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.

For nearly two years now I’ve had a recurring wonder related to righting the frustrating and infuriating underachievement by the Washington Capitals of this era: What would happen if this band of multi-millionaires suddenly had to share a room with a legend, an authentic legend, who wore the team crest; a true warrior whose number resides in the rafters of Verizon Center, whose honor mural conspicuously adorns one end of the team’s training facility; the scorer of what most Caps’ fans regard as the biggest goal in team history, a luminary who once lifted the Prince of Wales trophy high over his head? That for me was what was biggest about Monday’s stop-the-presses news — we’re about to watch my dream scenario play out.

It’s a dream scenario that hardly belongs to me alone. By noon Monday I’d received a text from a chum in Ashburn, Va., who reported seeing not one but two Dale Hunter Capitals sweaters adorning shoppers in his neighborhood grocery store. We had unseasonably excellent weather Monday for sweater exhibition, but still I found this anecdote, taking place in a single enclave of our region, remarkable. We awoke Monday with the post-holiday dread of return to our life of labor, only to spit out our first sip of coffee as the wire (The wire? I meant to type Twitter) broke word of the Legend’s return.

Bondra is a legend, Kolzig is a legend, but this is the Legend of Washington hockey. Captain Legend. Coming home. To help. When we need it most.

Remarkable.

Millionaires, all too accustomed to having their hockey hearts questioned, on Monday morning met the biggest hockey heart HockeyWashington has ever known. Christmas, indeed.

The Dale Hunter Era begins in Washington this week as an experiment, and I say that not with any overriding sense of doubt attached to the announcement but rather out of acknowledgment that nothing remotely like this has ever been tried here before. We’ve never had one of our own, an oh so distinguished alum, return home to help out in a leadership crisis. The Caps are Cup-less perhaps partially because theirs has been a bench populated, for nearly 40 years, by merely good and decent bench bosses, mostly very mediocre ones, and one or two less than mediocre men. Washington has not been a cradle of great hockey coaching. Far from it. Pittsburgh has enjoyed Badger Bob Johnson, Scotty Bowman, and now Dan Bylsma. We’ve had the Murray brothers, Shoeney and Wils and Gabby and Glen. . . and Butch Cassidy.

We won’t know for years where Dale Hunter falls in the litany, but at this moment this hire seems quite more than special, quite more than novel. To no small extent it seems to represent a vindication of Washington’s hockey legacy, modest though that be. It also seems like a terrific tonic for these troubled times; these Washington Capitals seriously need boots meeting their behinds, and the Dale Hunter kick ought to occasion some giddyup alright.

Monday at Kettler seemed especially about the Legend offering testimonials to his love affair for his Caps. “This has been my team — I shouldn’t say my team, it’s Ted’s team — but it feels like my team because I played here so long and had good memories here,” the Legend said.

‘Have you been able to follow much the team since you’ve been gone,’ a reporter asked the Legend. Only in the sense of taping and watching every Capitals game played since he left. Long bus rides in major juniors, you know; good way to kill all those hours, watching every game for the team you captained and left . . . the decade before last. “I’ve been cheering for the Caps since I left here,” Captain Legend admitted.

‘Were you a tough sell?’ another scribe wondered. Well before this moment word was in wide circulation among the Kettler hockey press that Huntsy had turned down overtures from other NHL organizations, out of fidelity to ours.

photo by OFB

“It would take the Washington Capitals to get me to stop doing what I was doing [in London],” the Legend said.

“This is the only [NHL] team he’s ever wanted to coach,” George McPhee told the mass of media enveloping him.

It didn’t come up during any of the press conferences Monday, but it’s part of the Hunter lore, and I remember it as much as any play in his remarkable career: Dale Hunter never hired an agent during his 19-year career, or at least certainly not while in Washington. Instead, once a year, at the end of each hockey season, he sat down with Mr. Pollin, briefly discussed his value to the club, quickly reached an accord, and made a new pact . . . on a handshake.

* * * * *

The St. Louis Blues are in the midst of their own honeymoon with new leadership. They’re hot under Hitch: 7-1-2 since he took over three weeks ago. I thought it remarkable that the Blues took to Kettler ice opposite the Capitals right as Dale Hunter was taking his first paces in his coaches warmup. Talk about a team seemingly walking into a Chinatown buzzsaw this week. A couple of Blues players even poked their heads in the other side of the rink to behold the spectacle of the Legend’s return.

* * * * *

Monday also delivered a brutal bittersweetness the likes of which I doubt I’ll ever encounter again. Bruce Boudreau’s dismissal necessarily delivered a deep bruise to that great hockey community just to our north. NHL rookie John Walton believes he’s in the big leagues today because of Bruce Boudreau. So you imagine his emotions on Monday. JW got to share about 10 weeks of the Dream with his advocate-friend, before having to say goodbye. On Monday he brought important perspective to the Boudreau legacy in D.C.:

“I learned of Bruce’s dismissal this morning around 8:00 a.m. As I drove into Arlington, I listened to the coverage of the coaching change on WTOP when a sad irony hit me. On Washington’s most listened to radio station this morning, the coverage of the coaching change was wall-to-wall. News at the top of the hour. Fan reaction on the talk back line. Sports at :15 and :45 was almost all Capitals. Joe Beninati on in the 9:00 a.m. hour . . . This happened on a Monday during football season. The Redskins won a football game yesterday, and there was almost no mention of it today. Has that ever happened around here?”

No, it hasn’t. Bruce Boudreau helped build this hockey town. Dale Hunter is elated to be here because he remembers well Washington’s ordinary status in this league of 15 years ago, and how extraordinary our standing is today. He’d be the first to acknowledge Gabby’s role in getting us there.

So in Washington this morning we’d sort of like to ask the commissioner: Can we start the NHL playoffs this week?

We are witnessing history each night with each successive Capitals’ victory this October, but more importantly, we are witnessing the successful auditioning of a roster for a durable and successful stay in next spring’s postseason — health permitting. And this isn’t merely because the Capitals are winning every time they lace ‘em up, it’s because of how they are winning.

A club that once upon a time failed because of its preference for perimeter play is today hard-charging the opposition cage, making life miserable there for netminders, and scoring goals in bunches from in tight. You pretty much figured that Troy Brouwer and Mike Knuble and Joel Ward would lunch-pale it in the slot, but this fall so too is Alexander Ovechkin. And Marcus Johansson. And . . . Mathieu Perreault.

When we watch this fall’s Capitals win so well and in such a laudable fashion — heavy on cohesion and work ethic — we meditate a bit on the important traits lacking in the failed clubs of the recent past, and increasingly we are led to conclude: those shortcomings sure appear to have been vanquished. Marcus Johansson has seized the long-vacant second-line center slot, displaying blazing speed, deft finish, and a high degree of overall hockey intelligence. You need your second pivot to deliver production and be a bit of a threat. It’s early still, but the toolbox young Johansson is displaying plausibly suggests 25-goal, 50-point production.

Previous Capitals clubs lacked a reliable no. 1 D pairing with battle-tested experience and pedigree. This Capitals club likely has two of them today. If you’ve followed Comcast’s Alan May on either television or Twitter this month you know that one of Washington’s most astute hockey analysts regards this year’s Mike Green as authentically Norris viable, and not because of his big offensive numbers by themselves. Roman Hamrlik is filling precisely the role the Caps had hoped he would, and proving to be the long-sought-for perfect partner for Green. Dennis Wideman is enjoying the finest start of his NHL career, and he might be the Capitals best all around rearguard. He skates in the team’s third pairing.

Take a look at the balanced minutes nightly being skated by the Capitals’ six rearguards: Green (22:45), Hamrlik (21:21), Carlson (19:47), Alzner (18:28), Wideman (20:06), Schultz (17:29).

And speaking of well-managed minutes, the team captain is clocking in at an average of 18:45 a night; he’s never averaged less than 21 minutes a game in his preceding six NHL seasons. If Bruce Boudreau is able to maintain a moderation of labor among his elite talent all season long the Capitals are likely to enter the postseason next spring with the league’s freshest set of legs.

The power play was moribund much of last season, and futile in the postseason. (Again.) As of last night, it ranked no. 1 in the NHL at 29 percent. Last season I was one among many in media who questioned the wisdom of positioning Alexander Ovechkin on the power play point. This season he’s most often found along the half boards with the extra man units — or in front of the net! — while a bevy of capable blueliners crisply distribute the puck and blast low and hard slappers on goal from the point. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.

Capitals playoff clubs in recent years have had quality netminding but something far short of a game-stealer. If Tomas Vokoun’s early work this fall is any indication of what we can expect come spring, the Capitals will be a tough out against any club. Vokoun’s numbers — especially ones subsequent to his debut — are stellar (all told, a 1.80 goals-against, .944 save pct.), but what has drawn my notice most is the technical brilliance with which he plays the position. It doesn’t seem to matter where shots come from on the ice; he seems to have his body consistently squared to the shooter. Pucks hit him in the middle of his frame and pads, rebounds are thereby relatively easily controlled, his blueliners puck possession and breakouts subsequently efficient. And it is certain that Vokoun and his blueliners will become even more comfortable with one another, and of more common understanding with one another, in the months ahead. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.

On the morning of the season opener I overheard general manager George McPhee offer something close to a prediction that his third line of Joel Ward, Brooks Laich, and Jason Chimera would remind folks of one of the team’s all-time best two-way lines: Ulf Dahlen, Jeff Halpern, and Steve Konowalchuk. Prescient forecast, that. No club in the NHL can match the production and two-way impact of the Capitals’ third and fourth lines. It’s rare to see a club skate in fall 12 forwards you hope remain paired without alteration the following spring, but that’s what the Caps appear to have this fall.

This is a terrific time for Washington’s hockey team to be seriously surging, what with the Redskins swooning anew and the Wizards AWOL. Things could get real ice-interesting-re-orienting around here in short order. That would be a beautiful thing to watch.

Image courtesy of BradysCards.com

And now, from the “you learn something new every day” files…

Lucy Neatby is a Canadian knitter and writer, and produces a monthly newsletter. Her latest one included this nugget:

Knitting Tip

Do it daily and have fun!

Really, knitting is therapeutic for you. Here in Canada one of our most famous hockey goalies regularly used it to relieve stress before and after major games, and he had such a record of wins that people took notice. Its effects on the body and mind are not unlike those of meditation, but as a bonus you get a product to show for it. Knitting is a powerful form of re-creation and creation, all in one. So be good to yourself: knit.

That got me wondering: who could it be?  Jacques Plante: The Man Who Changed the Face of Hockey has been sitting on our bookshelf for a while, and I clearly need to read it.

Years later, when his hockey career had taken him away from his impoverished beginnings, many teammates as well as members of the press were taken aback by Plante’s habit of knitting his own undershirts, socks, toques, and scarves. But he would always speak with pride of his ability to knit a pair of socks in a day and a toque in a mere three and a half hours. Throughout his life, Plante used knitting as a form of relaxation, oblivious to the reaction of those around him; this was his way to unwind after being the target of onrushing pucks. However, typical of the man, there was also a practical side to his needlework.

“I can’t get what I want in the stores,” Plante explained of his choice in undergarments, “so I knit [them]. I use four-ply wool. They must not be too warm. I use larger needles because small ones produce a thicker weaving and the holes are too small.”

Believe it or not, many professional athletes knit for the reasons that Neatby stated. While she was referring to Plante, it’s possible that it could be anyone; knitting really does relieve stress and anxiety. Can’t you just see Luongo knitting up a storm these days?

I’ve been hearing a lot from Killer since he left town last month after his first visit back to D.C. since he ended his playing days with the Caps. He was thrilled by witnessing two dramatic Caps’ victories on his visit, and his engagements with local media and fans. He especially appreciated the video tribute the Caps put together for him during the Backhawks game. He returned home from his visit with some team swag for his girls, and they’re proudly wearing it to school as the playoffs near.

Turns out, Killer, who played with so much heart and passion and courage, wanted to try and impart some of that in younger hockey players. So he started coaching. Turns out, too, that not many folks in D.C. were asking about it.

I tracked him down as head coach of the Youngstown Steelhounds of the Central Hockey League. I found contact info for the team’s staff on the team’s web site, and I shipped off an email to the team’s PR guy, identifying myself by name and blog affiliation, seeking an interview with the head coach, figuring that would pretty much be the end of my pursuit. But about two hours after that email a secretary in my office interrupted a meeting I was in to inform me that “a Killer is on the phone for you.” That’s exactly what she said. I remember it like it was yesterday. Funny, too: in that novel and bizarre moment, I sorta sensed that my life was about to change, that blogging about hockey in Washington was gonna get fun, fast. I still love telling my friends this story.

For the next hour on the phone Killer and I strolled down Memory Lane of Landover, Maryland. He treated me as if I were a 25-year veteran of the Washington Post. It wasn’t so much that he answered every question of him I had, with warm reflection and inspiring passion for our game, it was that he was, frankly, elated to be engaged with someone in Washington who remembered him, in the city that was his hockey home away from home. And it was from this remarkable initial conversation that I learned a lasting and important lesson about the athletes of our sport: they play in our cities and as fans we tend to commoditize their residence — are they playing well?; are they overpaid?; what have they done for us lately? But for the athlete, the residence here is signature — the dream of being a big leaguer realized. And for a player like Killer especially, Washington was uniquely embedded in his hockey heart: no organization believed in him like the Caps did, and he literally surrendered his health while wearing Washington’s sweater.

I remember hanging up the telephone for my call with Killer that autumn afternoon in 2006 and feeling like a lottery winner. An ex-Cap who was a hero to me as a fan had just engaged me as what seemed rather like a friend. I wrote up my story and it did what I wanted it to: it occasioned powerfully warm reminiscence of Killer’s guts and blue collar glory among OFB’s elder readership. My blog in its infancy suddenly seemed to have a spirit — and precisely the one I was seeking.

I could tell, too, that Killer appreciated the coverage. He began ringing me on my cell phone from his interminably long minor hockey bus rides across the U.S. with his team, looking to kill some time and just chat pucks. You know how with address fields in cell phones you use shorthand or nicknames for family and chums, and how those monikers appear on your phone’s screen when they call? Even years later I never quite lost a sense of marvel every time “Killer” would appear there on my phone when he rang me.

A couple of years ago OFB banded together with a few other local hockey blogs, the Capitals, and the Hershey Bears and organized a fundraiser at Clyde’s in Chinatown for the Wilson High hockey team. Wilson was the District’s only public school with a hockey team, and a Washington Post feature brought word of the loss of their coach to pneumonia, and serious financial hard times. Things looked seriously grim for the team. As a D.C. native and puckhead, this story was a sucker punch to my gut. I couldn’t not try and help. I got great help from the other blogs, amazing support from both the Caps and Bears (Hershey’s entire team signed a goalie stick and donated it to our event), and just two days before the fundraiser, I got a call in my office from Killer.

I wanted him to know that times in Washington were changing when it came to hockey, that high school hockey here was fairly flourishing, and that in the instance of the District’s lone public school puck program, we were gonna fight to keep it going. ‘When’s the fundraiser?’ Killer asked me.

‘The day after after tomorrow,” I told him. ‘I’ll ring you to tell you how we fared.’

The very next morning a box sized for a large television arrived via FedEx in my office. It had come from Youngstown, Ohio. Inside was a treasure trove of signed memorabilia from Killer’s playing career in D.C. as well as fashion and other trinkets from the Steelhounds. Killer was still going hard at his adversaries, apparently. At the fundraiser, I was in a circle of bidders around large signed color glossies of Killer in his bloodied Capitals’ sweaters. Those photos fetched hundreds of dollars by themselves. Our event overall raised thousands for Wilson. They’re still skating.

(Speaking of charitable impulses by hockey blogs, please consider stopping by tomorrow’s night’s big shindig at the Front Page in Arlington hosted by Russian Machine Never Breaks. I think I’m gonna bring a Killer to it.)

At 4:00 today my friend Killer will touch down at Reagan National for his first visit to his hockey home since he left it as a player. He’s gonna take in a couple of Capitals’ games this weekend. He follows the team pretty closely. Tomorrow night we’ll drive over together to the WTOP studios and stroll down Memory Lane again on ‘Saturday Night Caps’ with Jonathon Warner and Ben Raby. I’m looking forward to driving around town a bit this weekend with a Killer in my car.

There are old school discomforts with skates like this past Friday’s — Bears’ players, for instance, must carry off all preparations for practice at Giant Center, hop in their cars already geared up, and drive over to the old barn. But there’s something old school endearing about the sight of contemporary pro hockey players moving about a park in theirs pads and practice sweaters, largely emptied gear bags slung over their shoulders, sticks in hand.

One of HPA’s many charms is the accessibility Hershey hockey fans have to Bears’ players after practice. Fans coming into the arena to get their skates sharpened share arena hallways with the pros. In the primary entrance to the arena fans can and do wait with sweaters and photos for player signatures, and can walk alongside the pros as they make their way from the dressing room out to their cars. One fan on Friday brought along one of Mathieu Perreault’s Caps’ sweaters for signing, and if I heard correctly, claimed it came from the game in which Matty broke his nose. Of course the young center signed and posed for pictures with the fan.

This hockey landmark, lamentably, is unfit to host high-level hockey in the present. It can’t really host much of anything that might draw a big crowd. The building’s simply not to today’s fire and safety codes. The Bears can practice at HPA, they can devote some days of fall training camp there, but there are no more full-scale athletic events held there. Lebanon Valley College still plays its home games there, however. But every hockey fan I think ought to make at least one pilgrimage up to HPA for a Bears’ skate, or a Sunday afternoon public skating session in fall and winter, and behold the vantages of this mecca’s super steeply pitched seats — every seat in this home for hockey is situated right on top of the action.

Old wood benches are occasionally used by today's Bears' players to dull a bit of a skate's edge judged a bit too sharp

I'm sure most high school locker rooms in central Pennsylvania offer more amenities and comforts than does the home team's in HPA. But when I observed Bears' players lacing up their skates Friday there was nothing but smiles and the usual pre-practice banter enveloping this primitive dressing room.

Practice drills and rituals are no different in HPA than at Giant Center. But the spectator feels time-capsuled back into another era altogether.

Mathieu Perreault was all obliging for a fan who arrived at practice bearing one of his Capitals' sweaters.

After practice Friday Bears' radio voice John Walton gave Ben Raby and me a personalized tour of HPA, including this stop at the oh so primitive broadcast booth used by visiting teams' announcers years ago. Before Walton's work in Hershey, he also called games for the Cincinnati Mighty Ducks of the AHL. "I think we won three of eighteen games here," he told me Friday. To enter and exit this remarkable broadcast pen, announcers literally had to step onto armrests of adjoining seats. "But you had the best view in the AHL here," Walton noted.

In Monday night’s second period, with the game scoreless and the Pens holding a decisive edge in shots and scoring chances, Matt Bradley did what many in the NHL have wanted to do for years and in the process reversed the game’s momentum: he punished filthy Matt Cooke. Cooke, you’ll recall, did his level best to take out Alexander Ovechkin with an extended knee the last time these teams met. He kept up his dirty play and soon thereafter and was suspended. Matt Bradley carried a long memory into tonight’s game and waited to extract frontier justice in defense of his teammate. And despite the penalty he incurred on the hit, it was a clean hit.

Seasons of meager achievements gain meaning from such moments. And moments after Brads left the penalty box, he was forced to own up to his largely clean hit: Ryan Craig came calling, and Brads answered — in resounding fashion.

Let’s keep a close eye on what this hockey team achieves hereafter. Monday night we may have witnessed a turning point in a largely undistinguished season, and if so, Matt Bradley deserves credit.

Heck, even when this team practices outdoors it takes those paces at the posh Chevy Chase Country Club.

But from where I blog, a change in culture is badly needed for the Washington Capitals. Opulence and pampering and coddling, I allege, do not make for pit bulls in Bauers.

Herewith, in the first of a two-part revolution-intervention, I present a ten-point plan to radically reorient Washington’s country club hockey culture. On Wednesday I’ll bring you part II.

Understand, please: changes in cultures require shock therapy, boot-camp-style makeovers. These suggested intervention-remedies should be adopted in the short-term, and are not conceived as conditions to be carried forward (necessarily) through say the entirety of a player’s multi-year term with the club . . .

Although at this stage I am open to hearing otherwise from my readers.

• New paces at the Puck Palace. There will be no returning to Piney Orchard or Mt. Vernon for practicing and training by this club, and in a sense, that’s a shame. Those over-refrigerated, decrepit barns, while rough on shivering media and spectators, reminded Capitals’ players of hockey’s primal conditions. Lay an egg one night in an NHL rink, and Caps’ players could promptly expect locker room blackboard word of penance skates at their training ice box early the following a.m. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the greatest blue-collar ethos and lunch-pail sensibilities in Capitals’ history were forged during the neighborhood, rustic rink years.

Kettler-Capitals, on the other hand, is a puck palace. Capitals’ players can have their dogs groomed there while they practice; their girlfriends can get pedis and spa treatments a few floors below. We can’t take a literal wrecking ball to the palace, but we can remove a bit of the debutant-beau out of the hockey player while he’s in there.

Effective immediately, all 10:30 practices at Kettler are moved to 7:30 a.m. Practice skates the mornings after Eastern time zone road games will take place at 8:45. Cots will be purchased by management and placed in the locker room for players wanting to maximize their rest upon late-night arrival at Kettler from the airport. This will dis-incentivize a bit the team’s nocturnal social habits (more on that in a second). This is hardly cruel and unusual punishment; the region’s high school hockey players are typically on ice sheets at 6:00 a.m. for practice skates before classes. This will prove a bit of a hardship for local media, but they’re soft, too; it’ll be good to toughen them up a bit as well.

7:30 morning skates will strike many as punitive, and that’s fine. However, hundreds of thousands of Washingtonians are roused and already on Metro or en route to their labor at the Department of Labor, or some 60-hour-a-week software shop, by 7:30 each weekday, and so our newly inspired Capitals will with their new skating schedule be more in synch with their community. Wearing ‘Washington’ as crest on your sweater necessarily means you’re a Washingtonian; our guys in skates are gonna work like we do.

• Last call. Effective immediately, the very next Capitals player photographed at a bar the night before a game is fined $1,500, and the day following confirmation of the transgression, the team skates at 5:30 a.m. No need to go subpoena about the social past; perception in this town is reality. This is hockey; the sin of one is the sin of 20.

• Also effective immediately, second-offender bar sippers are fined $5,000, and a bag-skate — also in 5:30 a.m. darkness — will accompany. In-season, there will  be only one top shelf pursued by Capitals’ players so long as they perpetuate mediocrity on the ice upon Washington’s severely stressed fan wallets, and that’s behind opposing netminders. The Flyers, you know, had a similar cloud of alleged bar-fly booze haze dog them not long ago. A regime change remedied that rather swiftly, and the results ever since speak for themselves.

• Citizen-governance. No figure in hockey history was as effective at demolishing complacency and deficient work ethic as Herb Brooks. Unfortunately, we don’t have him around any more. But we can learn from his richly chronicled pedagogy. Effective immediately, Capitals’ season ticket holders will be invited to a novel participation in all bag-skates deemed necessary by the Capitals’ coaching staff. The evening before the skates, the Capitals head coach will, via email, invite a season ticket holder of duration out onto the ice the following morning for the retribution session, introduce the VIP to the entire team, and hand him or her a whistle. You know the rest. Ultimate accountability.

Legacy season-ticket holders unavailable to attend the skates will also be able to Skype-in their suggested discipline.

• Lunch-pail/brown bag nutrition. Team officials have described to me the in-flight meals afforded Capitals players on their charters. Suffice to say, they’re not the spartan sustenance of pretzels and lukewarm Folgers you and I receive on our commercial air excursions. More like the Palm at 30,000 feet. We’re changing that, effective immediately. In lieu of filets seared in cabernet-cherry, our new in-flight nutrition will be more in line with line workers: Sloppy Joes, spinach, and gelatin. And an apple.

Obviously, no Amstel Light.

You beat the Habs up there on a Saturday night, one bottle of Labatt’s per player for the flight home.

Shock therapy, remember.

[Coming up in tomorrow's Part II, we take our pampered pucksters for a little bus ride.]

These teams certainly have respect for one another, but also, they truly hate each other. And in hockey, hate is a very good trait. It’s a rivalry that now extends to the formation of colorful and highly energized fanbases creating a big-game aura in the respective cities that host the showdowns.

Likely January’s Winter Classic upped the stakes between these clubs forever more. There was plenty of dislike for each other on New Years Day: fairly early on, Erskine and Rupp dropped the gloves; you had Ovi’s face-wash of Sidney Crosby that left the Pittsburgh captain helmetless; in the aftermath of Dave Steckel’s (clean) hit on the Pittsburgh captain, which likely inaugurated his present concussion, fresh controversy was birth; and of course the Penguins’ failure to meet the Caps at center ice for an end-of-game handshake. We saw the hate come out again today, although in a much less honorable way.

Hockey has time-honored codes, such as: you do something questionable, something of a physical nature that skirts the line of sanctionable, you better be expected to reckon for it. Dave Steckel knew that, and you can debate until the end of time whether or not his New Years Day hit on Crosby was clean or not, but Stecks answered the challenge he was issued by Tim Wallace on Sunday. It was far from a classic bout, but Stecks met the moment. It was the honorable way to do things, adherence to one of hockey’s codes. Too bad Matt Cooke does not share that same sense of honor.

With time winding down in the third period and the game out of reach for the Penguins, Cooke took yet another cheap shot against one of hockey’s elite performers. The circumstances surrounding it — its timing so late in an already decided game, its target, and Cooke’s status as a repeat offender, all appropriately drew censure from the objective observers in the Verizon Center press box. There are hits to the head which are bad and there are the hits along the boards, when opposing skaters are uniquely vulnerable, that are especially dirty, but there is no hit more dishonorable and more ghastly than the knee-on-knee collision. It’s so anti-hockey. And it is a potential career-ender. That is the exact type of hit Cooke decided to deliver on Ovechkin, and it remains to be seen if the league will sanction Cooke as it should — at long last.

From the black and white side of things, it was called a trip. Cooke earned two minutes in the box. In Bruce Boudreau’s eyes after the game, though, there was no doubt about the insidious aspect of Cooke’s action.

“It’s Matt Cooke, need we say more?” Boudreau exclaimed after the game with his hands raised. “It’s not like it’s his first rodeo. He’s done it to everybody, and then he goes to the ref and says ‘what’d I do’? He knows damn well what he did.

While it was a dirty hit, Cooke could have at least stood up and done the honorable thing after his two minute “tripping,” read kneeing, penalty, and answered hockey’s call for atonement. He had a perfect opportunity to with Matt Bradley coming over the boards and approaching him like a lion on a gazelle. Instead of acquiescing Bradley’s request to tango he skated hard for his bench. Punk. A punk who should be punished — by the league this week, and especially by the Capitals in the teams’ fourth and final meeting this regular season.

These two teams bear an increasing respect-hate for each other because they are both clamoring after the same thing, the Stanley Cup, but the respect aspect of the equation suffers from hits like Matt Cooke’s on Sunday. Until he owns up to it — until the league makes him own up for it — I wouldn’t be surprised if Ovi didn’t take an extra few steps before laying the hurt on him in a few weeks when these two teams meet again. And my bet is he’d do so cleanly.