When that game-ending horn sounds early Sunday evening back at Giant Center, what do you imagine the line will be like of Bears’ skaters awaiting submersion in training room whirlpools? And how about Walton’s voice come next Sunday? I’m guessing the Bears might take next Monday off.

This grind, all of it of course by bus, makes Dmitri Orlov’s commitment to beginning his North American pro hockey career late this winter all the more impressive, no? One wonders if General Manager Doug Yingst didn’t in fact hide the team’s March itinerary from the prospect and his agent during their discussions last month.

Walton told me he couldn’t recall such a slate in all his years in the ‘A.’ Neither could Patriot News Bears’ beat reporter Tim Leone, who’s been covering the league for more than 15 years. Three-game weekends are the norm; occasionally there’ll be four-in-five. But seven in nine? Guys who work in the American League understandably roll their eyes when the word ‘fatigue’ is uttered in association with the NHL’s two games in two nights slate.

More fun with labor on the junior circuit: The Bears have utilized seven goalies thus far on the ’10-11 campaign. Actually dressed eight. They started the season with Braden Holtby and Dany Sabourin, and because of injuries they’ve gone through three of the backstops from the Caps’ ECHL affiliate, the Stingrays (Todd Ford, Shane Owen, Jared DeMichiel). Sabourin’s been on the shelf since early February with a knee injury that required surgery. Semyon Varlamov did a conditioning stint up there. Nolan Schaeffer arrived on loan from Providence just this past weekend.

Things got real interesting the Saturday before last, when Varlamov went down in D.C. and both Holtby and Sabourin were sidelined. The Caps signed and recalled Ford for their game on Long Island. Hershey, which like Washington had a game that night, was left with a single fit goalie at 1:30 Saturday afternoon, facing a 7:00 faceoff. They tapped Bobby Jarosz, securing him on an ATO contract. Jarosz earlier this season was in net in the Central Hockey League for the Arizona Sundogs. The Bears knew him from his stint in Reading with the ECHL Royals.

And had Jarosz been unavailable? According to the Bears, they’d have been forced to ATO a netminder from HPA tenant Lebanon Valley College.

The funniest part about Saturday, February 26, and we can say this since both the Bears and Caps won that night: had Brett Leonhardt still been with the Capitals organization it would have been highly likely that he’d have been summoned to dress as backup for the Bears that night. And you just know Leonhardt Bears sweaters would have been purchased in bulk the following week.

Orlov, 19, collected two assists in his first two games with the Hershey Bears (AHL) this season after signing an amateur tryout contract with Hershey on February 20. Prior to his stint in Hershey, Orlov appeared in 45 games with the Novokuznetsk Metallurg (KHL) this season, registering 12 points (two goals, 10 assists) and 43 penalty minutes.

Orlov, a 5’11, 202-pound defenseman, was Washington’s second-round selection, 55th overall in the 2009 NHL Entry Draft. He helped lead Team Russia to a gold medal at the 2011 World Junior Championships in Buffalo, recording nine points (one goal, eight assists) in seven games and was named to the tournament All-Star team.

With Kugryshev’s help, we asked Orlov about the adjustment he’s confronting coming over to North America well into the hockey season. And he answered us directly about his thoughts on how the AHL stacks up against the KHL. Kugryshev played his junior hockey in Quebec, and so his transition to North America was perhaps a bit less formidable. The two young Russians are living together in Hershey, which helps, and are voracious consumers of the NHL Network. And we also asked Kugryshev to own up to a moment of conspicuous bravado on Facebook in the immediate aftermath of the Russian World Junior team’s gold medal triumph over Canada back in January.

Johansson of course has played precious little four-on-four sudden death hockey on a North American sized ice sheet in his handful of years in professional hockey. In that perilous, pressure-packed moment in his own end Tuesday night, against one of the best teams in the NHL, Johansson simply drew upon the instincts that have served him well as a young pro: centers generally cover low in their own end, and low he went. He was supposed to remain high and pressure Meszaros and try and force the puck out away from the threatening middle of the ice. When you’re young and inexperienced and under pressure understandably you draw upon the habits that you’ve honed successfully. It’s just that in this instance those were the wrong instincts. Johansson finished Tuesday a -2.

It’s Bruce Boudreau’s job to place the rookie in situations offering the greatest likelihood of success for the rookie. Being one half of the second forward unit out for the Capitals in overtime probably wasn’t one of them. And actually, the team’s general manager should place the barely 20-year-old Swede in the situation offering the greatest likelihood of long-term, successful development: in Hershey.

Marcus Johansson, the wager here is, will develop one day into a fine and reliable defensive pivot with decent offensive upside. He’s not that player today, however. He can’t possibly be. And because the Capitals are apprenticing him in the big league they occasionally pay a price for their greed. The Capitals are in desperate need of a veteran playmaking center for their second line. Their failure to secure one last offseason fairly forced Johansson into this season’s lineup. Time will tell about the wisdom of that decision; Tuesday night suggested it was an unwise one.

“Defensemen take [opposing] forwards and forwards take [opposing] defensemen,” a visibly dejected Bruce Boudreau acknowledged of his expectations for his four skaters in overtime. He was not going to offer instruction to his young center prospect last night in a locker room packed with disappointment but rather wait until practice back at the Flyers’ rink Wednesday morning.

Key reads, numerous other high-impact decisions demanded instantaneously, and sundry skill set enhancements are best pursued by first-year North American pros not in the National League but rather the American. The ‘A’ in AHL somewhat stands for “apprentice.” It is there that Johansson should be learning subtle stratagems that often mean the difference between victory and defeat in the big league. Johnasson’s lack of a big league physique would also benefit from competition one level lower; he is especially disadvantaged along the boards in all NHL games but especially in big games like Tuesday’s. And he also ought to work in the minors on improving his 37.5 faceoff percentage.

What stood out to him most about that suffering was the genesis of the Capitals’ losing streak, specifically December 2nd’s game in Dallas. I wrote a file succinctly titled ‘Zebra-Screwed‘ the morning after that loss — in which a John Carlson game-tying tally in the game’s final 10 seconds was waved off, and it was a seminal moment in this Capitals’ season for the general manager.

“That game in Dallas where I felt the referees took the game away from us . . .  I remember telling Bruce [Boudreau], ‘This is how losing streaks start.’  It’s hard for players to react [to that kind of loss]. If they didn’t play well, they pull their socks up and play better the next game. But that was different. You feel like in some ways you were robbed.”

Of that robbery I wrote, “The most egregious and insufferable shortcoming with hockey’s officiating occurs when a zebra makes a judgment call, through a maze of bodies, that undoes late-game heroism. It’s a moment when an official, rather than world-class athlete(s), determines a game. We fans pay good money to see special athletes thrill us, occasionally surmounting enormous obstacle and odds to triumph. Their doing so affords us sports’ most indelible images.”

If McPhee’s right about the extraordinary impact that judgment call in Dallas had on his team — and I think he is — Dan O’Rourke did far more than cost the Capitals a hockey game. He damn near cost a good man [Bruce Boudreau] his job. That was the heart of McPhee’s reflection: an isolated loss due to deficient performance is part and parcel of athletics, from which athletes bounce back in a reasonable amount of time, but the psyche of the elite competitor can’t reconcile as well excellent effort, culminating with heroism, that is overturned by error. Sometimes we hate referees for good reason.

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McPhee called the Winter Classic “maybe the most fun I’ve had as a manager, and maybe the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.”

“It was sort of a ‘Field of Dreams’ thing.”

On the Red Out of Pittsburgh last weekend: “Even on the ride home to Washington on Sunday, I drove my family back, it was Caps’ fans all the way back, at toll booths, the gas stations, restaurants . . . Every time you turned the corner in Pittsburgh someone was wearing a Caps’ jersey. I think the popularity [of the Caps] is unprecedented.”

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The Capitals this season are getting quality contributions from a half dozen rookie performers. The World Juniors in Buffalo (which apparently was annexed by Canada late in 2010) sent this message to Caps’ fans: Ready yourself for another wave of impact youth.

Ron Wilson was mightily impressed by Capitals’ center prospect Evgeny Kuznetsov, and so was McPhee. In fact, McPhee liked an awful lot of what he saw from a bevy of Caps’ prospects in Buffalo over the holidays.

Kuznetsov was “one of the best players [of the WJC], and [Cody] Eakin was the best player on the ice” in the gold medal game, the Caps’ GM said.

“It sure is nice as a manager to go to a tournament and see talent like that. Especially where we’ve been picking [in the Entry Draft]. We’re gonna have another wave of good players coming to the team.” Reporters asked McPhee about the preponderance of centers in the Capitals’ development pipeline. He acknowledged that, but he also pointed out that the transition from center to wing is not a difficult one, whereas most wings cannot effectively move to the pivot. And so we should expect to see one or two young centers make the move. Eakin for instance has blazing speed that could be effective outside. McPhee expects Eakin to go straight to Hershey once his junior season is completed. The Bears are heating up, and Eakin will be a special reinforcement.

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The Americans at these World Juniors played only one poor game, but it was when they could least afford to — in the semifinals against a revenge-minded Canada. Still, they won bronze, earning their first-ever World Juniors medal on home ice and winning consecutive medals in this tournament for the first time ever. The signs of lasting American emergence in international play are everywhere, and the 2011 World Juniors offered additional evidence of it. The Yanks were legitimate gold medal contenders. Favorites, actually.

Think back just to last February and Vancouver, and the near universal sentiment going in that the American Olympic entry, laden with youth and inexperience, was a likely 4th or 5th place finish outfit. The Americans got great goaltending from Ryan Miller, but they also got beyond-their-years play from young rearguards — Erik Johnson especially. That silver medal showing in Vancouver justifiably led to some gold medal game forecasts for the Americans in the Sochi games. These last two World Junior American clubs are likely to feed notable talent to that team. Both John Carlson and Cam Fowler are viable Calder candidates, for instance. We might even see a Californian or two on that Olympic team, and down the road a bit, maybe a Washington young gun who made the trip to Pittsburgh with his father last weekend for the Winter Classic.