A devoted worshiper at the Church of Old Time Hockey, and imbued with resounding cynicism, I couldn’t help but think: We in D.C. have become so saturated with soft, perimeter play by our hockey players — most especially in spring — that it shouldn’t be surprising that some observers here find Callahan’s impression of William Wallace . . . so alien. One interpretation of the perpetual scratching of Jeff Schultz is that the Capitals’ new head coach thinks like I do.

An alternative interpretation of Callahan’s gallantry could go something like this:  That motherf*cker is damned tough to play against, and for the past couple of seasons, the talent-challenged Rangers have well reflected their captain’s grit and determination, by decree of their head coach, and given more talented clubs a real run for their money (especially in spring). Ryan Callahan is one hell of a captain. He will be one hell of an American Olympian captain as well.

Today, that talent gap with the rest of the East for New York has been closed quite a bit, and for me it’s no coincidence that playing inspired, finish-your-checks hockey the Rangers reside at the very top of the conference. Soon, they’ll get their best defenseman in the lineup (Marc Staal), for the first time this season, making them even tougher to play against. The Rangers are built the way serious contenders are — from the net out, big and brawny, with an unmistakable net-clearing ethos in front of the net, and mobile and skilled on the blueline. Served the Bruins rather well last spring.

Perhaps before we criticize another team’s captain and his teammates for excessive sacrifice and courage we ought to see to it that ours is within driving distance of the Viking, Alberta, meter of toughness and tenacity.

The Washington Capitals of the past five years haven’t exactly been known for the selfless sacrifice of their bodies for the betterment of the team, for finishing their checks. In fact, especially in spring, they have fairly earned the reputation of being a team that’s easy to play against, one that comparative lunch pale squads want to draw in the postseason. To state the obvious: there is today no Capitals player quite like Ryan Callahan, and there hasn’t been for some years. Once upon a time, though, there was. The good news is that the former Capitals’ captain is now behind the team’s bench. There, he’s attempting to change a country club culture.

He needs time — cultures, of course, aren’t changed in a week or a month.

Almost certainly, he also needs more Patrick division bodies. More on that in a moment.

Speaking of instructional moments, HBO’s ’24/7′ this month is again affording more stark relief for Capitals fans insofar as how the rugged East comports itself. Watching the intermission exhortations of John Tortorella and Peter Laviolette is not far removed from listening to the warrior words of William Wallace. At their conclusion I find myself clutching my abdomen on my couch to make sure no Rangers or Flyers stick blades make their way through the TV screen at me, and necessarily I’m reminded of the contrast Dan Bylsma brought with our guy on last year’s series (“Hit Green.”).

George McPhee hired Dale Hunter because he believed him to be the best possible coach for the Capitals at the present moment, and part of that formulation perhaps included his conviction that Hunter could be the architect for revamping both the style and ethos of the club. My guess is that Coach Hunter is taking inventory of the roster he has and will report rugged shortcomings to the GM in short order.

The arrival of 2012 really brings a demarcation moment for the Washington Capitals. To posit any plausible playoff success next spring the Caps necessarily will have to get past the pesky and gutsy and supremely sacrificing Rags, the larger and skilled Flyers and Bruins. I’m not sure that as comprised the Capitals would be favored in any series. But 2012 also brings Washington’s return to the reconstituted Patrick division. The Capitals of the past five years have been assembled to compete quite well in the softer Southeast. In the next calendar year the hockey for the guys in  red necessarily gets rougher and tougher.

Looking ahead to 2012 and beyond, there is cause for concern. When you inventory the Capitals’ prospects holdings at Hockeysfuture, with an eye toward who among just the top 15 qualifies as a North American forward prospect tipping the scales at at least 6 ’0, 180 pounds (hardly power forward in stature), the calculation is stunning: zero. Then for fun take a look at the size of the prospect holdings for the Rags, Flyers, Pens, and Devils — and just in their top 10. The Rangers are awaiting on reinforcements like Chris Kreider (6 ’2, 200), J.T. Miller (6 ’1, 198), and defenseman Dylan McIlraith (6 ’4, 215, nicknamed the Undertaker). Philly, ravaged by injury this season, has already received notable contributions from young, big-bodied North Americans like Brayden Schenn and Sean Couturier. The Pens have Eric Tangradi (6 ’4, 232), Dustin Jeffrey (6 ’1, 205), Robert Bortuzzo (6 ’3, 196), and Brian Strait (6 ’0, 200) in the pipeline. From the development perspective, we’re coming to the Patrick rechristening party next season with jockeys.

I still suggest that in hindsight it was right to draft the likes of Brian Sutherby, Nolan Yonkman, and Joe Finley. Things didn’t work out with them; injuries eviscerated their respective development. But the Capitals obviously have gotten away from drafting size and guile and grit, and beginning in 2012, they need it badly. Funny: The ‘New-look’ NHL at the top of the East these days rather resembles the old, in stature. The Capitals hold two first-round picks and potentially Colorado’s second-rounder next June. Those picks need to resemble NFL linebackers or safeties in size, and here’s hoping Dale Hunter — uniquely qualified to assess the attributes of top junior talent — is at the draft table for their selection, and subsequently their development.

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.

To purchase a copy of Ted Starkey’s brand new look at the Capitals’ organization, from the Calder Cup finals of 2010 through the 2011 Winter Classic and beyond, click here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.”

The new radio voice of the Washington Capitals looks great in red, doesn't he?

I trace my passion for puck in Washington back to the 1970s, and Ron Weber’s radio calls of Caps’ games on WTOP. Radio men in hockey back then — most particularly in this region of the world — had a novel responsibility to be the eyes and ears for hockey fans unable to be inside the arena, as televised hockey outside of historic markets was virtually non-existent. In non-traditional markets these men were tasked with bringing alive an alien game for novice listenerships. Ron Weber’s enshrinement in hockey’s Hall of Fame is a powerful acknowledgment of his ability to do precisely that.

One of my most cherished recollections from winter nights in my youth was surreptitiously following Weber’s late-night calls from the West Coast while in bed, the audio on my clock radio low enough so as not to be detected by my parents when they poked a head in my bedroom to check on me. The rare Capitals’ victories out there made the fatigue at school the next morning oh so worthwhile.

Like pretty much every other novice puckhead in these parts, I’d transitioned to following hockey fairly exclusively on television by the middle 1980s as Home Team Sports emerged to help bring the game alive visually. My father by then had secured Capitals’ season tickets, and so while my appreciation for Weber’s work waned not a bit, my reliance upon him for game results diminished. Interesting note, though: Dad and I made a practice of being among the first in flight out of Capital Centre in order to get to the car and turn on Weber in time to catch his postgame recap, and most especially, on nights when the bounces went our guys’ way, to hear the iconic play-by-play voice announce, “It’s been a two-point night, Caps’ fans.”

More recently, the Capitals’ perpetual struggles with spring afforded me opportunities to follow on line and up in the Giant Center press box another distinctive and oh-so-impassioned play-by-play voice — that of the Hershey Bears’ John Walton. As the Capitals were transitioning from league doormat to contender, it was compelling for me to chronicle the development of young talent plucked from high in NHL entry drafts and apprenticing in Hershey. But quickly I realized that with Walton there was a future impact NHL talent as well; his was a perfectly pitched passion, idiosyncratically distinctive from Weber for sure but identical in his call’s ability to bring a game alive for a listener. He paints you a picture of the action with his narration. Just as importantly, he wears his hockey heart on his sleeve with his audio storytelling. The image I have of Walton’s work in Hershey was of him most often standing in his booth, his eyes glued on the action, his eyes, and his heart, telling you the night’s story. Hockey, I believe, is meant to be communicated with passion; no one is hockey knows this better than John Walton. In being engrossed with Walton’s calls I recognized a latent charm from my youth. His game calls for me were a variant on ‘That ’70s Show’ — except on radio.

A couple of times I was afforded run-ins with Walton while following the Bears on the road up in New England, and it was then that I first developed an appreciation for the breadth, and new age savviness, of his work. By about 30 minutes at the conclusion of road games Walton needed to have completed his postgame wrap-up on air, packed up an impressive hauling of broadcast gear, and be on the team bus for a swift departure for the next port of call. But seated on the team bus Walton’s work was renewed, not ended,while surrounding Bears players devoured pizzas, napped or engaged with various recreational electronica. Walton went to work filing game stories for the team web site, uploading audio calls for dissemination to his media list, and seizing the reins of social media well before it was in vogue to do so.

Then something far better than mere appreciation developed between us: friendship. It takes a special friend to maneuver me as John did for game 6 of the Calder Cup finals at Giant Center in 2010: credentialed to be down on the ice amid the euphoric champion Bears, my tiny camera capturing video and stills of Bears’ players in never-ending embraces with family. That night remains the highpoint highlight of my blogging experience.

In recent years John has shared with me his dream of calling games in the big league, and always I told my friend: your talent is too large, your passion too irresistible for it not to happen. It would just be a matter of time.

This week, perhaps as early as today, my friend behind the microphone — and every bit as adept seated before a laptop — will be announced as the next radio voice of the Washington Capitals. A miserably long and hot D.C. summer suddenly has delivered a soothing, pond-freezing sort of breeze.

Safe wager here: John Walton will be much, much more than a radio voice to the Capitals’ communications regime.

A good month and a half ago I shared with John a crossed-finger strategy for invigorating my hockey blogging pursuits. I told him that I was weary of the routine of the Verizon Center press box, the ritual of making seem meaningful nice regular seasons that always yielded to infuriating and at times inexplicable postseason sourness. I told my friend that if he got the callup to D.C. that I would spend the entirety of the 2011-12 hockey season at home, following his calls on the radio while silently watching the television broadcast, and thereby renewing my passion for the game in much the same way it was first ignited, three decades ago.

As summer yields to autumn my hockey heart needs still a fresh infusion of passion, and John Walton is precisely the right guy to make it happen.

I should hate the Bolts; they just beat our ass badly, after all. But they’ve dusted off the Caps twice in a decade, and when you think about it, who hasn’t? None of their fans came to Verizon Center for games 1 and 2 of round two, and small wonder — they’re like a thousand miles away.

Ah, the absence of Tampa fans; it’s a prime theme in a brilliantly conceived and devilishly cunning Boston Bruins ad campaign — or it was, rather, until a Tampa tirade of telephone calls closed it down. Meaning, I’m resurrecting it here.

The Bs of course have carried off this fabulous mascot-driven humor campaign in print and video spots the past few seasons. We’ve sung its praises here. It’s simply magnificent. And it bloomed beautifully in Beantown for this year’s Eastern Conference finals, but as Greg Wyshynski noted in his treatment of this matter, the Bs have run it for each and every postseason opponent the past two springs. It’s Tampa’s hockey fans who singularly took offense to it. The aforementioned DJ, for whom I haven’t enough respect to ID, led a campaign of on-air ire against it, and urged his listeners to swamp Bruins’ telephone lines with complaints. Enough of them did, the Bs probably figured it was easier just to take the ads down and be done with the diaper set from the South, and that’s that. Some fun was had, but it should have continued.

Still, let’s enjoy more of this spirited smack — and you can find a helpful gallery of the art at massholesports.com.

To state the obvious, no way you’d hear any outcry about this sort of campaign from fanbases in Philly, New York, or Pittsburgh. Those are real hockey communities with appropriately toughened sensibilities. Tampa surely bettered D.C. where it counts, on the ice, but at least we have our dignity. Finally, though, I’ve found rationale to take interest in a Southeast foe’s fate in spring. Go B’s.