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

Camp convened with perhaps only one roster spot genuinely open and available among the top nine forward spots (second line center) (or is it first?). It was pursued by a small assembly of center ice men who came to be known as ‘The Bubble Boys.’  But even with this storyline the drama didn’t build greatly, as Mathieu Perreault emerged early and decisively as the top performer. He led the Caps in scoring during the preseason. And after Sunday night’s camp-concluding exhibition game against Chicago, Bruce Boudreau said of no. 85, “I think our best player all of camp was Perreault. I think he played with energy every night.” On the radio last night, Mike Vogel was similarly impressed: “He’s been consistently good throughout the preseason regardless of which line he’s been on.”

The forward ranks offered this camp its exclusive intrigue, and that was muted drama. On the blueline, the top six were set before camp started, and likewise, the Capitals’ net was set before training camp’s first conditioning whistle blew.

This drama-free state of affairs was by design. In the middle of the offseason the GM overhauled his roster heavily for size and grit and experience up front on the wings, some character and a former captain’s experience and leadership to center the fourth line, and then the ultimate offseason coup — Tomas Vokoun. Offseason changer, that.  Training camp quickly became more a dress rehearsal than an audition.

Camp’s top storylines:

• As important as McPhee’s offseason roster moves were, it was what the GM did at his office keyboard while the wounds of another short postseason were still raw that likely set in motion the business-like tenor of this training camp. At camp’s dawning the Washington Post reported that early in the offseason that Capitals’ players were issued a written warning about changed expectations for fitness for duty come September:

” . . . players received letters early this summer warning them to expect an Albert Haynesworth-like timed fitness test with controlled recovery intervals at the start of camp.’

That was George McPhee the enforcer enforcing a culture change for his hockey club. Overdue, in my opinion. May it be the last time Albert Haynesworth’s name is evoked in connection with the Capitals.

• More on the conditioning/work ethic/maturation front: Ben Raby, writing for the Toronto Star, got captain Ovechkin to concede that his 2010-11 showing wasn’t up to par on a number of fronts. He approached last season looking past its regular season toward the postseason, and sacrificed his conditioning in the process. His owner took note:

“He tried something different,” Caps owner Ted Leonsis said. “He wanted to work his way into shape so that he would peak during the playoffs.”

Indeed, Ovechkin admitted that all year he “just wanted to be ready for the playoffs.

“I was starting, like, in the middle (of the season) to be in shape.”

• Vitally important testimony attesting to the Capitals fall-time fitness arrived at the dawn of training camp, from team strength and conditioning coach Mark Nemish.  “I already know [Ovi's] in shape; I can tell. “We’ve worked several times on the ice and, without a doubt, he’s in the best shape I’ve ever seen him.”

• The kiss or death . . . or well considered wooing?: The Hockey News tabbed the Caps as 2012 Stanley Cup champions.

• The GM sure likes his hockey club. At CapsCon, he told the assembled thousands that this year’s squad reminded him very much of the ’97-’98 club — the one that advanced to the Stanley Cup finals. “It’s going to be a hard team to play against. Maybe not as offensive, but more physical.” Superb coverage of CapsCon from the Examiner’s Michael Hoffman here.

• If the Caps hoped that Vokoun would inspire Michal Neuvirth it appears early on to have worked. Neuvy was especially strong this preseason. There may not be the 60-20 split in games between the two that a lot of folks thought about three weeks ago.

• McPhee also chimed in on realignment, all but stating that 2011-12 would be, mercifully, the final season for the Southeast division. What it’s looking like now: two 15-team conferences with 8- and 7-team divisions within. Apparently a popular plan would see the Capitals reunited with the New York clubs and the Flyers in a division. I say, why go halfway — get the best rivalry in all of hockey, and one of the best in all of sports, rekindled as well. Anyway, when it’s official, OFB I think will host a realignment party in town, where we’ll give away NASCAR posters and coupons for Waffle House. And certainly we’ll have a Gary Bettman pinata.

• Netgate.

• Camp standout: Dmitri Orlov. Still with the team partially because of John Erskine’s rehab, but also because he’s played with poise and impact that belie his years this preseason. Stock seriously on the rise.

• Camp standout, on the air: John Walton. If you haven’t given much thought to following Caps hockey on the radio in recent years, you should now.

• One of the biggest stirs in camp perhaps came with the team in Chicago for a game, and when red, white, and blue old timers returned to Kettler for the organization’s first-ever alumni game. Old timers Alan May and Kevin Kaminski drew blood from dropped gloves. I got a good chuckle from learning that Killer had earned the first-ever Alumni Game’s first-ever first star of the game designation.

• Don’t overlook this sidebar to the new season: the trading of Semyon Varlamov delivered to the Caps Colorado’s first-rounder next June. McPhee really likes the ’12 draft — it’s much stronger than this past June’s, he intimated at CapsCon. You might want to take a look at where Adam Proteau has the ‘Lanche finishing out West this season.

What might this season’s lines look like?

Ovi – Backstrom – Brouwer

Semin – MJ90/Perreault – Knuble

Chimera – Laich – Ward

Hendricks – Halpern – Beagle

Love those third and fourth lines.

Brads, it seemed to us, didn’t come across as a recently departed player with any axe to grind. Instead, he seemed comfortable and content with his new place of employment and sufficiently distanced from D.C. to bring reasonable objectivity to his reflections. In the middle of last season this blog  identified what it considered to be grave issues with the culture of the Washington Capitals organization, and on Tuesday Matt Bradley brought this concern to the fore of his reflections, beginning around the 8:30 mark of the segment. He was specifically asked by the program’s hosts why the Caps have been unable to break through in the playoffs.

• Some of his teammates, Bradley said, “didn’t show up . . . I’ll leave them unnamed.”

• “Our locker room was maybe a little too nonchalant, and guys weren’t disciplined the way they should have been.”

• Brads also called into question the practice habits and culture of his former club — “Not being ready to practice, missing practice with questionable injuries.”

• Alexander Semin, Brads claimed, “could easily be the best player in the league but for whatever reason just doesn’t care . . . You almost get the sense . . . he wants to be back in Russia.”

Our pal Ted Starkey was about 1,500 words into a new chapter for his new book thanks to this eye-opening radio appearance.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“The Atlanta Thrashers were a professional ice hockey team based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. They were members of the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL).”

The entry was subsequently modified. Though perhaps to be modified again — perhaps even today. Because of:

This tweet from Fan590 personality Greg Brady:

Brady added in a subsequent tweet: “Let’s face it. Gary might have needed to keep Coyotes in PHX to free up Winnipeg for Thrashers. Quebec’s not ready in 11-12.”

It's been quite a roller coaster ride for Bruce Boudreau in Washington

The Capitals may or may not have a deficit of leadership on the ice and in the room with this roster, but dogging them most in the initial hours and days of yet another postseason far too early arrived at is an intense debate about their ultimate leader — Bruce Boudreau.

There is anything but consensus on this matter; in fact, it’d be difficult to identify a moment in Capitals’ history when as much high-pitched debate centering on the fate of the coach commanded as much speculation in print space, such a frenzy of pixels on line, and so much oration on the airwaves.

For his critics, Bruce Boudreau is a tale of two seasons — the terrific winning percentage of the regular season campaign juxtaposed by conspicuous struggle in the postseason. Moreover, he’s been bested in the postseason, while guiding favored clubs, by a host of wet-behind-the-ears coaches — John Stevens, Dan Bylsma, and most recently Guy Boucher. General Manager George McPhee on Thursday’s break-up day at Kettler seemed to offer both endorsement of the coach while also acknowledging that no firm decision on his future had been made.

“There’s no difference between a playoff coach and regular season coach. Either you’re a good coach or you’re not. He’s a good coach,” McPhee claimed. To which Yahoo’s Greg Wyshynski replied, “has anyone yet heard from the Capitals why, then, there’s such a difference between their regular-season and postseason success?”

Puck Daddy adds:

“In eliminations against the Pittsburgh Penguins (2009), the Montreal Canadiens (2010) and the Tampa Bay Lightning (2011), Boudreau was outcoached. Bad line changes and too many men on the ice penalties — on a power play, no less — undermined the team against Tampa. He’s been unable to extract the same level of intensity from his players in the postseason as he has the regular season.”

Boudreau’s return for next season, Wyshynski wrote mere minutes after the Capitals’ expulsion from the postseason, “is rightfully in question.” For one of hockey’s most influential voices, Boudreau’s fate in D.C. this spring ought to be dire: “This should be Boudreau’s final game as head coach, because standards need to be higher than this.”

By Friday Jon Press of Japers’ Rink had seen enough of Gabby as well:

“either Bruce Boudreau had the wrong message, or he had the right one and was incapable of getting his players to execute it. Whichever it was, it’s ultimately a poor reflection upon the coach — being an effective communicator and motivator is every bit as important as being an effective tactician and strategist here . . . for whatever reason, he’s never been able to consistently extract from this Caps team a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts when it’s mattered most. It’s time to find someone who can.”

In today’s Boston Globe Kevin Paul Dupont, taking up Washington’s latest springtime collapse and its implications, offers a commendable but brutally frank assessment of how short of success the Capitals have achieved while under Boudreau’s guidance: “Until a team makes it to the conference finals (a.k.a. the Stanley Cup semifinals), its playoff aspirations never really mature beyond “Off Broadway”’ status. Clearly, that cold reality was running through the fingertips of Capitals owner Ted Leonsis when he decided to tickle his computer keyboard immediately after his club’s wipeout Wednesday night at the hands of the Lightning.”

Dupont reminds that Bruins’ GM Peter Chiarelli publicly backed coach Dave Lewis early one offseason only to jettison him 60 days later. And Lewis didn’t get four cracks at postseason play with an elite roster as Boudreau has:

“Something has to change in Washington. It’s just not working when it needs to work the most. Blogger/owner/truthsayer Leonsis has all but written it on the subway walls and tenement halls. And it could be that McPhee will have to send his coach packing, or join him on the subway. For the Cup semis, all they’re hearing each year at the Verizon Center are the sounds of silence. “

Up in Hershey, Bears’ beat reporter Tim Leone, who knows Boudreau perhaps as well as anyone in hockey, defended the coach, stressing the vicissitudes of bounces and inches in the NHL  postseason:

“If Washington wins in overtime in Game 3 for a 3-0 series lead against eventual champion Pittsburgh two years ago, the Caps might already have a Cup in the bank. If Philly’s Jeff Carter gets the puck two inches higher in OT of Game 2 in the first round against Pittsburgh that same year, maybe the Flyers would have won it.

“A coaching change is a reaction way out of proportion to the small margins deciding winning and losing. A dramatic move might immediately feel like it gets you closer to a championship, but in reality it pushes you farther away.”

There are “Ifs” and “buts” that may be used to explain away every misfortune of a close call in a hockey postseason, and in every sport’s postseason for that matter. Ultimately what we have to evaluate are the final results, coldly and dispassionately. The Tampa Bay Lightning didn’t sweep the Capitals out of the playoffs by inches. Their star performers outperformed the Capitals’ stars by leaps and bounds. Michal Neuvirth was good, but Dwayne Roloson was appreciably better. And a real telling discrepancy in this series came from Tampa’s plumbers and muckers — Sean Bergenheim foremost among them — who lept over the boards for every shift and played inspired hockey. The men who wore the Lightning sweater were inspired by their coach. It’s difficult to look at any Capitals’ performance this spring save game 5 against New York and suggest we witnessed inspired hockey players in red and white. And the same could be said of Boudreau’s club when it counted last spring.

Boudreau’s defenders this spring fail to acknowledge that the coach entered this season with a bit of a mandate for the postseason — at least among fans and media. That’s what last spring’s shocking round one dismissal earned, coupled with going one for four in home-ice Game 7s. No one around Washington suggested that if the Caps could merely dust off an 8 seed in round one this spring all would be swell. The Capitals, most believed, needed to make discernible progress. They did not.

It isn’t just that there is a heavy accumulation of poor postseason results — shockingly early, uniformly, and always against lower-seeded teams — that is conspiring strongly against Gabby’s continuation here. It’s how they’ve looked in most of the defeats: tentative and indecisive, frightened at times, even, sloppy, and conspicuously lacking in emotion and drive.

Interestingly, there is probably a good deal of shared sentiment about Boudreau among the firing versus retaining camps this spring. Both sides would probably agree that on the whole, and relative to a majority of his NHL peers, Gabby’s a good coach, of inordinate achievement. Both sides would likely agree, too, that he’s well managed and developed George McPhee’s impressive stable of exceptional young talent. The divergence, I think, arrives at a point not unlike most of us arrived at with Glen Hanlon in the autumn of 2007: another level of accomplishment is needed and appropriate, and there is precious little evidence in this coach’s body of work in Washington that he’s likely to achieve it. Instead, his backers rely on faith.

The past week’s best assessment of the state of the Caps came from our city’s most accomplished and gifted sportswriter, the Post’s Thomas Boswell. Boz was out at break-up day at Kettler on Thursday, and he came away with a clear sense of a deeply troubled Capitals culture.

“At times like this, when a no.1 seed gets swept by a No.5 seed, you line up the firing squad or you line up the excuses. For the second straight year, the Caps went with the excuses . . .

“In a sense, the Caps are trapped by their own culture of decency, self-regard and optimism. They want to give everybody a second, and sometimes a fourth chance, even the coach. They don’t want to act in haste and repent at leisure, even if it means soft players aren’t traded and get to repeat their spring failures. They don’t want to blow up what they’ve built because they believe in sound foundations. But the Caps also flatter themselves that what they have created is a notch better than it actually is. And the Caps hate, hate, hate to admit any evaluation is wrong, until it’s so obvious they can’t deny it.

“Good intentions, good results, then playoff mortification, year after year, followed by the same mantra: There’s nothing wrong. We were just unlucky or injured. Next year: our turn. Keep the sellouts coming.”

Mortification indeed.

More beautiful Boz: “What team reacts to such devastating defeats with equanimity, common sense and a huge sigh of acceptance at life’s unfairness? How estimable. But it drives you nuts.”

OFB back on 106.7 the Fan for game 5 previewing