorites (the multiple OT comeback win at MSG last season is a career highlight), but for the time being I am the host of a nightly show and that is fine with me!  Whatever comes out of that I will embrace with all my might.

OFB:  Take a look back over the last 5 years in D.C., and specifically where the Caps and hockey were around 2006 and where they are today as an event and galvanizing civic force. Anything comparable within the Washington sports scene, as long as you covered sports here?

Thaler:  I am a proud member of the family of Caps’ supporters and reporters who covered the team before they became the CAPS as we know them today. I remember one night early in the final days of of the Glen Hanlon era, before the season got underway, producing a “Post Script” imploring the sports fans of the DC area to embrace what I thought was a budding franchise.  Of course it wouldn’t be until after Bruce Boudreau took over on Thanksgiving 2007 that things started to look up, but there was just too much good in that group to ignore.

I haven’t seen anything like it in my 10 years in DC.  Perhaps at the height of Gilbert Arenas’ powers you could say the same things about the Wizards. From a personal perspective, I’ve become a hockey dad because of the Caps. I know that I am not alone in that. My family has taken to this team in the same way Redskins fans were brought up through generations of winning football. So much credit has to go to the organization itself for the way it has embraced its new fans while respecting the ones who came before. I have spent many days at Caps Kid Skates at Kettler with Slapshot and my family. My wife and sons have waited patiently for the players to emerge from the building in to the parking lot. These are memories we will take with us on our new adventure, and when the Caps win the Cup there is a promised trip back to DC for the victory parade. Can’t wait!

OFB:  True story, right — Mrs. Thaler agreed to attend a Rush concert with you — and kept dating you afterward? Do you ever air guitar in front of her?

Thaler:  How do you know when she’s a “keeper”?  When your first real “date” is in Cleveland, Ohio, for a night with the greatest band in the world on the “Counterparts” tour.  Brooke, ever the trooper, was more than game on that night.  Does she share in my devotion to the holy triumverate? No. But that’s okay. She knows what brings me true joy, and once (or twice) a summer I get my Rush fix. Plus, she never makes me turn the channel when “Spirit of Radio” comes on in the car. And if “Time Stand Still” happens to pop up she’ll even sing along. What’s not to love?

P.S.   I have learned a great deal from you about hockey. I’m not talking about x’s and o’s stuff. I’m talking about the culture, the soul, the traditions and idiosyncrasies that weren’t part of my makeup to begin with. Your writing has allowed me to break the surface of the frozen pond.  Thank you for that.

Brads, it seemed to us, didn’t come across as a recently departed player with any axe to grind. Instead, he seemed comfortable and content with his new place of employment and sufficiently distanced from D.C. to bring reasonable objectivity to his reflections. In the middle of last season this blog  identified what it considered to be grave issues with the culture of the Washington Capitals organization, and on Tuesday Matt Bradley brought this concern to the fore of his reflections, beginning around the 8:30 mark of the segment. He was specifically asked by the program’s hosts why the Caps have been unable to break through in the playoffs.

• Some of his teammates, Bradley said, “didn’t show up . . . I’ll leave them unnamed.”

• “Our locker room was maybe a little too nonchalant, and guys weren’t disciplined the way they should have been.”

• Brads also called into question the practice habits and culture of his former club — “Not being ready to practice, missing practice with questionable injuries.”

• Alexander Semin, Brads claimed, “could easily be the best player in the league but for whatever reason just doesn’t care . . . You almost get the sense . . . he wants to be back in Russia.”

Our pal Ted Starkey was about 1,500 words into a new chapter for his new book thanks to this eye-opening radio appearance.