Dateline, Philadelphia, January 5, 2012. Three Philadelphia Flyers fans are wanted by Philadelphia police for their role in beating two New York Rangers fans in the immediate aftermath of Monday’s Winter Classic. One of the victims was beaten quite brutally and hospitalized. Video of the assaults emerged. (You can watch it easily enough; I urge that you don’t.) The more seriously maimed victim, turns out, is a cop, an Iraq war vet, a Marine, and a Purple Heart recipient. He had the temerity to attend a big hockey game in Philadelphia wearing the colors of that day’s adversary. You know, just as has happened with every game in every arena and stadium on the continent the past 40 years. But in Philadelphia, this hero of his country was beaten for it, brutally.

I like to think that somewhere in her eternal rest Kate Smith is restless and nauseous.

To me there is something distinctive about this instance of violence relative, say, to that we witnessed in Vancouver after last June’s Stanley Cup finals. Both outbreaks are abhorrent to be sure, but there is in our sport something enduring and singular — and brandished as a badge of honor, even — by the bellicose and beer-swilling  in orange sweaters, somewhat a minority of the overall Flyers fanbase, I think, who for at least a generation have taken it as a blood oath to violently defend their allegiance.

There are fights in the stands at many rinks and ballparks, I know. But it’s really only with one civic outpost that news of them seems to be met with . . . a wildly warped sense of pride.

You see, yesterday I had to endure a soberly stated justification by a Flyers fan — a high school classmate of mine — for what transpired in Monday’s assault: that somehow the Rangers fan, likely loose of victory-bragging tongue, deserved his fate. My Flyers’ partisan high school buddy is a Duke graduate, a Gulf War vet (Marine), a lawyer, a husband and a father. And he thinks as he does in this instance. So I say he’s card-carrying member of a warped culture. I’ll still call him classmate and friend, but yesterday I wondered: just how eager would the hospitalized Rangers fan Marine be to share a foxhole with my Flyers’ friend, and would my friend really have articulated the defense he did with me in front of his daughters?

You want to say that only a tiny sliver of the Flyer fanbase could and would go perp like this, but afforded over many years ample opportunity to disavow themselves of the reputation, collectively they’ve passed. They like the reputation not just of their skating heroes being bullies but of being bullies themselves. That sweater, its wearers want you to know, represents a good deal more than division titles and Stanley Cups won. And it’s been that way for years.

I can’t say that I can recall an instance when the executive leadership of one of Philly’s professional sports teams has led some public initiative to counteract the city’s pride in its twisted embrace of being bullies. Instead, the culture of Philadelphia seems almost to celebrate that their football stadium — and theirs alone in the republic — erected a makeshift courthouse on site to address violent attacks that have become a staple of sports patronage there.

There is a seemingly lone voice of reason up there in all this — the Broad Street Hockey blog. Those bloggers did what the Flyers should have: reluctantly, but courageously, they pushed out video and narrative of this super sad story and condemned the violence. “We say so often that we don’t deserve our reputation as awful monsters moonlighting as sports fans, but when this sort of thing happens, it completely undermines everything we say on the subject,” they blogged.

By about 5:00 yesterday this story had gone viral — Fox News, NBC.com, Puck Daddy were all weighing in on the malevolence. Out of curiosity I visited the Flyers’ web site to see if the public relations damage had occasioned any concern from the team. Maybe the team wanted to intervene and assist the victims’ families in some way. Nope. A band of cretins wearing your sweater pummeled a Purple Heart vet, in broad daylight, fellas. Would it really be beneath you to show some moral leadership and remind your community that this isn’t really behavior that ought to be replicated, again, or even celebrated? This morning there is acknowledgment of injury in Philadelphia on the team’s web site — Kimmo Timonen got dinged (upper body) during last night’s game against Chicago.

I like to think that two forms of justice ultimately will visit the assailants in this crime — the formal one meted out by the courts, and then the other seldom detailed but widely understood, enacted, well out of sight, against those who harm those who sacrifice to keep us safe. More importantly, I hope at long last a story that makes you cry will occasion a leadership long lacking in a bully culture.

The Governors’ vote was a landslide 26-4. We don’t quite know who the dissenters were (we have educated guesses), but we’re confident our guy wasn’t among them. To Ted Leonsis (and Dick Patrick), the OFB team says, from the bottom of our collective hockey heart, Thank you! With your vote you helped make Washington a better hockey town.

We are keenly aware that so small number of hockey fans in this region have no attachment to the Capitals’ Patrick affiliation of the past. And yet many of those same fans have stepped into Verizon Center on the nights of visits from the Flyers and Penguins and Rangers and felt, acutely, the different atmosphere. Ready yourselves for an entire season of it. And God willing, another generation of one of the fiercest rivalry atmospheres in all of professional sports. Our blogging team reflects individually on the moment:

Tuesday Puck Daddy identified the Caps as "winners" in the NHL's "radical realignment"

Empty Maybe: I suppose it’s odd to be so excited to see more of something you really don’t like — in this case, however, it seems perfectly natural.

I do not like the following teams: the Flyers, the Penguins, the Rangers, the Devils and the Islanders. And I’m going to be seeing a lot more of them. And not just in the regular season but in the playoffs, where true hockey hatred is forged and purified.

I get tense during the playoffs because I’m a Caps fan, and as such I know there are no sure things, no ‘easy’ match-ups. During a series against the Penguins or Flyers, however, I become positively mental. Blood-pressure raising-type mental. “Buy flowers and make reservations for a nice apologetic dinner pre-emptively” type mental.

And now I’m going to get that worked up more often.

I’m glad that the plan includes a home-and-home with every team in the league, and I’m surprised that such a radical re-shifting happened so quickly, but most of all I’m bracing myself for the playoffs. Gleefully.

Gary: I could not be more excited about the announced realignment. It’s a welcomed homecoming. More recent Caps fans probably don’t think twice about the New York Islanders. Yes they’ve been horrible for a number of years now — in no small part to ‘Genius’ Milbury — but I still hate them. Why? The playoffs in the ’80s. Similar feelings for the Penguins. Why?  Playoffs.

This realignment brings us back to our close neighbors. Short and frequent trips to the hated lands in Pennsylvania and New York.  Playoff triumphs and failures intensify with repetition with divisional playoffs. Those intense feelings carry over to regular season games.  One never really felt that with games against Atlanta or Florida.

Now the NHL needs to complete this realignment properly with the four conference names. They already know how to spell them and where they should be.

Patrick. Adams. Norris. Smythe.

Elisabeth Meinecke: One of the themes which emerged at last Thursday’s Caps-Pens battle from journalists both paid and unpaid to watch hockey games was that more games should be like the one developing below us that night: two teams that had a solid history of disliking each other elevating their level of play. Ken Dryden once said that by the time you retire, you are grateful for a good opponent, because they have only forced you to play your best. With the Caps’ new conference opponents, they’re going to be playing their best a lot more frequently.

DC SportsChick: Admittedly, I’ve only been a fan since the Southeast Division alignment, but this is a great development. It’s really hard to get excited about games with Tampa. Now, playing New York or Philly is a different story. Those are great cities to visit for an away game, and the rivalry is intense. That’s something you don’t see with Florida or Winnipeg. The realignment bring much-needed enthusiasm and excitement to the NHL.

Mike Rucki: Getting an extra home game each season against Philly, Pittsburgh, New Jersey, and the New York Rangers is a boon to both fans and owners alike. More intensity in the arena, more fans in the seats, more Ted-pleasing sold-out games. It also makes sense to keep Carolina in the division while jettisoning the Florida teams; the ‘Canes and Caps have developed a healthy dislike for each other over the years.

But perhaps most exciting is that the Capitals will have a better chance to judge their postseason chances during the regular season. With more intense play during the year, the Caps will no longer be able to finesse themselves to a division title. Now the Caps will have to succeed against bitter, physical rivals all season, and therefore should be better prepared for the inevitable postseason shift toward bruising, grind-it-out confrontations. It may be a somewhat painful transition at first, but it will improve the Capitals’ chances for playoff success by forcing the team to build the right roster — and the right attitude — to flourish in May and June.

pucksandbooks: I’m not sure I can identify a moment of greater pride being affiliated with this blog. At our inception we planted the flag of Patrick Division Reunification in the e-ground. We listened attentively to all dissent (“Atlanta’s a Top 10 market — the Thrash aren’t going anywhere!”), but ours was a position of principle and passion. So maybe this moment ought to be instructive: if you love a sport dearly, and believe rigorous reform imperative for its overall health, champion it — spiritedly, with unwavering resolve. The fight for reform may take years, but when it arrives, it’s oh so sweet — and the sweeter for the duration of the battle waged.

It’s seldom trumpeted, but hatred is part of the plasma of our sport, and the Washington Capitals have known no hatred quite like that which boiled over in the Patrick division years. And now it’s back. Seemingly miraculously!

I can’t help but think that the genesis for this amazing moment might just date back to New Years weekend, in Pittsburgh, when the Red Army made so spirited a showing at Heinz Field. Capitals’ officials forecasted 20,000 in Red marking the pilgrimage; instead, the figure was closer to 30,000, and the Army, with all of hockey watching, made the national anthem theirs and were never silenced thereafter. How could anyone have left that stadium and that atmosphere and not wondered: what if these two teams, with their iconic stars, could battle again for division titles, and in divisional playoffs?

It’s true: Chinatown today is transformed on hockey nights. It is ablaze in Red. As a Washington native I walk among the throng and have yet to grow accustomed to the spectacle, even years later. But it’s about to be transformed again. What lies ahead with Patrick Division 2.0 is the formation of elite hockey culture in a fledgling hockey town. Redskins, beware.

Realignment Heaven, nearly

Christmas-pinch me: Could it really be that in the very same week Dale Hunter is returned to D.C. legacy-honoring leadership is emerging in realignment discussions, such that our Dick Patrick in particular would feel like a kid at Christmas?

Even recently arrived OFB readers know well our disdain for the scourge that is the Southeast division. This realignment scheme — and it’s merely a proposal that could be voted upon by owners at their meeting this week — takes some serious TNT to the least interesting division in the history of pro sports. As a kissing cousin to the Great Old Patrick division, the proposal differs only with the addition of Carolina. Most importantly, it jettisons the rest of NASCAR country, miraculously sticking it to the historic Habs and Leafs — but under an intriguing premise: there would be, the thinking goes, some synergy between Canadian snowbirds who follow those Florida clubs and the elite markets way up North. Interesting.

Additionally, as part of this scheme, there appears to be something akin to an intriguing sweetheart promise to the historic North Atlantic clubs for accepting the sunbelt orphans: the very real possibility of absorbing a relocated Phoenix team, in Quebec City. The proposal posits a 16-14 split between what could be viewed as East and West alignment, and moving the relocated Coyotes in with the Habs et al would achieve 15-15 balance. I haven’t spoken to many in hockey media ever since Atlanta bolted for Winnipeg who don’t believe that Quebec City will have an NHL team within 5 years. Viva Les Nordiques! That division, even with its Southeast hangers-on, would have serious jam.

The travel for the ‘Ning and the Cats would kinda suck, sure, but who outside Florida cares? It’s the ‘Ning and the Cats, after all. What matters: the Wings are finally happy; nightmarish travel for Western clubs today is significantly repaired, insomuch as there is far greater an equality of travel among all member clubs; and the grave injustice perpetrated by Gary Bettman against Washington in the late 1990s is at long last rectified. If this scheme comes to pass (heavy lifting for it, undoubtedly), I’m sending the commish an OFB Christmas card.

Knowing that NHL owners were meeting this week to discuss realignment (in Pebble Beach, Calif. — nice winter meeting work if you can land it), I actually spent a fair portion of Saturday running errands with a pad of paper and a pen in my Jeep, concocting a variety of realignment lineups — all predicated on returning the Capitals to where they belong: back with Pittsburgh, back with Philadelphia, back with the Rangers, the Devils, and (for now) the Islanders. The problem I kept running into: what do with the Southeast dregs — basically, the Florida teams.

I tried of course pairing them with Nashville, and Columbus. Just when I’d get excited about achieving what I ultimately wanted I’d realize how many Western clubs I had to slide over to the East, creating grave imbalance. In one scenario I even had the Original Six clubs lined up together — talk about generating some serious buzz; no other pro sport could match that kinda fun. But nothing was working out as I’d hoped.

One of the creative tools I was tinkering with was assigning a value to each NHL club based on the likelihood of each one remaining located where it is today, in five years’ time. I raised this notion because when it comes to “radical realignment,” I really believe owners and managers need to consider the very real possibility that a handful of clubs in grave fiscal distress now won’t be where they are today down the road just a bit. This proposal as outlined on CBC last night takes Phoenix’s identity crisis into mind. Odds are at least one or two more clubs will be in a similar situation soon.

Ultimately, we may owe some mistletoe love to the leadership in Philly and Pittsburgh for this scheme. Understandably, those clubs didn’t want any realignment that separated them. The beauty of a reconstituted Patrick division is that it reignites some of the fiercest rivalries in all of hockey south of the border. And when you think about it, given all the Caps and Pens have done for the sport post lockout, how shallow and short-sided would it be to move forward with significant realignment and not put the Flyers, Pens, and Caps in direct warfare with one another? Detroit and Winnipeg obviously need their respective situations remedied ASAP, but thinking large on realignment fosters a big win for the league overall.

Heck, we could really have some fun with this new-look league: How about a Patrick Division Winter Classic round-robin New Years weekend? The top four teams in the division at Christmas get the invite. The stadium atmosphere would resemble European or South American soccer in its potential for violence. Sign me up.

Speaking of division names: This too Bettman needs to be called to the carpet for, and it needs to be rectified as part of radical realignment. If indeed there are four “conferences” established (the new set of four groupings apparently would each be called “conferences”), each should be named after a giant in our sport. I’m not wedded to Patrick, necessarily, for our grouping, but I do believe some blue ribbon panel ought to take All Star weekend, say, and meditate on names like Howe, Orr, Gretzky, as well as some of the builder giants that erected this league. A special trophy ought to be commissioned for each named setup.

Additional attributes of this potentially Heaven-sent setup: A more balanced schedule, featuring home-and-away dates with every club outside of one’s recast division/conference. While there is some concern with increased travel costs with this, I’m of the opinion that two factors override it: Most basically, what is it about the NHL that necessitates geographical isolation, relative to other pro sports? And isn’t there something akin to a moral obligation for the league to showcase its other-worldly talents (Crosby, Oveckin, Stamkos, etc.) in every market, every year? With the present unbalanced schedule if you’re a fan in Western Canada and Crosby’s Pens visited you while he was recovering from a concussion, you’re SOL for years. And divisional playoffs will breed new rivalries and give life to already established ones.

We in Washington are already indebted to Santa for bringing us an early Christmas present this year, but given what the league has put us through with the Southeast, we are entitled to another special gift, I say. Hockey’s greatest rivalry today ought to be organically housed, and in the process the abomination that has ever been the Southeast division ought to be, mercifully if belatedly, euthanized.

Last night’s was a game with justifiable buildup: the Caps were off to a best-ever 7-0 start, the young and rebuilding Oilers had acquitted themselves quite well early on in the new season, and their Lottery Line of Jordan Eberle, Taylor Hall, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins was evoking the high-end forward skill showcased by the Capitals in recent years. Including a few injured players who did not dress, last night’s game featured two organizations in possession of fully 20 first-round draft choices, including four no. 1 overall selections.

The Capitals entered play last night as the league’s least penalized team. Before 41 minutes had been played last night, the Caps had been whistled for an astounding nine minor penalties. Fully one-quarter of the penalties the Caps have earned through eight games this season were accrued last night. It’s surreal that the Caps outshot the Oilers 35-19 while having to spend so much of the evening on the penalty kill. And it was remarkably commendable that the visitors attacked the Edmonton zone with as much fury as they did in the evening’s final frame; little in hockey is as physically taxing as killing penalties.

Edmontonians today are no doubt thrilled that their young and upcoming club prevailed 2-1 in the game, but I wonder how many of the $100-plus-paying patrons last night genuinely enjoyed watching so much special teams play. Hockey, most especially when it’s contested on a heavenly sheet of ice as found in Edmonton, is meant to be played 5-on-5. Understand: I’m not scapegoating Dan O’Halloran and Stephane Auger for last night’s outcome. My concern is much larger than the game’s outcome. The argument here isn’t that a game’s referees should put the whistle away every time two highly skilled teams face off; it’s that on some level there needs to be recognition at the very top of the league how damaging a game like last’s is when considered from a broad marketing perspective. Last night’s was a game that rightly ought to have been showcased as a novel NHL event. The two teams don’t meet very often (the Caps won’t face Edmonton again this season), they possess a conspicuous abundance of world-class skill, and they met on the type of ice sheet that highlights hockey’s greatest skills.

Virtually uninterrupted killing penalty robs teams of their natural line combinations; it reduces the minutes for first- and second-liners. It grinds a game down into rink-long puck dumpings and four-man boxes. End-to-end rushes are replaced by keep-away. Hockey’s most natural sounds — churning steel driven into an ice sheet during end-to-end rushes, the thwack of a perfectly passed puck cross-ice smacking a teammate’s blade — are replaced by . . . whistles, and the silence of one team standing around, trying to kill clock. An awful lot of clock had to be killed last night. What a damned shame.

Some of it, of course, is inevitable. When an entire night, however, is dominated by interruptions and extra-man play, we’ve been robbed.

Bruce Boudreau acknowledged that the referees were absolutely within their right to whistle incessant halts in the action as they did.

“In the rulebook they’re penalties,” the frustrated-looking head coach told media in the postgame. “Some [refs] call it, some don’t.”

And that’s the essence of this problem.

Newcomer fans to our game often find it both inexplicably perplexing and infuriating to have such dramatic enforcement variance from game to game. This isn’t a matter of high or low strike zone variance among baseball umpires; this is about altering the advertised appeal of two appealing teams, of eviscerating what should be a fast-paced game’s flow, with whistle-happy officiating. It is not in the best interest of our sport.

What I have found to be the most consistent source of confusion among sports fans brand new to our sport, trying to make sense of its rules and rituals in its fast proceedings, is the wide discrepancy of enforcement ethos from night to night, referee to referee, period to period . . . shift to shift. From Ed Frankovic’s WNST recap of last night: “Things started to get crazy towards the end of period one when referees Dan O’Halloran and Stephane Auger decided they were going to be the show [emphasis OFB's] and proceeded to call a dive on Matt Hendricks, who does not have a reputation for doing that, and then a shaky stick infraction on Hamrlik late in the period.”

Ed nailed it. Last night O’Halloran and Auger were the show, they were to focal point of the entertainment. Want to pay three figures to watch that?

“When the Caps play 5 on 5 hockey they are the best team in the league,” Frankovic wrote of last, “but tonight the guys in the striped shirts didn’t want to see that.” And that’s a big problem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Meanwhile, should this prognosticating actually come true, take a look — if you dare — at how our friend Peerless says he’ll acknowledge the feat.

Transition Game author Ted Starkey, at his composition desk

We are thrilled to have had a chance to review a couple of drafts of a new book coming out early this autumn that affords a commendably wide-angled lens on the Washington Capitals’ organization, Transition Game: Story of the 2010-11 Washington Capitals, by the Washington Times’ Ted Starkey. The title is slightly deceiving insomuch as Ted’s well crafted narrative captures not only the the ups and downs of a drama-laden season for the Caps but delivers a valuable history of the franchise, dating back all the way to its inception, as you’ll see in the excerpt below.

A special first edition of the book is being sent to press right at this moment and should be shipped in September before the book is available elsewhere, and Ted will personally sign and ship each copy of the initial printing. Because of the unique nature of this project, pre-ordering helps determine how many editions to print and in return will noted as a specially marked first edition of the work.

The cost will be $25 for the book and $5 for shipping within the United States and Canada, and for other destinations please make a special request for exact pricing. If you’d like to place an order, you can either make a payment via PayPal to CapitalsBook@aol.com, or mail a check to: Ted Starkey, c/o The Washington Times, 3600 New York Avenue NE Washington, DC 20003

Now on to that excerpt. A big thanks to Ted for involving us in this project as he did. It was invigorating watching Ted pursue this project with the zeal he did. Capitals’ fans have a special voice of passion and commitment offering them an engrossing narrative of their favorite hockey club late this summer.

* * * * *

For a club that has always labored in the shadow of the city’s NFL franchise, the Capitals have emerged as the trendy sports team to follow in the national capital area. While the Redskins still are the most-watched team in town – due to the team’s long tenure in Washington and the sheer brand power of the National Football League – the Capitals certainly have seized a strong second spot among the city’s four major professional sports teams.

Of course, it wasn’t always like this for the franchise that was awarded to Abe Pollin in 1972 to help the first Capitals owner solidify plans for the construction of an arena in suburban Landover to house the new National Hockey League franchise as well as Pollin’s relocating National Basketball Association franchise, the Baltimore Bullets.

With the Capitals entering the NHL the same time that the upstart World Hockey Association was beginning to draw talent away from the more-established league, the early editions of Washington’s franchise weren’t pretty.

The inaugural 1974-75 club set a record for the fewest wins in a season (8), and didn’t register a win away from the brand-new Capital Centre until March 28, 1975 – their only points away from Landover during the campaign. The next season was marginally better, recording an 11-59-10 mark – a wide 95-point gap between them and the first place team in the Norris Division, the Montreal Canadiens . . .

By the summer of 1982, with the team’s lack of success on the ice being reflected at the gate, Pollin threatened to move — or disband — the Capitals without getting concessions from Maryland’s Prince George’s County and the team selling thousands of tickets for the new campaign.

Thus, the “Save the Caps” campaign was born, and with support from the local media, fans and local businesses, Pollin eventually backed down from threats to possibly merge the Capitals with the relocating Colorado Rockies in New Jersey.

Thanks to the ticket drive, what had been a floundering franchise got more stability as a business venture, and successfully averted what to date has been the only major threat to the franchise’s existence in Washington . . .

During the 1980s, the team enjoyed a popularity that it didn’t have during its first decade in the region.

The Redskins were in the midst the best run in franchise history by winning three Super Bowl titles in 10 seasons, but the Capitals created a good following of their own and taken over the role as the second team in town, replacing the Bullets franchise. Pollin’s other franchise won its only NBA title in 1977-78 but had slipped back into mediocrity during the 1980s, creating a chance for the NHL franchise to take a solid second among the city’s three teams.

However, the wave didn’t last forever for the Caps, and the departure of two of the team’s future Hall-of-Famers didn’t help matters . . .

Although the Capitals reportedly brought in more ticket revenue than the Bullets, the NBA franchise was having more gate success in terms of average attendance – through some rather unconventional methods – and Pollin was looking to transfer that apparent success to the NHL team.

O’Malley had run the Bullets’ ticket operations and had made a point of selling ticket plans for fans to see the opposing stars – leading to some unusual sales patterns for the struggling Bullets with some large crowds when the team played league’s big-name teams, although other games drew very small gatherings.  O’Malley quickly took over the hockey team’s ticket operations and instituted a similar model with the perennial playoff-contending Capitals.

“I remember in the early ‘90s, when I was working for the Caps, the Bullets were bad and they were marketing the other franchises in an attempt to get people to come to their games,” recalled Ed Frankovic of WNST radio, who was working with the club at the time of the merger.

“When the Bullets and Caps offices merged around 1995, Susan O’Malley wanted the Capitals to do the same but from General Manager David Poile on down, the hockey people thought that made little sense and so did the majority of the Caps marketing and communications personnel. To go out and market to the fans of your opposition seemed ludicrous.”

While the figures improved sell-out wise for the Capitals, a number of those tickets usually found their way into opposing fans’ hands. The problem became even more apparent as the Caps’ ticket prices rose sharply when the team moved from Landover into brand-new MCI Center in the middle of the 1997-98 season.

Even when the franchise reached its only Stanley Cup Finals at the end of their first season in Chinatown, O’Malley undercut the Capitals’ own fan base by selling thousands of tickets to a Detroit travel agency for Washington’s home games. The move left Caps fans looking for tickets for home games being required to buy partial plans for the next season, while out-of-town fans buying packages through a Detroit travel agency didn’t have the same stipulation.

The result of the move was a large Red Wings contingent for the two games that were played in Washington, including the series-clinching Game 4 in which Detroit claimed its second consecutive Stanley Cup title with a 4-1 win over the Capitals.

The following summer, Pollin sold the Capitals to America Online executive Ted Leonsis . . .

* * * * *

The last time the team was together at the suburban Virginia complex had been four months before. Washington’s players met a day after its Game 7 loss to the Montreal Canadiens to meet with the media, their coaches to get evaluated and the tough task of packing up their gear and belongings before splitting up for the summer.

The team also had the difficult task of trying to explain to reporters just how its 121-point Presidents’ Trophy season came unraveled in just five short days, losing a 3-1 series edge against the eighth-seeded Habs with three straight losses.

The modern twin rink facility on top of a shopping mall in Arlington that opened in 2006 is one of the best in the NHL and has a lot of bells and whistles, but it certainly lacked what the team was really looking for that April day: a reset button to erase the previous season’s meltdown.

“They got to camp, and nobody wanted to be at camp, they wanted to be in the playoffs,” the team’s then- Vice President of Communications Nate Ewell recalled. “It was just all just long preamble that you had to get through.”

Reporters certainly got the vibe from the players that unlike previous campaigns in Washington that had seen some Hart Trophy-winning performances from their captain and three Southeast Division titles and a Presidents’ Trophy, the regular season was just an 82-game grind to get to before they could try and focus on having some playoff success.

“I think the Caps were totally focused on what they could do to be better once the playoffs started,” Ed Frankovic of WNST in Baltimore said of the team’s mood as camp opened. “It was clear that the regular season didn’t matter much to them.

“George McPhee said that to me on Media Day. He said the only thing that mattered to him was a long playoff run. So if the man at the helm is saying that, then the players were likely thinking the same way.”