In Glacialis Blog

Mane Sunday vesper, servo an oculus in Novus England Pium’ porro encroachment in history libri, EGO sententia super res a lusum fan in D.C. per a reign of imperator contendo procuratio per a major domus of areas’ lusum teams, comitatus per imperator in- agri/ villa/rink victor. Nusquam dynastic, mens vos, iustus a universe convenienter, sanus dose of victor jactito per potissimum teams in urbs.

Illa erant, necesse, hypothetical sententia EGO eram having.

Iam meditatus quis bonus folks in Boston es usura illa dies. In October Rutilus Sox won suum secundus Universitas Serius in preteritus quattuor annus. ingens redivivus Celtics es serius contenders pro NBA titulus is season. Quod Pium? Forsitan a perficio season, quod gravis favorites ut lucror quis would exsisto suum quartus Eximius Scaphium titulus is decade. Frendo es Beantowns’ pallens sanctimonialis, tamen vel theyre’ quinque venatus supremus .500 is season. Suus’ an embarassment of lusum opulentia in Beantown.

Meanwhile, hic, nos have Daniel Synder, haud- nomen Nats, quod vere nocens glacies.

Utique erant’ questus a nice novus stadium tunc ver.

Meus Sunday vesper sententia, promptus per invidia of Novus England, centered in is quaero: subtilis ut eram adventum of tendo lusum corruptio in D.C., quod est illic ullus forsit spero melior vicis in foreseeable posterus?

Lets’ primoris pactus ut per rectum of Unholy Trinity of Hardwood — Abe Capitagium, Susan OMalley’, quod Wes Unseld — illic eram haud contendo ut exsisto perficio illic, stipes ‘79. Sic dissimilis Boston, nos in D.C. couldnt’ have totus major domus lusum teams firing in totus cylinders. Bovis-Wiz of ’80s quod ’90s subsisto Hechingers dum ceterus of NBA went Domus Depot. Tamen D.C. in ’80s had Eximius Scaphium Tergum quod a iugo of centum-pt. Caps’ stipes ( quisnam quoque usquequaque no playoffs). Titulus- victor Georgetown hoops, quoque, eram per validus tunc.

(res baseball- minor insquequo nuper, nos Washingtonians quisnam sought estas lusum had mutuo Os’, quod they, quoque, won a titulus in ’80s ( suum permaneo), quod showcased superstar shortstop, Cal. Tunc Peter Angelus supervenio quod nos totus had ut subsisto liking lemma)

EGO sententia super Joe Gibbs’ subitus, offensus decessus in Proficiscor 1993, ( is traho a Vermeil) ( vacuus incessanter singultus), quod admiratio si EGO vires non vestigium ut ut anchor pro D.C.s’ lodging in Bermuda Triangle of lusum abyssus. Volvit sicco, 1993 eram an scelestus annus nobis hic. Dum Gibbs mortuus tunc, decessio peius- paratus Tergum staggering in a gubernatio inritus quod launching lemma in 15 annus of lousy- ut- mediocris cogo, quod plerumque lousy seasons, unusPeter Angelus supervenio (via an ambulance is fugo) ut major domus erus of Orioles. Amo nos didnt’ animadverto is procul vicis, tamen progenies eram in.

Proficiscor 9, 1998, eram a proprie bleak dies pro D.C. lusum Lavatio Stipes Caps’ pello pepulli pulsum opinio Bob Fachet obduco. A legend eram lost quod nunc deinde hockey, institutionally, incurred nomine tenus — tamen non professio — occulto per paper.

Undeviginti nonaginta six eram haud pacis of a annus, aut. Ut annus Redskins valedico ut NFLs’ plurimus venustus stadium, RFK — quoque unus of plurrimi territo pro saluto teams — quod took sursum sedes in a locus accersitus Raljon ( vere), an immense, aesthetic- solvo mausoleum semino nightmare Beltway traffic, sessio licentia, quod, eventually, prehendo of testis whod’ praesumo tendo quod penetro Raljon vacuus ponying sursum an American Effor numerus pro ortus fees. Is eram amo restituo Jackie Onasis per Britney Telum.

(is would exsisto plurimus interesting ut capitagium Redskin season ticket habitum hodie quod scisco quod theyd’ have pocius seeing 12 annus abhinc: millions prodigo consummatio 20,000 sessio quod luxuria boxes ut RFK, ut secui of D.C. liceor parumper posterus estas Olympics obnoxius, vel eximius- amplitudo sinkhole in PG Duco)

Tamen ut malignancies obviam victor vado, nos in D.C. erant iustus questus coepi. (persevero)

November 23 in Philadelphia eram, technically, Bruce Boudreaus’ debut ut caput capitis cogo of Lavatio Caput. Tamen EGO vere puto puteus’ animadverto Bruce Boudreaus’ Lavatio Caput semel tonight, in Novus Jersey, in novus Prudens Center. Is should exsisto an vesper of novitas quod resurrectio.

Permaneo Sunday EGO asked Cogo Boudreau super gravitas illae weeks’ quinque- dies effrego ex lascivio in terms of putting suus imprint in team. Vacuus pause is affirmed is — is eram futurus a week of vere instruction, quod in rabies of six venatus in suus primoris novem dies in D.C. totus is eram amplus validus reddo ut team erant basic alignments quod exhortations. Is has been a eruditio week pro Bruce Boudreau. Tonight nos suscipio disco quantus suus discipulus have absorbed.

Nos teneo is ex Bruce Boudreau semita record: suus sensa quod tactics magis sepius quam non take hold, quod victor plerumque secuutus. vox vocis of Ipsa Gero, John Walton, yesterday told mihi, “ si illic’ quislibet in hockey quisnam can adepto Caps ut duodeviginti [ in Oriens], suus’ Bruce.”  

Is may have been theca ut a subpono magister — discipulus’ ventus pius– had been instructing Caps preteritus three seasons. Is December in D.C. illic est a headmaster in tutela. Hes’ severus, hes’ a taskmaster, tamen hes’ quoque a ordo hockey personality. Futurus inter Bruce Boudreau est futurus regius in hockey lore. Nonnullus illae, Im’ certus, est partis per suus ludio ludius. Is in ipsum has futurus a exspectata, refoveo change in Caps’ cella.

Utpote Boudreau has captus super Caps Ive’ admiratio super prosperitas hockey cogo quod suum potestas, super tractus of ferinus porro seasons, ut extraho excellentia ex battered bodies per talis convenienter. Ipsa Gero permaneo season utor suum teres season in suum repono history: 51-17-6, bonus pro 114 cuspis. season prior, quoque sub Boudreau, eram mereo praeclarus, quod capped per a Calder Vas. Utriusque seasons erant venalicium per tractus victor virga — comprehendo, per 2006 postseason, an stupendum 10 consecutive laurifer. Sub Boudreau Gero quoque won septem consecutive lascivio serius. Illud quidam quaedam quedam quidam factum, is videor, can tantum supervenio ex splendidus paratus, instruction, quod motivation — ex caput capitis guy — quod eximius selflessness quod vitualamen ex suus ludio ludius.

Boudreau, EGO reputo, in addition ut usus a savvy hockey caput capitis must quoque have utor inordinate credibility with most of ludio ludius in sulum cella hes’ cogo impetro praecessi is has.     

Skepticism surrounding the porro-term prospicio of penitus cogo es premised, EGO reputo, in quod Boudreaus’ decessor, quoque, supervenio in Lavatio via American League, quod ut amo Glen Hanlon, Bruce Boudreau nunquam before managed an NHL scamnum. But such a visum visum the coach in constituo formo; Bruce Boudreau eram a melior cogo in Ipsa quam is eram in Manchester ( quod is eram per bonus illic pariter). Quare wouldnt’ nos reputo hed’ amplio hic quoque? And is addo a championship stemma per him.   

Is week Boudreau eram asked, per reference to his teams’ permaneo- locus superstes, iustus quantus lenimentus is sententia team could planto is season. Animadverto ut praeter 50 venatus subsisto, is respondeo, “ quidne primoris?”

Nos shouldnt’ have specto ullus alius refero.  

Per quinque dies off pro Fridays’ venatus per Novus Jersey, an video of Sunday oriens’ meditor procul Kettler Caput vires reputo Caps erant seputus in a medium-season palaestra castra. Sarcalogos Expedio, Viktor Kozlov, quod Alexander Ovechkin erant indulgeo ex skate. Boudreau skated ceterus of a defessus hockey team aliquantulus praeter an hora, quod sepius ferreus. Multus of drills in sessions’ oris oris dimidium had vultus of cado castra’.

“quis weve’ perfectus permaneo 10 dies has totus been verbal quod visual quinymo quam vere effectus is, quoniam nos havent’ had vicis in ice,” Cogo Boudreau said postea. Is clausus of off dies, is added, “ est a valde eruditio tool, quod ut’ quare nos volo utor is ut nostrum commodum”

During Saturday nox noctis’ Comcast telecast JoeB quod Craig prolecto ut Alexander Semin nondum res in “ venatus vultus” In drills Sunday oriens Semin vultus mobile, tamen suus timidus per nonnullus of suus elite permoveo videor ut exsisto iustus off. Suus razzle-dazzle has nonnullus rust in is. Quod quam couldnt’ is? Hes’ requiro non iustus vis of teams’ venatus is season tamen ustulo of meditor pariter.

Sarcalogos Expedio, Boudreau said, is “ dies ut day.”

Ex a Caps’ persona: “Pittsburgh tantum has 24 cuspis . . . ut’ a maior fabula quam nostrum having 20.”

Congruo.

Quod quis has venio ut Ottawa?

In Kettlers second’ ovis of glacies mane Sunday Lavatio Junior Populus, cogo per e- Solio Vestigium Tinordi, erant adversus Portland Junior Pirates in an Atlantic Metropolitan Hockey League venatus rink eram refertus per testis, silicis music per lascivio stoppages eram loud, quod hockey eram eximius. EGO vere didnt’ teneo a res super is league quod suus campester of lascivio, sic EGO did aliquantulus of research in ‘Net tardus yesterday. Jr. Nats es affliated per Junior Caput quod Lavatio Parum Caps (Tier I. They) lascivio suum venatus procul Kettler quod procul Ortus Glacies Domus in Laurus, Md.

Junior Nats quod Junior Caps vultus Washington Junior Populus Contraho Development Progressio (WJNCDP). Ex teams’ textus site: “is est absentis of WJNCDP iuvo ludio ludius develop ut pubes quod ut hockey ludio ludius, tamen quoque iuvo rector illa pubes obviam nonnullus vultus of contraho hockey. Coach” Tinordi has duos sons skating pro him — Jarred quod Res. Nats are 14-11-0-2 and will travel ut Hudson, Novus Hampshire this weekend  for a duos- venatus serius obviam Northern Cyclones. Is est bonus hockey ut vigilo — vos iam have duos bonus causa facio hiberna saluto ut Kettler Caput.

The Caps are off Monday tunc eo ut Chevy Fugo Terra Stipes Tuesday vesper procul 600: p.m. parumper reverto fides of permaneo seasons’ altus appealing foras meditor illic, tempestas licitus. forecast pro Tuesday vesper vultus pulchellus bonus. Im’ proprie interested video vidi visum quis quispiam amo Nicklas Backstrom reputo illae noval quod forsitan annual outing.     

Cousin quod EGO es in vere magnus urbs iam caput. Nos supervenio in vicis pro Thanksgiving prandium Thursday, quod dum terra hic est turkeyless ( quod snake- solvo nimirum, gratiae maculo. Pium), cousin quod EGO postulo haud misericordia. Ut loco is mitis, nos ingurgito ourselves amplitudo procul Gallaghers’ Boxty Domus.

Gallaghers’ est forsitan optimus- notus quod plurimus carus dining macula in Templum Talea plaga of Dublin. Boxty est Irenses pro pancake- amo utor of potatoes. Totus ratio of caro es refertus intus lemma, quod presentations es os- unda. Meus Thanksgiving farina convenienter of oak smoked Irenses salmon garnished per vegetus viridis, institutio Irenses vilicus, duos pints of Murphys’, a vas of Parvulus cabernet, quod a heaping lubricus of Procurator’ cheesecake comitatus per Procurator’ capulus.

EGO didnt’ requiro turkey adeo.

tempestas in Dublin est se gero ut teres dining quod indulgens pubbing. Is pervenio minus unus hic Thursday nox noctis (Celsius, obviously), quod Friday videor haud tepidus. Suus’ fantastically terror, quod dum locus es entombed in layers quod headwear quod vix, EGO wouldnt’ have is a singulus inhonestus tepidus. Totus ut’ absentis ex meus vita tardus is November est ago hockey. Divum Novus Friday oriens forecasted snow pro Scotland.

Altus in meus procurator hic eram shopping pro nonnullus Irenses laneus sudo, quod is tempestas afforded perficio backdrop illo nisus. EGO cautus duos ingurgito quod somes estus- reservo sudo ex Perfectus Shop in St. Stephens Viridis Friday meridianus, quod is eram blustery satis ut EGO wore unus ex shop atop an American sudo EGO eram iam taedium. (persevero)

I had three thoughts in the immediate aftermath of last night’s 2-1 loss in Sunrise. One, the title of one of my favorite cinematic comedies, ‘As Good as It Gets’ — that title, its syntax, just sorta sauntered about in my post-loss head. Two, that there surely was an elevated toxicity to be found in the forums of the foaming at the mouth, and that I’d wait 12 or so hours before scanning their contents, as hanging for losing hockey games is in my view too severe a remedy. And three, fan exuberance and its obvious shortcomings notwithstanding, sometimes the mad men are actually right in their fury.

Absent a miraculous turnaround in this hockey team, the wherewithal for which is impossible to detect this morning, odds are that Caps’ management is going to come to see things much as much of the fanbase has for about two weeks now — and likely, rather soon. (Assuming they already don’t.) Which for me invites an interesting question. We can all agree that 75 or 90 percent of the time, the pitchfork-and-torches brigade of the beaten down by too many losses is reactionary and irrational in wholly unproductive fashion. It’s the old I gotta have a head on a platter mentality. It’s driven by the Id’s need to vent. But ocassionally, just ocassionally, beneath all the sound and the foaming, there is actual merit to their madness.

But more specifically, what is it about the kingdom of fandom that once in a while affords it a view to an appropriate kill, while management, comprised of seasoned professionals in the industry, dithers and damagingly delays? It could perhaps be analogized as the dog owner who presents his pup to the veterinarian complaining of a gut-felt malady in the little guy, but finds no remedy. ‘My little doggie just isn’t right,’ the owner would report. The vet would examine, detect no ill, and move along to inspect the next critter. A tumor somehow went undetected, by the pro we most depend upon to find it. Again, nine times out of ten, it’s found, and quite often excessive worry and woe needlessly drive scores of animal lovers to unnecessary and costly visits to the vet. However in Washington this fall, we’ve a genuinely sick pup named puck.

Fully five days this hockey team had to prepare itself for the perpetually underwhelming Florida Panthers, losers of four straight games. Its lineup was at 95 percent capacity. Its leaders spoke this week on record of an imperative of the moment. Again, once the puck dropped, it played not poorly at all but not good enough to win. Again.

One could plausibly posit that the Southeast is the NHL’s least imposing division, and the Capitals this morning are at the bottom of it. Syllogism: the Caps are the worst team in hockey. One that eight weeks ago spoke uniformly and openly about participating in the NHL postseason.

The fanbase this morning might rightly ask of management: just how much evidence do you require?

This morning there is for me a foreboding sense of an awful appointment tonight for the Caps, again in Florida. I witnessed much of what Vinny did to the first-place ‘Canes the other night. A Friday night in Tampa: this building, unlike last night’s, will be sold out. There is a team perhaps in or approaching a death spiral gliding toward a potential buzzsaw. I fear a high order of ugliness. And then, following, a quiet weekend of disquiet. Again.

Then, maybe then — likely not but perhaps — remedy will follow. A furious fanbase will be obliged. A corrective course will be pursued. Maybe.

More likely, however, even in the event of a wretched, additionally spirits-sapping defeat this evening, one driving this hockey team further below the Mendoza line of competitiveness, management will ponder further. At some point, however, the conveyor belt of rationalizing inaction will produce no product. Then it will be fair for the fanbase to ask of the team’s management, with respect to this week’s five-day break, Why did you wait?

New free agents aren’t performing poorly. The defense is much improved, the goaltending super solid and often even better. Alex is playing the best hockey of his career. But accorded the advantage of relaxed schedule and the self-imposed imperative of winning, the best this Caps club could do last night in Sunrise was play well enough to lose to a lousy club. Again.

This is as good as it gets.

Quality human beings comprise the vast majority of the enrollment for the great game of hockey, and so when the giants within it are called upon to offer reflections on their journeys within the game, we shouldn’t be surprised at the quality they offer in that endeavor. It’s impossible to watch the NHL’s Hall of Fame Induction ceremony and not be persuaded that the humility, character, and most particularly the connection to family that hockey players demonstrate and articulate is unrivaled in the landscape of professional sports. Baseball’s induction ceremony this past summer, by virtue of the character of its principal inductees Gwynn and Ripken, seemed to take a step back in time and grace and generate a renewal of honor for a sport badly in need of it. But the NHL, with its highest honor event every November, has it every year.

The billing for Monday night’s ceremony in Toronto was a legends’ list of inductees, the best class ever, but listening to their tales of rising within dedicated families and their unwavering support structures — ones that are extended and amplified within the larger hockey family itself — one felt that this event, seemingly a spectacle for the rare-talent individual, was actually every bit as much an exhibition for the family unit that serves as the perpetual wellspring of greatness in this game.

The cameras last night delivered to us footage of the excellence of the inductees on the ice; their poise and emotion while reflecting on their honor on stage; but also regular glimpses of their families seated nearby and poetic testimonials from their sons as to their invaluable influence. All seemed interrelated and intertwined.

And in point of fact it is. The Hockey Hall of Fame has among its exhibits a simple home’s family room circa 1950 within which family members are gathered around a broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada. It also has a station wagon honoring the pre-dawn pilgrimages to the rink, played out over years through the hardships of Canadian winter, conducted as devoted ritual.

A hockey player’s developmental journey requires nothing short of an all-out commitment of time and resources from families. They arise on weekdays with newspaper delivery trucks to make pre-school practices in frigid blackness. They become road warriors of the winter weekend to travel to games and tournaments, and in 90 percent of Canada and the upper Midwest, that’s often desolate and dangerous travel.

Becoming a hockey player is rarely a fleeting, half-hearted venture. Perhaps that’s why this sport is played with so much heart.

Al MacInnis was the first honoree last night to acknowledge the role of family in his greatness, and as the first-ever Nova Scotian to be enshrined (incredible, that), he made sure that his extended family members in Port Hood knew of their role in his career. They had a place in the Hall of Fame, too, he said.

It was heartening to hear Scott Stevens testify to the impact he felt from his eight years in the Washington Capitals’ family. He thanked David Poile and Bryan Murray from management, and his defensive partner Brian Engblom. He characterized his tenure in town as “a period of growth” and alluded to being a part of the first Capitals’ team to qualify for the postseason — the first of seven straight such in D.C. he was a part of. And he thanked Capitals’ fans for their support.

The tear machine that is Mark Messier of course had ample reflections on the role of family in his career. He had ample reflections period, obliterating the prescribed four minutes for remarks with rambling incoherence that nearly outlasted his career. What if he’d been wearing a tuxedo system designed by Reebok amid all that sobbing?

Messier’s frequent pregnancy-long pauses allowed me to rememeber that at one time his family was reputed to have included Madonna. I rather delight in hockey’s figures of towering talent, their origins in towns of hundreds, their modesty unmatched in or out of professional sports, dalliance-ing with American starlet strumpets. That of course is the exception to the more mundane extension of family in this sport. Hockey players never forget their roots, or lose their attachment to them.

One way to react to last night’s PowerBall-winning-odds turn of events in Ottawa is as I did, in foggy disbelief, with the aid of paramedics. Clutching the lapels of the uniform jacket of the young woman from the Bethesda-Chevy Chase rescue squad kneeling over me in my home near 11:00 last night, oxygen mask over my face, I was able to stammer out “We really . . . the Senators . . . 13-1 going in . . .?” I suspect she was from Minnesota or Alberta, for she offered me the warmest of smiles and a nod of affirmation. And a victory beer.

Another way to react is with relief but also indignation. Without Chris Clark and without Alexander Semin — 68 goals of absence, we were constantly reminded this week — the Caps have taken down the province of Ontario recently by the count of 11-2. Injuries really aren’t an excuse for prolonged losing; now we know they really can’t be one for this version of the Washington Capitals. And we know this: this team, even missing a couple of key parts, is capable of playing great hockey — but you wouldn’t want to bet the mortgage on them doing it night in and night out.

Why can’t they? Why must the heat be turned up, the sportstalk shows fomenting with hockey caller fury, for this team to respond by skating brilliantly and hard for 60 minutes? Many Caps’ fans around town likely thought Coach Hanlon bought himself two or three weeks’ worth of additional job security with last night’s stunning outcome. I actually think the result bolsters the case against him.

Olie Kolzig was a rock in net last night, but he didn’t have to stand on his head. His team played that well in front of him. The Senators, authors of the best start to a season in NHL history, didn’t offer up a flat, take-the-W-for-granted effort; they skated hard and magnificently, and they played valiantly and authoritatively in the third period. But regularly there were opposing sticks in their passing lanes, shin guards in their shooting angles. The Capitals last night sent out shift after shift of committed passion, guts, and guile in pursuit of victory.

They played desperate hockey.

Problem is, we don’t see it often. And we never see it consistently.

This is a team capable of shutting out the ‘Canes, humiliating the Leafs, vanquishing the best team in hockey on its home ice. But it is also a team capable of looking mismatched against the Isles.

It is a bit of a cliche, but in sports certain teams, by virtue of their maddening inconsistency, are designated as playing up or down to the level of the competition they face. This Caps’ squad is on cue auditioning for such a status.

(What kind of consistency would I seek? That of Metro’s disruptions, delays and dysfunctions.)

My hope entering this season was that a whole lot of losing in recent seasons had bred a bile and contempt for it among a core of Caps. That mid-February Tuesday night matchup with the Panthers would be met with Old Time Orneriness. Maybe it still will. Coach Hanlon I think makes a fair point in noting the need to mesh not only his free agent newcomers with his core but four or five AHL graduates as well. But the hour of meshing is upon us.

So this member of the jury is still deliberating. I may have a verdict come late Saturday night.

In its postgame studio coverage last night, the hockey talking heads on Versus posed the question, ‘Which coach is on the hottest of hot seats?’ Ron Wilson (his team with a winning record) and John Tortorella were ID’d. So was Glen Hanlon.

“This is a huge, huge roadtrip,” Hanlon told the Washington Post at the beginning of this week. Two-thirds completed, the Capitals have, through 120-plus minutes of it, a single goal and a single point. More of either will be hard to come by Thursday night in Ottawa.

Given the daunting task set out before him when he arrived behind the Caps’ bench midway through the 2003-04 season — presiding over an underachieving, expensive roster, soon to be gutted, then slowly, loss-ladeningly rebuilt, it seems almost inhumane this morning to set out prose hinting at the possibility of Glen Hanlon’s being fired. But this climate of suspicion has its roots in upper management’s very publicly stated Midsummer’s Night Dream of reaching the 2008 postseason.

Led by the owner’s bull market forecast (”The rebuild is over”), backed up by the captain’s camp-opening can-do creed, the flames of happy fortune were fanned all across the organization and broadcast in high definition by new and old media. Currently residing in a tie for 28th in the standings, this Capitals’ team this morning is anything but postseason bound.

The Caps’ 3-0 start only further fueled hockey happy talk in these parts. But this morning, what seems more aberrant — that start, with a victory over a battered-by-Bob (since fired) Thrashers’ crew and a 12-shot effort on Long Island on Columbus Day — or the current 2-9-1 slide into the standings sewer?

I answered that question, thought back to the team’s playoff pledge, and, knowing the nature of contemporary pro sports as I do, immediately thought of the phrase storm clouds converging.

At the heart of the present heartache for Caps’ fans, it seems, is this question: While almost certainly Glen Hanlon was the right man to preside over the rebuild, is he as well the right man to guide them to and through the playoffs? It’s a question that I’ve heard asked by Capitals’ officials themselves the past two years, but this week in Washington — and now on national television as well — it’s being asked with application and urgency.

Glen Hanlon is now 49-78-10 as head coach of the Capitals. Taken in total, that winning percentage isn’t all that bad in light of some of the sweater fillers he’s been tasked with guiding the past three hockey seasons. But that’s not the issue he’s likely facing right now. It’s this one: that hard-working, overachieving band of nameless and journeymen, and Ovechkin, he impressed the NHL with two years ago doesn’t look quite so hard working and overachieving today.

Worse: because of the sub-.500 hole his club now finds itself in, the scratching and clawing required to move from 28th to say 16th in the league will demand a healthy stretch of non-losing. When have Capitals’ fans ever seen that from Glen Hanlon’s Caps?

One night in the middle of Alexander Ovechkin’s rookie season I was watching a Caps’ game with a wise old man about pucks, my Old Man. All too familiar with the team’s decades of disappointment as a season ticket holder, and aware of the rebuild scheme, Dad explained to me the competitive urgency of the moment given the Great8’s awesome gifts.

“They cannot waste seasons with this guy not in the playoffs,” he told me.

Greg Wyshynski, Washington correspondent for The Fourth Period, is one of the most enjoyable and insightful folks in town with whom to take in a hockey game. Last week I had the pleasure of his company at the Islanders’ game, and in the midst of another failed Caps’ power play he asked me if I thought that Alexander Semin’s absence from the lineup was decidedly detrimental to the Caps’ man advantage. “Semin,” I told Greg, “is the difference between this power play ranking 25th or 12th in the league.”

I may have slightly overstated Semin’s impact, and last night’s 0-for-4 showing while a man up against Tampa in the Caps’ 5-3 victory doesn’t appear to offer prima facie evidence of a potent power play with Semin back on it. But don’t be fooled. It sure looked different, didn’t it?

Imagine the Caps’ power play unit entering a robust pumpkin in a Halloween pumpkin carving contest. For the past three weeks, the Caps’ pumpkin has sat uncarved and unilluminated on a shelf, its suggested visage traced out in black marker as jovial as opposed to menacing. For the purposes of this contest, hosted by Wes Craven, the Caps’ unit seeks to make a menacing jack-o-lantern. Tom Poti carves out the top. Michael Nylander might chisel out a set of frightening eyes. Alexander Ovechkin would follow with a creepy-wicked mouth. Alexander Semin brings the finishing light within. It offers a harrowing red glow.

A potent power play first needs a playmaking catalyst. The Caps have had that this season in Michael Nylander. It needs finishing skill as well. Alexander Ovechkin certainly brings that. It must also have competency at the points. The jury’s still out here, but Tom Poti and Mike Green and others on the Caps’ blueline are putting up a healthy tally of points in five-on-five play, and Poti’s career has more often than not brought healthy power play production. The arsenal in Green’s game surely suggests he can help generate production on an effective power play unit. So far this season, the Caps have missed a complimentary finisher opposite AO. It’s been a one-side-of-the-ice threat. That’s relatively easy to defend.

Great or at least reasonably effective power play units boast scoring threats on both sides of the offensive zone. Semin obviously brings that compliment to his countryman Ovechkin. But Glen Hanlon has also deployed Semin on the power play point. The Caps haven’t had him in either role much of this season to date. Some in hockey (Craig Laughlin comes to mind) regard Semin as possessing hockey’s most lethal wrist shot down low. Now think back to the 5-on-3 man advantages the Caps have had thus far, all of them without Semin. Think that wicked wrister might have helped out there?

Here are five qualities to the Caps’ power play that, from my vantage, Semin helps facilitate:

• The addition of a world-class finisher who requires precious little time and space to produce in lethal fashion;
• The arrival of crisp, cross-ice and often creative passes between Ovechkin and him, among others, adding a horizontal threat to the attack;
• Depth in quality personnel at the point;
• With Semin and Ovechkin working the half boards, the creation of more open lanes for the point personnel, as PK units understandably are drawn lower in the box to try and check the superstars;
• An altogether different realm of confidence in the entire unit.

A scary-good power play is within this team’s potential with its current personnel, I wager. It’s a nice time of year to anticipate its arrival.

Even in the post-lockout NHL, staring at a 2-0 deficit during the second intermission is daunting. Seated next to Gus, and having absorbed two periods of the Caps outshooting and outplaying the Isles but watching bounces bumfuzzle the Caps — cosmic justice for our rudely unmerited victory on the Island 10 days ago, I thought — I told my bloggermate, “It would take a small miracle, but if they could just pull a point out of this mess.”

In point of fact, a frenzied and determined Caps’ team made the third-period comeback look rather easy: it was knotted up at 2 well before the 10-minute mark of the stanza.

But as the opposing centers took the center-ice draw in a sudden deadlock, I turned again to Gus and said, “The hardest part isn’t necessarily evening things up, it’s taking the next step, actually overcoming, and stealing a game with a full-on effort throughout the final frame.”

I’ve watched I think 10,000 hockey games in my life, perhaps more. I’ve seen comebacks precisely like the Caps’ last night a couple of hundred times. Ninety three times out of 100, I’d venture, the comeback kids valiantly steady themselves and soar the spirits of the home partisans to the stratosphere, only, utlimately, to trip themselves up, lose, and labor in vain.

Captain Chris Clark, behind Rick DiPietro’s net and the puck a harmless 199 feet, 9 inches from Olie Kolzig, tripped up an Isles checker while his team was in frenzy’s full flight . . . and with that error sirened the end of the comeback. I said as much to Gus as no. 17 skated to the sin bin; he didn’t dispute me. It happens almost every time. It was the absolute worst place on the ice to take a penalty at the very worst time. A mad comeback’s energy suddenly screeched sullen and silent. Next you could hear a subtle groan among the hockey cognescenti in their seats.

The recognition.

Some in the Verizon Center stands filed out last night thinking of softies that slithered past and humiliated Kolzig. They were soft, yes. They hurt, certainly. But they weren’t as determinative as the Clark miscue.

The threatening intruder snake had been boot-stomped into compliance by the Russian snake-charmer wearing no. 8. (We in the stands were rather charmed as well.) It was the duty of his teammates — all of them — not to let their Bauers up off the head of the snake.

Two minutes for tripping.

The viper recoiled.

Hockey teams like the Isles on the receiving end of such savage surges are truly helpless. Lines change among the dominators but the ice remains tilted. The coaching staffs of the beleaguered can exhort, reassure, toss towels or water bottles, it matters none. It’s called hockey’s momentum, and in third periods it’s directed at defying death — losing. Which may make it so powerful, so unprecedented to the rest of the earlier action. It’s a natural force, a Force 10 of fury.

And it can be undone in an instant.

In Monday’s New York Times, in her “Sports of the Times” column, Selena Roberts posits that baseball itself is largely culpable for its death as a participation sport in the U.S. She noted that by the time MLB got around to sanctioning the first pitch of an American League playoff game last Saturday night, the American sporting landscape was already abuzz from another Saturday afternoon of upset specials in college football. Worse, Saturday night’s Red Sox-Indians’ tilt ended some time near Sunday morning church-going for millions of Americans.

In catering more to Jay Leno’s demographic, baseball is divorcing itself from the very constituency it needs to perpetuate itself: young athletes. And in so doing, and here’s where Roberts’ argument gets really fun, baseball necessarily has exported many of this nation’s best athletes to another sport — football.

“Only insomniacs, Stephen King and barflies would have seen the Red Sox lose at that hour [Saturday night],” she wrote.

“Only baseball could test the sleep-deprivation limits of its fans in a postseason where every inning feels like the seventh-inning stretch. Only baseball could seem more invisible, more numbing, during the playoffs than it did during the slow-drip cadence of a 162-game season.”

It’s not a terribly terrific idea I don’t think to take a non-contact sport, which derives much its enduring hold on its supporters for its “cerebral” and games-without-clocks appeal, and by virtue of starting games past the bedtimes of millions of American youths, help ensure they can’t form important attachments to it. We’re talking about the sport’s postseason, after all, when heroes and icons typically are birthed.

“This is why college football is reveling in the sweet glory of parity,” Roberts claims. “The decline of baseball as America’s pastime — or past time, as the clock may indicate — has inadvertently seeded football programs across the country with talent.”

“Where are all the skilled athletes going? To the sport they can watch, to the sport that engages their short attention spans and markets to their starry-eyed sensibilities. To football.”

There’s data backing up Roberts’ point. The conspicuous decline in participation by American blacks in baseball is increasingly being documented — the sport’s been obliterated from urban America. (Where are the fields in cities?) But now American blacks are beginning to be joined on the sidelines by another important group: whites.

“In the past 15 years, according to a recent study by the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, the percentage of African-American major league baseball players has plunged to 8.4 percent from 18 percent; the percentage of white players has slipped to 59.5 percent from 68 percent.

Now look at Division I football statistics compiled by the N.C.A.A. In the past five years, the percentage of football scholarships offered to African-American players has risen to 45.4 percent in 2005-6 from 39.5 percent in 1999-2000.”

I read Roberts’ remarkable findings and claims and thought back to Labor Day weekend, when Appalachian State stunned much of planet Earth with its compelling slaying of top-5-ranked, powerhouse Michigan. It wasn’t with smoke and mirrors that A State pulled off the feat, it was with quality athletes — all over the field, and especially at the skill positions. Does that kind of upset happen 20 years ago? Of course not; had it, the reaction to this game wouldn’t have been as powerful as it was. And now, virtually every Saturday sends fresh jolts throughout the top 25 rankings. College athletic directors who 5 or 10 years thought they’d scheduled “gimmes” out of conference in 2007 are learning something else.

The vast majority of college football games each Saturday are completed just as baseball’s playoff clubs are leaving their hotels. And so baseball’s wound in the competitive sports marketplace is self-inflicted. Why can’t a postseason first pitch be delivered at 1:05 on a Saturday? Because of baseball’s bloodlust for prime — and past prime — time big bucks.

There’s a cautionary tale here for hockey. The good news is that when a hockey broadcast, regular season or playoff, commences at 7:00 on the East Coast the action starts at 7:05 and pretty much proceeds unabated until 9:30. It’s a kiddie-family friendly schedule. For some mysterious reason baseball broadcasts arrive and viewers are greeted by nearly a half hour of non-action analysis. Then, in its modern iteration, baseball imposes something on the order of 21 pitching changes over the course of nine innings. Really, could it do anything more to drive away viewers — young ones most particularly?

The economics of baseball for families aren’t all that bad — wide swaths of stadiums’ upper decks and bleacher seats remain within wallets’ reach. Less so, though, I think with big-league hockey. The American League and CHL games I attend are constantly crammed with kiddies. That’s not because they find the NHL boring.

There are great athletes today in hockey, at all levels. This is true to some extent because they have been able to make a connection with the game on television. But could even more great athletes form an attachment with hockey, particularly, say, in urban settings? I think so.

One of the more endearing traditions in the American Hockey League is the relative prevalence of afternoon games. Some are scheduled during September’s preseason slate, others on holidays like Columbus Day. School kids by the busload fill the stands at affordable rates. Hockey wants to be a hit, but first you must hook the kids.

“As viewing habits go,” Roberts concludes, “a sport can’t be a hit if it’s not seen. Football gets that. And with it, all the talent.”   

Hockey luminaries Gary Bettman and 2007-08 Jack Adams Award winner Glen Hanlon loom large these days. Knowing the commissioner as I do, it’s virtually certain he’ll insist on senseless redundancy, and not cancel the remainder of the NHL season and instead mandate that the Caps complete the remaining 79 games on their schedule. Insanity is famously defined as the repetition of the same act while expecting a different outcome. At least in the absence of competitive drama this hockey season the Caps can showcase their impressive new threads in arenas across the continent.

How am I supposed to work up any hatred of the Caps’ opposition when they can’t even score?

Here’s one directive I do expect out of the league office, perhaps as early as today: the Caps will be required to wear thermal versions of Reebok’s uniform systems, ones made of Northern Ireland sheep wool, for they are unable to work up a sweat in their current garb. Especially the goalies. I am an admirer of the team’s first television ad of the new season, one featuring a sultry brunette being tattooed with the new logo. But I’d modify the ad’s slogan to: “Perimeter kicksaves by yawning netminders, in True Colors.”

Hanlon, few would have guessed a month ago, is today on the short list for Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year Award — at least if it’s bestowed for exemplary acts of good sportsmanship. Knowing he had all the weakspots from recent years filled on his roster coming into this season, he’s chosen to sit Alexander Semin in two of the season’s opening three games, affording the appearance of competitiveness in the games. I know Semin’s ankle is sore, but I also know that he’d be playing were we in April instead of October. Or if there was any doubt as to the outcomes.

Approximately two-thirds of the Caps’ top line is in synch, the power play isn’t, and a stud is missing from the lineup, and so far no one in the East can compete. Speaking of tattoos, long ago I made a promise to my hockey chums that when Lord Stanley is hoisted here by my guys I’d permanently etch the occasion on my hind quarters. Herewith, I’m accepting estimates from the region’s parlors, with quivering buttocks.

Imagine the disquiet that must be settling in on the team’s general manager and scouts, knowing that soon, by virtue of a hostile NHL Board of Governors decree, they will be restricted to drafting hockey players only from Maryland and Virginia. You don’t really think the league is going to give Ross Mahoney et al a crack at another Mathieu Perreault — (he’s not allowed to play as many games as other forwards in the QMJHL, to keep the scoring race competitive) — do you?

Lindsay Czarniak sure didn’t pick the right hockey season to go to the dark (Burgundy) side, did she?

We have a Roll Call of the Rocks-in-Their-Heads to conduct. First up, ESPN’s John Buccigross, who pegged the Caps for 14th in the Eastern Conference this season. That was with Alexander Semin in the lineup he prognosticated so. Another last-place-in-the-Southeast forecast came from Sports Illustrated’s Sarah Kwak. “Their offseason moves failed to address the defensive shortcomings that led to their surrendering 3.35 goals a game,” she opined. The Caps have defensive “shortcomings” only if the barometer was holding all 82 opponents scoreless for the entire season. Let’s see if we can get Eric Staal and Erik Cole and Ryan Whitney to get the shot counter above 5 midway through a game against the Caps before we wring our hands over “defensive shortcomings.”

Here’s what Kwak should have written: “Ditched in D.C. this summer: Kris Beech. Standings value? Five slots, minimum.”

This dynasty-audition by the Caps is breeding in me rational but nonetheless exuberant sentiments. Check out the exchange I had tonight with the shepherd of both lonely and swelling hearts on radio each evening, Delilah, on FM WASH:

Delilah: “On the love line, pucksandbooks . . . that’s a distinctive name. So you want to dedicate Paul McCartney’s ‘Silly Love Songs.’ Tell me Pucks, who’s stolen your heart this Monday night?”

Me: “Don Koharski.”

I awoke at 4:30 this morning, two hours earlier than my alarm. I’m awake at the same time as Elliot Segal, and like Elliot today, my head is crammed full of thoughts about a new hockey season in Washington.

I’m thinking about the visitors’ locker at Philips Arena just now, how in darkness just like my bedroom’s those snazzy looking new Caps’ threads — admittedly poorly engineered, and likely to be the death of about 70 NHLers this season — were already hanging in place, set out by the dutiful Capitals’ equipment staff. I thought about how different the Washington players might feel as they first entered the room early this evening and seized upon the new uniform systems. I do think it likely they’ll feel more attachment to them tonight than they did while wearing them during the exhibition season (if for no other reason than a fair number of players had the fight ’til Sunday night to win them). In no small way they’re emblematic of a changed hockey culture in Washington this season.

I’m thinking about those 22 points the boys more or less need to make up to vie for the eighth spot in the East this season. It’s a tall peak to surmount, but I think it likely. For one thing, I don’t see those points in terms of 11 additional regulation-time victories. Last season the Caps authored what will stand the passage of time as the worst set of shootout performances in hockey. In hockey history. If they’d altered nothing about their shootout lineup this summer they couldn’t have gone one-for-eleven again. (Could they?) But GMGM brought in two of the league’s best shootout marksmen (Nylander and Kozlov). It isn’t irrational to imagine the team meeting something like .500 in shootouts this season, and if they do, that 22-point challenge has been reduced to about 17. I’m almost looking forward to shootouts this season. Almost.

It’s very quiet in suburban Maryland at 4:50 in the morning, but it won’t be inside Verizon Center during hockey games this season, thanks to a $25 million investment hanging high at center ice and encircling the lower rings of the seating tier. We’ll be exposed to an atmosphere, I wager, the likes of which we in D.C. never have before, and how fitting that it debuts alongside a buzz-generating hockey team. You’ll agree with me, I think, that Ivan Majesky in enlarged hi-def is still Ivan the Terrible. This morning in my dark quiet I’m thinking about a winter Friday or Saturday night with a marquee visitor in town, the Caps on a three- or four-game win-streak, the house full or close to it, the Alexes scoring on binges, and all that noise.

Still before 7:00 and still dark, I learn I’m not alone in my puck thoughts: I receive an instant message from the Caps’ Spike Parker. He’s working already and I’m blogging: it’s just like we’re back in Moscow together again, except the women in my neighborhood don’t look quite as fit and alluring. We wish each other a Happy Opening Day.

I’m thinking about the novelty all of the media on the Caps I’ve consumed this week. We may look back on this week as perhaps the most significant for media for this team in its history, when a perfect storm of blogging, new and renewed print and broadcast zeal, and some re-engineering by old media combined to deliver a feast for hockey fans in this region. Somebody tell Tony and Mike.

I’m thinking about the bloggers’ season kickoff soirée scheduled for this evening downtown at the Grand Hyatt, and how eager I am to reconnect with so many friends I made last season and didn’t get to see over the summer. (Vogs, I’ll have one for you.)

Hockey’s here again, in my hometown. Even in the dark, I can look out and see the correct alignment of the planets.

There is pleasant, engaging office water cooler chat — (none of us really gather around water coolers anymore, do we? It’s just that we haven’t found the appropriately updated workplace referent) — and then there’s what I have gained in breaktime communications by virtue of changing careers this autumn. Two doors down from my brand new office in Northwest D.C. is that of Eric McErlain, he of Off Wing Opinion, he the trailblazer of hockey bloggers, he the author of the blogger credentialing guidelines requested by Ted Leonsis and the Washington Capitals, he the Maestro of New Media, he who puts the “multi” in e-multi-tasking, and, as of this week, he the best of all hockey bloggers. Sports Business Media this week named Eric’s Off Wing Opinion the best hockey blog out of the universe of all hockey blogs.

Ten such hockey blogs were acknowledged for distinction by Sports Business Media, and Jon Press’ Japers’ Rink made the list as well. So D.C. bloggers comprised 20 percent of the e-dignitaries. Not bad for non-hockey town. The list of the 10 best:

1. Off Wing Opinion
2. James Mirtle
3. The Pensblog
4. The Battle of California
5. Barry Melrose Rocks
6. BfloBlog.com
7. Waiting For Stanley
8. The Battle of Alberta
9. Japers’ Rink
10. Behind the Jersey

I first met Eric early last hockey season. I was (and remain) a very novice blogger, while he was in year six or so of breaking down traditional media coverage barriers. I was keeping my head low and my mouth shut in the hour of so before Caps’ home games down in the press mess. Eric was the first person to sit down next to me and make me feel welcome in the strange environs. It’s a favor I aim to return this Saturday night at Verizon Center if I see a fresh face among the Opening Night press pack.

Anyway, by about our third pre-game meal together Eric felt like a real good friend to me. Perhaps you can imagine my feelings for him when, in the middle of this summer, he took my CV and shepherded it into a spectacular new communications gig for me — and as his colleague. We have plans for a lavish steak dinner out together on my dime to acknowledge his life-altering intervention on my behalf, but his myriad e-moonlighting missions keep robbing him of free time.

Our office is a lot like many other professional settings in a big city. Colleagues of distinction hunker down and labor hard and well, and when they seek a break and some personal engagement, they confide in their office neighbors and or project team members about family, recreation, travel plans, and the child custody drama of Ms. Spears. There are so many gifted and warm professionals on our staff, and these dialogues they have no doubt carry uncommon rewards. Yet I can’t help feeling a wee part of pity for them, for when Eric and I dialogue, we ruminate on the exotic, like junior hockey travel in Saskatoon or Moose Jaw or Rimouski, the best ways to get hockey hear dry between games of a weekend beer league tournament, and John Buccigross pithiness. In our prattlings we do break away from our immersion in big-league rosters and transactions; we discuss international monetary policy, too. Now that the Canadian dollar has achieved parity with the American, we wonder (at length) how much beer money we’d need on a roadtrip north of the 49th to take in a long weekend’s worth of Q League games.

It’s a foreign tongue to our colleagues that Eric and I traffic in over the day’s first cup of joe, during portions of the lunch hour, and in quick-hit comings and goings in hallways. A veteran of our trade association, Eric knows full well that when say Ben Clymer is dispatched to Hershey and I’m tied up in some technical meeting on another floor, he can relay the breaking news to me via our Blackberries. It’s at times like that that I’m of the opinion that ‘Brian’s Song’ has nothing on the nascent friendship between Eric and me.

Eric in his formidable online technical faculties of course is as clued in to our sport’s developments as anyone in North America, and so he genuinely doesn’t need me to pop my head in his office and blurt out the latest injured reserve designations. But I do that anyway, for he and I are kindred spirits about all things frozen, fast-paced, and fisticuffs, and needed levity and even some level of nourishing, sporting spirituality is secured in our office engagements. We have our own blogs, and both of us have material that ends up on the proverbial cutting room floor; these tidbits and trinkets too we share with one another. We speculate, debate, reminisce, and simply luxuriate in an immersion into an inner sanctum of our beloved sport.

Late Wednesday, just hours before the start of the new hockey season, Eric popped his head into my office, knowing that my new home had recently been wired for NHL CenterIce for the first time. He simply wanted to see the look of anticipation on my face, I think.

It was there alright.