It’s simultaneously exciting and a potential curse: everybody’s picking the Caps to win this series versus Tampa.

But there’s a reality this spring that can’t be ignored: Two teams among 16 this postseason distinguished themselves for the efficiency with which they plowed through the first round — Detroit and Washington. It’s interesting that the Caps are being heralded as prime Cup finalist contender while the Coyote-mauling Wings are, comparatively speaking, an afterthought. That may have something to do with this: Detroit must navigate San Jose and likely Vancouver to emerge from out West. Have fun with that.

And Vancouver, our reigning President’s trophy winner . . . has had its sails clipped a bit by virtue of surviving a serious first-round scare with the Hawks, coughing up a 3-0 lead in the process. Someone between Philly and Boston is required to take stand as obstacle in the Eastern conference finals. Neither will cause Bruce Boudreau to lose sleep. More than a few observers believed that the Rangers potentially offered the Caps their most difficult challenge in the Eastern conference.

Two weeks ago, Michal Neuvirth was something of a question mark, if only by virtue of his age and NHL postseason inexperience. Today, do you think the Flyers might like to have him in place of their three-headed monster of ineptitude between the pipes? (Or might not the Canucks for that matter?) He’s competed in 15 professional hockey postseason series and won all 15. Nifty, no? And if for some reason Neuvirth suddenly becomes average, look what’s positioned immediately behind him as stand-by, quality depth. To scan the forecasts of the second round in the East is to see consensus that the Caps prevail over Tampa in either 5 or 6 games. All such forecasters presumably are steeped in the grotesque Capitals’ postseason shortcomings of the past, but among them there seems a recognition that this spring is different. And that’s telling.

No one seriously posits that any GM had a better late February than George McPhee. Marco Sturm has been a good fit; Jason Arnott an all-time good fit. In this second round versus Tampa, the Capitals are likely to see the returned services of Dennis Wideman. What if he looks 75 percent as good as he did at the time of his injury? Then this happens: some defenseman who’s played well for the Caps this spring will be required to sit. A player the caliber of Scott Hannan could be in the Capitals’ third defensive pairing. Exactly when did that last happen with a Capitals’ blueline in the warm weather months?

On the face of things, the Capitals and Lightning were separated by just four points in the Southeast this season and therefore ought to engage in a lengthy and highly outcome-uncertain Eastern semifinal series. I’m not so sure. Leave in place all of the notable and prolonged injuries the Capitals endured during the regular season, but grant them this back in autumn: the roster additions they made at the trade deadline. And give the ‘Bolts Dwayne Roloson all season as well. This is a fair point to raise because after all theses are the rosters the Capitals and Lightning are competing with beginning tonight. Add Wideman to the blueline and eliminate the five months of second line center by committee carousel the Caps perpetrated — Jason Arnott centering Alex Semin all season long. The verdict I come up with is a solid double-digit division triumph for the Caps. Again.

This opponent, however, is not one to be taken lightly. Steven Stamkos is a game-breaking talent — if playoff unproven. Martin St. Louis is aging like fine wine. Roloson is proving to be the reliable backstop Steve Yzerman dreamed of.

The ‘Bolts’ blueline is big but lumbering — the Capitals can exploit that unit if they gain puck possession with numbers beyond the trapping Tampa forwards in the neutral zone. But these burly blueliners also block a lot of shots (Eric Brewer had 27 in round one; Mattias Ohlund and Victor Hedman will well clog life in front of Roloson as well). The Capitals made a commitment to blocking a lot of shots against a shot-blocking Rangers club in their opening round. That needs to continue.

Tampa can’t match the Caps in offensive depth, but they’ve a bevy of wonderful role players up front. No forward impressed me as much as Nate Thompson against Pittsburgh. Gifted skater, courage coming out of his ears — he reminds me of Brooks Laich a bit. Ryan Malone, too, is a gamer, and Sean Bergenheim is highly versatile and effective in all areas of the ice. And somewhat quietly, Simon Gagne picked up 7 points versus the Pens. Neither Gagne nor Vincent Lecavalier possess their game-breaking great status of five years ago, but they’re both grizzled playoff veterans who’ll help in key situations.

It’s likely we’ll see a lot of New Time ugly hockey in this series. The Caps are a defensive minded club these days; Tampa will try to score a game’s first goal and make a mess of the neutral zone thereafter. Bruce Boudreau seemed amused by Tampa’s 1-3-1 setup at times during the regular season. It will be interesting to see how he attacks it this spring (having Dennis Wideman back soon would help).

Series keys:

• There’s a bit of a Mendoza line for the Capitals when it comes to penalties in this series, I think, and I peg it at the number 4. Four or fewer power plays for Tampa each game and the Caps’ magnificent PK group ought to be ok. But beyond that, the Caps flirt with serious danger. The brilliance of the Tampa power play — it’s operating at 29 percent effectiveness this postseason — is a potential series-changer. The Caps need to be a disciplined club in this series especially.

• Get shots through to Roloson, and get on the board early against him. A heavy workload is an excellent strategy against a forty-something goaltender who saw a heavy workload down the stretch of the regular season and seven games in the opening round.

• Be patient against Tampa’s 1-3-1. Seams for stretch passes in it can be found — and the Caps often found them well in regular season matchups with Tampa.

• Get the puck on Alex Semin’s stick in this series as often as possible, in time and space, preferably. In four regular season games against the ‘Bolts Sasha was very good: 7 goals and 2 assists.

Caps in 6.

Heinz Field of course is home to the Steelers, and that begins and ends the NHL’s association with football next New Years Day. The goalposts should have been ditched, goal nets placed in the end zones instead, and the substance of the presser should have focused on past, present and future animosity as it relates to one of hockey’s great rivalries.

In an era of UFC, some Hatfield and McCoys in skates would have worked magnificently out on Heinz Field last week, but it wasn’t to be, because there’s a huge hit or huge miss tact the league takes to marketing our game. On the one hand we receive gems such as the pitch-perfect, highly amusing and entertaining 30-second spots that run throughout the season on the NHL Network. Some celebrate hockey’s inter-generational appeal, others the physical and emotional sacrifices associated with the pursuit of the Stanley Cup. Still others are just laugh out loud funny. The success of those spots is attributable to their celebration of hockey’s intrinsic spirit. Last week at Heinz Field the league took the opposite approach. All of the longstanding spirit of the Caps-Pens was AWOL. It was a great opportunity missed.

Touting the Caps-Pens rivalry isn’t to diminish the other great rivalries in the NHL, but next New Years Day represents the first instance of the league marrying its great new success, the Winter Classic, with one of its great storylines of every season. The Associated Press believes this is the greatest rivalry in all of hockey:

“The rivalry already is so good — the teams’ seven-game Eastern Conference playoff series two seasons ago was one of the NHL’s most compelling in years — Crosby doesn’t believe it will intensify by moving outdoors.

“I don’t think you can imagine it being more intense than it already is,” Crosby said.

The megawatt presence of Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby to these franchises has only catapulted the rivalry into must-see moments for sports fans generally. It’s a wonder this game didn’t inaugurate the Winter Classic.

But last Tuesday we had images of Sidney Crosby and Mike Knuble holding footballs and yucking it up. Why?

Here’s what ought to have transpired out on Heinz Field instead last week: key figures from the current teams should have been joined by alumni from Caps-Pens battles of yesteryear, and players present and past should have taken turns relating anecdotes of their great and fierce battles as they related to this rivalry.

photo by the Associated Press

On Sidney Crosby’s first-ever visit to Washington years ago I had a chance to interview him in the visitor’s locker room after a game, and the very first thing I asked him was to what extent was he aware of the Caps-Pens years-long poisonous relations. I was pleasantly shocked at his reply. He told me that he spent a fair portion of the previous summer pouring over vintage Caps-Pens games, precisely because so many in the Penguins’ organization had prioritized the rivalry for him. He spoke eloquently of the rivalry’s meaning even as a newcomer to it. I almost liked him for that.

Ironically, away from Heinz Field, Pittsburgh’s Max Talbot got to the heart of the matter by going on local radio and launching the latest missile in this ice war. He reiterated his hatred of the Washington hockey team and its star. Talbot’s radio rant was this Winter Classic’s most salient and sellable moment to date. It was a  moment that no doubt made Gary Bettman and his marketing team cringe, while all hockey fans savored it. That moment should have teed off an in-kind roundtable of reflection down on Heinz Field about what will make next January 1 so special in the young legacy of the Winter Classic. Instead we saw mostly a bunch of Canucks tossing around a football and firing pucks between the wrong set of goalposts, looking silly.

Let it be a teaching moment for the league’s marketers: for the league’s showcase event of its regular season, trust in the intrinsic value of our great game, as you sometimes do, and most especially capitalize on one of its most compelling features: warriors, generation after generation, bearing a common crest, going to war against a hated neighbor. The names and numbers of the warriors in this special engagement change, however the hatred never abates. There’s a fierceness and intensity to the matchups between these storied rivals that I think is unrivaled anywhere else in the league, and next New Years Day, the battle takes place in a Roman Coliseum-sized setting.

It’s a very weird thing to my very East Coast orientation to be pursuing a big hockey game in the middle of a weekday afternoon, but I relish the novelty. The concierge downstairs informs me of a joint named JT’s about two-and-a-half miles away. There’s a good chance of finding a specific sporting event among its satellite options, he informs. I have my mission, and I embark on it with optimism.

I have no rental car, though — an office colleague is arriving in the evening with one for us to share — so at 3:00 sharp, armed with excellent directions for the bar, I begin hoofing it. I like the mildly long journey required; it’s symbolic of my devotion for hockey, I tell myself. If I write about this experience, I decide early on in my walk, I will wildly exaggerate the paradisaical conditions: my miles-long march will be under a searing and unrelenting Pacific sun, rather than the skin-caressing, soul-rejuvenating, I-just-may-not-board-that-return-flight-home, seduction-spring-scented air washing over the pedestrian all the time out here.

In truth, it was a long walk to the bar. But it was wondrous. I passed Lady Gaga look-a-likes and recreation junkies who remind me on every visit to the Golden state that so many seem to prosper here while spending so little time in offices. As I drew closer to JT’s I grew impatient with traffic lights that halted my progress. At last I turned a final corner and spotted, off just ahead, the big bar. I could have called ahead to inventory the TV options, but for some reason I wanted to preserve ignorance as part of the drama and allure of this project.

Inside JT’s an expansive bar area is empty, a lone, California-attractive, twenty-something barmaid looks bored, and above her left shoulder, mounted on a brick wall, is 50 inches of high definition. It was offering ESPN and college hoops minutiae upon my arrival.

“What can I get for you?” Samantha asked as I sat down immediately in front of the screen.

“Hockey,” I replied, “and I can make it very worth your trouble.”

“Call me Sam,” she returned, “and lemme see what I can do.”

Sam was exceptionally attractive, with long flowing sandy blonde hair and all natural curves in a region known for manufacturing them, and her bar’s menu, well populated by Pacific seafood and Kobe beef, well flirted with my lunch-missing tummy. But the nourishment needed by my hockey heart wasn’t going to endure ESPN and hoops at such a critical hour; if need be I was going to cab it back to the hotel and have a matinee date with Steve Kolbe and room service.

Sam grabbed the sports section of Wednesday’s Los Angeles Times and scanned its televised sports listing. Then she disappeared from the bar. Maybe she needed approval from management, or perhaps she was going to attempt the channel switching herself. This was very much a sitting-on-eggshell moment for me. What if the Caps and Pens played another classic and I missed it?

Additionally, I’d awoken at 6 in the morning and gone at it hard in the hotel fitness center, and with the afternoon’s lengthy walk I was feeling my age. I really didn’t want to move, and I had the bar pretty much to myself. Sam was prepared to enthusiastically pour mini-pitchers of 20-plus varieties of drafts for me. JT’s boasted an impressive wine list as well. I had the perfect setup if I could just locate the game. I wondered if the Caps-Pens being on the NHL Network made my quest more or less longshot than were it broadcast on Comcast.

Suddenly the flatscreen above me began an exciting channels migration. In some back room Sam was puck-advocating on my behalf.

And she found it. Familiar NHL Network faces arrived on the screen and were apparently previewing the game with Penguins and Capitals logos emblazoned on the studio set. Sam returned behind the bar, and in that moment she appeared to me in possession of all the dreamgirl beauty of CJ Parker sunbathing at Laguna Beach.

I sent a text message to the Capitals’ Nate Ewell and Kurt Kehl: 3k miles away, but I’ve hockey-fied a SoCal bar with the game.

Technology was never more my friend than on Wednesday, and what a great game I saw. Sam seemed indifferent to it, but I didn’t care. The bar swelled during the 6:00 portion of happy hour, and when Mike Knuble completed the shootout comeback the drinks up and down the bar were on me. A coast and continent away I was very much at home.

Returning from a holiday out of town, I was stuck within Beltway brutality before 7:00 yesterday morning, and out of morbid curiosity, (and being without satellite radio), I tuned in to local sports radio the morning after a 4-12 Deadskins’ season. I should have known better. (I did, actually, but my iPod charge was low.) Apparently the head coach was canned in the middle of the night; apparently he was security-escorted out of the team office soon thereafter; no he wasn’t; yes he was; maybe he was; better go bloated remote there the rest of the day. Some sycophant scribes even took to photographing their bloated presence at the Ashburn park and publishing the pics on social media. It was pornography against professionalism.

We in HockeyWashington are to respond by taking up arms. Sticks, rather. Sticks for shinny. It is as if Mother Nature even cannot suffer our local media fools, and is taking up the cause of converting Washington into a Tier I hockey town with this early January deep freeze: the ice on the Canal is thickening fast. Get the little feet of your little kiddies snuggled into skates, get them outfitted in their new red hockey sweaters left by Santa, and get them out on the Canal this weekend. The hyperventilating over Jim Zorn will still be there when you’re through.

We are also to tune in to the NHL Network, which is broadcasting big, authentic news: no small portion of the future of American hockey will earn either a gold or silver medal tonight in Saskatchewan.

There is manufactured buzz, created by the press, in self-fulfilling prophecy, and then there is a real and authentic one emanating from ice: Washington’s hockey team and its virtually guaranteed participation in the very next Winter Classic; the 2010 Winter Classic was TV-ratings injured by the slight against the Caps; an altogether unexpected American uprising is taking place at the World Junior Championships up in Canada, which features a bedrock of the Capitals’ blueline in the new decade ahead, John Carlson; Mike Green was snubbed by Team Canada; the Hershey Bears are auditioning for promotion to the National League.

Should each major local sports outlet, the moment the United States shocked all of Canada with its New Years’ Eve performance against the five-time champion hosts, have dispatched at least a single reporter to frontier Canada — or at least sought out a stringer there? But of course. Many local media pegged their lead training camp storylines on John Carlson nearly four months ago. Now he’s enjoying the greatest success of his young hockey career, and they’re missing it. But at least we have Larry Michael’s pearls of dispassionate wisdom.

Here is another timely storyline worthy of pursuit by professional media, were they here: is it possible that the Capitals actually miss Mathieu Perreault?

The entire local sports page for the past week-plus ought to have looked like one published in Minneapolis or Toronto. Instead, it’s looked like Groundhog Day, circa ’92.

The dichotomy couldn’t be starker: it is one of celebrity and controversy versus actual accomplishment. Dan Snyder is a celebrity, an agent of controversy (it is his commerce). Ted Leonsis has actually served as architect over a revolutionary accomplishment in this town. If only his athletes would carry firearms into their lockers.

He, too, has noticed the malfeasance.

” . . . we made a trade - a smart one for our team - that added a big left winger and cut some salary for us to have “optionality” at the trade deadline and for future use to keep our young core of players together. But we did trade a great man; a great player; and our captain . . . I think our team was over confident playing Carolina at home and we were still a buzz around the trade. I will miss Chris Clark and thank him and his family for everything they did for our franchise. Then while the league was gearing up for the wonderful Winter Classic, we went out on a crazy two game West Coast swing over New Year’s break. We were as far away from Boston as possible, weren’t we? And Mike Green was left off the Canadian Olympic team which I think was the wrong decision by their team management. I believe Mike Green is a unique and spectacular talent and one of the top D men in the NHL. We have Mike’s back. We believe in him. I know this snub will motivate Mike for the rest of the season. We as a franchise sometimes don’t get the respect we have earned [emphasis OFB's] yet but the only way to right that wrong I believe is to win a Stanley Cup. We get the joke. We have collective chip on our shoulder.”

I have friends flying in from Maine today to attend tonight’s Caps’-Habs’ game. How often do seriously out-of-towners fly in to D.C. in mid-week to attend Buzzards’ games? I asked them if they were anxious about air travel in light of recent, freshly frightening circumstances.

“We are more concerned about accidentally entering the Wizards’ locker room,” one chum replied. Each morning they read hockey blogs to get the news and analysis that matters to them.

Injuries, it should be mentioned, are playing a role: Sergei Gonchar, Evgeni Malkin, Kris LeTang, and Tyler Kennedy are on the shelf. Malkin is expected back in the lineup this weekend. But cry me Three Rivers. Who isn’t banged up in this injury-riddled opening six weeks of the season?

You know times are tough when the game announcers offer this observation: “The Devils are getting all kinds of chances now.” That analysis arrived during last night’s broadcast on the NHL Network.

At least Sidney Crosby is doing his part during the 1-5 freefall; he registered his first point in the month of November last night. It was the longest drought of his career. Wayne Gretzky, the player many have compared him to, never went that long without a point in his many years of hockey.

The Pittsburgh power play has also been silent since Malkin went down with injury on Oct. 29, and Pittsburgh’s offense overall had been just as silent until last night, failing to score for 170 minutes and 27 seconds. Can we get a tape of that?

A member of the Penguins’ Twitter community recently summed up the team’s struggles perfectly, saying, “RT@AxsDeny: In NHL News, the New Jersey Devils defeated the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins.”

At the the 2:45 mark of this video you can hear ESPN personalities slam the Penguins and essentially call them crybabies. Happy Friday, folks.

Seriously, is it that hard to spell “band?”

With more live game coverage than ever before, NHL Network today unveiled its U.S. broadcast schedule for the 2008-09 regular season. It includes 75 regular-season games, all in HD.
Highlighting the schedule is the inclusion of CBC’s award-winning Hockey Night In Canada, now available to U.S. fans through NHL Network for the first time. Every Saturday night, NHL Network will not only broadcast the live Hockey Night In Canada double-header, but also the CBC pre-game show Scotiabank Hockey Tonight and post-game show After Hours.
Additional highlights for the 2008-09 NHL broadcast schedule include:

• Live NHL games every Saturday night throughout the season
• 26 double-headers and 1 triple-header
• 17 Wednesday-night games featuring TSN’s broadcast of Wednesday Night Hockey

Though not called out by name, you have to think that the triple-header is CBC’s Hockey Day in Canada.
If you haven’t picked up that HD flat-screen yet, may we suggest a shopping trip this weekend?
Check out Kukla’s Korner for more information, including the full schedule.

With more live game coverage than ever before, NHL Network today unveiled its U.S. broadcast schedule for the 2008-09 regular season. It includes 75 regular-season games, all in HD.
Highlighting the schedule is the inclusion of CBC’s award-winning Hockey Night In Canada, now available to U.S. fans through NHL Network for the first time. Every Saturday night, NHL Network will not only broadcast the live Hockey Night In Canada double-header, but also the CBC pre-game show Scotiabank Hockey Tonight and post-game show After Hours.
Additional highlights for the 2008-09 NHL broadcast schedule include:

• Live NHL games every Saturday night throughout the season
• 26 double-headers and 1 triple-header
• 17 Wednesday-night games featuring TSN’s broadcast of Wednesday Night Hockey

Though not called out by name, you have to think that the triple-header is CBC’s Hockey Day in Canada.
If you haven’t picked up that HD flat-screen yet, may we suggest a shopping trip this weekend?
Check out Kukla’s Korner for more information, including the full schedule.