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.

It’s been a hat trick of extraordinary accomplishments for the radio men of Washington-affiliated hockey this season: Earlier this season the Capitals’ Steve Kolbe called his 1,000th game with the Caps, and the Capitals’ original radio voice, Ron Weber, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as the 2010 Foster Hewitt Memorial Award recipient. JW belongs right with them as an iconic voice bringing our game alive to those not in the arena.

Walton calls for January 27 Bears’ triumph

The winter sports mayor of D.C.

In the spirit of the season, I offer a list of 10 things I’m thankful for while commissioned in the Red Army this fall.

(10) The Moxie of Matt Hendricks. The longshot training camp candidate won a checking line center’s job with solid play and especially an ethos of holding Caps’ opponents accountable for their misdeeds directed at his teammates. Late in preseason Boston’s Greg Campbell took some end-boards liberties with the Capitals’ captain in a game, and in a rematch the next night in Beantown Hendricks signaled that the 2010-11 Caps would skate with a little more snarl and swagger: at the opening draw Hendricks dropped ‘em with Campbell, exacting some much-needed frontier justice for his club.

“He didn’t need to be told,” Bruce Boudreau said of Hendricks’ actions that night. “He just watched the game [Tuesday] night and knew what he had to do. I thought, ‘What a team thing [to do].’ It was great.”

(9) A third-pairing profile of effort and courage: John Erskine. Erskine’s career in D.C. has been inconsistent — there have been indications that he’s improved from journeyman status, and rightfully and reliably earned a regular spot on the team’s third-pairing blueline unit, but also fits where his lack of footspeed and limited skillset have been emblematic of a rearguard corps that lacks depth. This season, however, Erskine’s been relatively consistent, effectively physical, and even authored a pair of highlight-reel scores from the point. And for good measure he’s dropped ‘em when his team has needed him to, and he brought a fanbase to its collective feet with this stunning slow-dance with Atlanta’s Eric Boulton on November 14:

(8) An Opening Night of Old Time Hockey. The Caps had 20 fighting majors in 2009-10. In the third period of their home opener October 9 — a 7-2 trouncing of New Jersey — they met 20 percent of that tally. And even without D.J. King in the lineup much the Caps have shown more than a willingness to play it rough and tumble.

(7) The continued candor of Bruce Boudreau. In the postgame of the Caps’ 4-2 victory over Buffalo on November 17, in which his team held a commanding 3-0 lead and could have potentially built on it with some obvious power play opportunities the officials ignored, Bruce Boudreau told media that the evening’s referees “reffed the score.” In an era of scripted soundbite and formulaic drivel from athletes and coaches alike, Gabby nightly holds court  after games and thoughtfully analyzes the evening’s action. He’s unvarnished. He’s a delight.  And, he also makes some endearing Mercedes Benz commercials.

(6) The no. 2 netminder: an actual no. 1? His play has cooled off a bit from a torrid October, but Michal Neuvirth, pressed into duty by a lingering leg injury to Semyon Varlamov, is by many estimates a co-MVP through the first quarter of the season along with Alexander Semin. He was named October’s Rookie of the Month. When both young goalies are healthy the Caps ought to be the benfeciaries of a spirited competiton for no. 1 come spring.

(5) That ‘other Alex’ is our best Alex this season — where would the Caps be sans Semin? To re-sign or not to re-sign? The first-quarter play of Alexander Semin (14 goals, 12 assists in 22 games) is making it exceedingly difficult for Caps’ fans to imagine a Cup-contending team without him. He’s been a fixture in the top 5 of league scoring since late October, and nine of his 14 goals have come at even strength. Additionally, we’ve seen maturation from him in his own end. Comcast Sportsnet hockey analyst Alan May this fall called Semin the team’s best defensive player.

His presence allows Bruce Boudreau to form a dream line of high octane production for a Caps’ team that finds itself trailing late in games, a factor Semin critics ought to consider as his free agency looms. Inexplicably, and indefensibly, Semin was left off the NHL’s All-Star ballot for fans. There is however a write-in campaign for him on Twitter (#WriteInSemin).

(4) The Hockey Hall of Fame welcomes the original and iconic voice of Capitals hockey, Ron Weber. It’s always great seeing a member of the Capitals’ family enshrined in the Hall, but there was something distinctly uplifting about Weber’s honor. This is what I wrote about the moment: “His calls were iconoclastic in their detail, illuminated by his trademark fluency with all manner of statistical analysis. He voice also bore a familial warmth; indeed, it wasn’t unusual, Weber told us, among the thousands of appreciative letters he received over the course of his career to read of a displaced Washingtonian detailing a night in which clear skies brought his Caps’ calls far up the Eastern seaboard on WTOP’s powerful signal.”

(3) Must-See holiday season TV: HBO’s chronicles the Caps and Pens in the leadup to the 2011 Winter Classic. It was an otherwise non-descript day at Captials’ training camp in September when all media present at Kettler were summoned to a surprise briefing, one announcing the Capitals’ participation in the HBO series ’24/7.’ The Caps — our Caps — a storyline for a highly regarded documentary? Yep. ’24/7′ made a portly New York Jets football coach a household name (except in my household). George McPhee apparently became a big fan of that series and this cable outlet’s craftsmanship with sports documentaries. He pledged “unfettered access” to HBO cameras. Wow. The inaugural episode airs December 15, and the four-part documentary will culminate in early January with an insider’s account of the Winter Classic itself.

(2) Quality depth in net. The Caps have used all three prized young goaltenders early on in 2010-11, and all three have offered evidence backing management’s optimism about them. In the offseason, some in media suggested that the Caps would do well to shop for a pricey veteran backstopper, but relative to other needs (a reliable second line center; a physical, shutdown blueliner), that’s well down the list of priorities, thanks to the play of the kids in pads.

(1) Having a hockey-lover own all of Washington’s winter sports empire. Changes in both the appearance and function of Verizon Center have been swift since Ted Leonsis assumed ownership of the building and its pro sports tenants in the offseason. Foremost among them: it actually feels like a hockey game in there now, even in early autumn. It’s cold! But the formation of Monumental Sports & Entertainment hasn’t altered the owner’s accessibility with fans one bit. I can attest; I’ve heard from him (spiritedly!) with most of constructive criticisms of the team I’ve authored this fall.

Joe Beninati, Rob Weber, & Steve Kolbe - via DCRTV.com

Last night the originating voice of the Washington Capitals, Ron Weber, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as the 2010 Foster Hewitt Memorial Award recipient. If any individual affiliated with the Caps belongs in Hockey’s Hall, it’s Weber. Beginning with the Caps’ inaugural season in 1974, Weber over the course of the following 23 years never missed a single game, regular season or playoffs. Baltimore has its Iron Man, Washington Ron Weber.

It’s impossible to overstate the impact Weber had in forging a durable hockey community here. He was a singular access point for those Washingtonians unable to attend Caps’ games in Landover, Md. For most of the Caps’ first 10 seasons, there simply was no television coverage of the team’s games, certainly nothing approaching today’s October through spring blanketing of the regular season. And Weber seemed to take that special responsibility of being a pool reporter’s eyes on the action for us and make it his broadcast manifesto. He believed in his heart that hockey was the greatest game on the planet, and his role in the broadcast booth was to bring it alive for a community with precious little experience with it.

Did he ever.

His calls were iconoclastic in their detail, illuminated by his trademark fluency with all manner of statistical analysis. He voice also bore a familial warmth; indeed, it wasn’t unusual, Weber told us, among the thousands of appreciative letters he received over the course of his career to read of a displaced Washingtonian detailing a night in which clear skies brought his Caps’ calls far up the Eastern seaboard on WTOP’s powerful signal. Weber was the very first Washington hockey figure interviewed by OFB just weeks into our startup, and during a memorable stroll down Memory Lane with him he told our pucksandbooks that if he could be given three games with which to introduce a Washingtonian to hockey — seated next to a newcomer to our game in Verizon Center over just a week’s worth of action — he was convinced he could make a lifelong hockey fan out of his companion. If your life was enriched by his broadcasts as ours were, you have no doubt about that.

Admin Update: Be sure to read Mike Vogel’s sit down with Ron Weber at the Caps’ site.

Yesterday Weber appeared on Comcast Sportsnet’s ‘Washington Post Live’ to discuss the honor with Ivan Carter. I’m of the opinion that we have not acknowledged Washington’s hockey heritage with anything close to the honor and remembrances it merits, and so appearances like Weber’s on local TV are special. And Comcast Sportsnet additionally announced yesterday that the outlet would be televising, live, all three of the Hershey Bears’ Calder Cup finals games in Texas this week — games 3 through 5, beginning Monday night. That and this Ron Weber interview amount to Comcast giving hockey some royal treatment in the early heat of summer. Good on them.

When the Washington Capitals joined the NHL as an expansion team in 1974, Weber, then the Baltimore Clippers’ play-by-play announcer, was hired to be the voice of the NHL’s newest franchise. Over the next 23 years Weber never missed a regular season or playoff broadcast, talking Capitals fans through 1,936 consecutive games.  On a most personal level, Weber’s was the voice that brought alive hockey in Washington for this Washingtonian, and he graciously accepted my request to be the very first pro hockey figure I interviewed for OFB.

“Ron has been a key contributor to the growth of NHL hockey interest in the D.C. area over his two-plus decades as the original voice of the Capitals,” said Chuck Kaiton, President, NHL Broadcasters’ Association. “He is very worthy of this honour.”

This year’s Hockey Hall of Fame Induction Weekend will take place November 5-8, culminating with the Induction Ceremony on Monday, November 8. The Foster Hewitt Memorial Award is named in honour of the late “Voice of Hockey” in Canada. It was first presented in 1984 by the NHL Broadcasters’ Association in recognition of members of the radio and television industry who have made outstanding contributions to their profession and to the game of hockey.

Postscript: Dan Steinberg has offers a compelling look at the dedication of Weber’s broadcast career with the Capitals in Wednesday’s WaPost.  The online file includes a terrific photo of Weber seated next to a youthful Joe Beninati from 1997.

The Habs last offseason were assembled by Bob Gainey much as a stew is — without regard for presentation and with the hope that all tastes well once the burner is turned off. Almost all season long, they’ve looked like a product befitting the manner in which they were assembled: rag-tag, tossed together with haste and whim, ultimately unsatisfying. They very much backed into the postseason, winners of just four of their final 12 games.

Worth noting: their chef is no longer in the kitchen.

The Capitals, conversely, bear the architecture of a team assembled expertly and with savvy.

A primary focus of attention for media in this series is Jose Theodore. Theodore went 20-0-3 with a 2.58 goals-against and a .922 save percentage after January 13. His 23 straight decisions without a regulation loss are the most in Capitals’ history, and the stretch included his club-record and career-best 10-game winning streak. Theodore was 30-7-7 on the season. Bottom line: If he plays merely reasonably well in this series the Caps win.

The Caps ought to win this series in short order, convincingly. It isn’t just that they were 33 points superior to Montreal during the regular season, but that there is an aura of arrival with these Capitals, one not predicated principally on the President’s Trophy, either. They’ve paid their dues, and then some. They’ve matured. Now more so than ever before this spring feels like the time is ripe for the Caps to strike. Big.

This is the first-ever playoff series between the Caps and Habs, and as such, something for Washington hockey fans to savor. Montreal, like the New York Yankees or Notre Dame football, is royalty in its sport, and no matter their postseason seeding, confronting them with hockey’s Holy Grail at stake is a special occasion. Should the Capitals go on to win Lord Stanley’s Cup this spring defeating Montreal — the winner of more Cups (24) than any other NHL franchise — en route enriches the achievement. Indisputably.

And it’s a showdown whose overdue arrival invites reflection on the remarkable regular season history between these franchises.

The Washington Capitals lost the first 23 games they played against Montreal, and that infamy extended in winless fashion to 0-31-3. The Capitals finally prevailed over the Habs at Capital Centre, on February 19, 1980, by the score of 3-1. Indulge a bit an old man’s reminiscence of the euphoria associated with that remarkable night.

There was no television coverage of that game in D.C. then. This was pre-Home Team Sports. Dad and I followed Ron Weber’s WTOP call in the family dining room while mom made dinner. Victory that night, I recall, made my father beam after dinner. A native of suburban New York, Dad saw his share of Rocket Richard’s Habs torment his Blueshirts throughout his youth in MSG. Dad loved to remind me of the winter sidewalks he needed to shovel of snow for the $7 required to gain a train ticket into the city and entry into MSG to see Richard and the Habs.

Early in my father’s Washington law career, the fledgling Caps became his adopted club, trips to the new arena in Prince George’s County a special father-son indulgence. A year or two after the Caps finally bested Montreal  my father purchased full season tickets for the Capitals. I wonder if that first victory over Montreal was the catalyst?

Anyway, I remember vaguely Ron Weber orating with unprecedented passion in the postgame that breakthrough February night. Really it seemed like a dream. Not yet a teenager I was old enough still to appreciate the aura and awe Montreal held over the sport: they were after all just a few seasons removed from the greatest hockey season an NHL team had ever achieved. Many of those Habs’ heroes were still wearing le bleu, blanc et rouge. Our awful and wholly unrespected Caps had finally done it. I knew heading to bed that night that I’d clip the morning papers’ account of the win.

Why can’t scrapbooks with such clips more easily survive a few decades?

The 139 regular season games without a playoff series between these clubs are the most for any Capitals’ opponent. That streak ends tonight. Normally I’d treat game 1 of a postseason for a strong Capitals’ club a refreshing and welcomed arrival, but not necessarily special. Tonight is special. Tonight history — in the form of our game’s standard bearer — comes calling on Chinatown, to this new outpost imagining itself a sliver of the puck passion that is congenital in Montreal.

There are storylines aplenty with this series — the no. 1 vs. no.2 power play, Jose Theodore’s return to his NHL origins, Montreal, and the teams’ conspicuous competitiveness during four regular season games this season — but I find all of that somewhat sidebar to the novelty that is the arriviste Caps going up against the storied and stately Habs. Maybe it’s a fit of nostalgia borne by the middle aging, but I still see this series as newcomer struggling for respect against regal establishment.

I would strongly recommend that Capitals’ fans take the opportunity that is this series to immerse themselves in the lore that is Le Hockey Club de Montreal. Word arrived late Wednesday that, for the first time since the rebuilt Caps commenced a postseason, there wasn’t room enough in Verizon Center’s press box to accommodate all media requests for a first round series. That is undoubtedly attributable to the teeming traveling media that cover the Habs. One or two members of the Montreal media who’ll be in the Phone Booth tonight covered the early gory days between these clubs.

They’ll experience a markedly different atmosphere from Landover, don’t you think?

For what it’s worth, my old man tonight will be watching the game with his retired feet up before his shore home’s 46-inch flatscreen.

Caps in five.

We enjoyed two giants of hockey broadcasting sharing stories and laughs while celebrating the here and now of the best run organization in hockey.

We hope you do, too.

Weber’s voice was synonymous with Capitals’ hockey in this region even well into the 1980s; certainly for much of this organization’s first 10 years Weber was the only broadcast access point for hockey fans, until Home Team Sports, the predecessor regional sports television outlet to Comcast, formed in 1984 and began broadcasting home games on local cable TV. If anyone can appreciate where the Caps are today relative to where they were back at the start, it’s Ron Weber.

Saturday night I asked Weber: Back in the day, could you have ever imagined demand here for hockey such that the team would sell out 50 straight games at home?

“You’ll be surprised when I say yes,” Weber told me.

“I just thought that if the product was good enough . . . I guess if it surprises me at all it’s because we’re in the teeth of a recession. So that may suggest yes, it’s a little surprising.

“Ted Leonsis is the most popular owner of any sports team I’ve ever known,” Weber added. “You’ve got to have the winning, to be sure. But having said that, it also has to be the ‘In thing’ to do, and right now the Caps are the ‘In thing’ team in town right now.”

Another large-looming figure from the past in the rink last night was former Caps’ defenseman Calle Johansson, holder of the record for the most number of games played in a Caps’ sweater, 983. Johansson, who lives back home in Sweden, is only able to return to Washington, he told me, at most two times a year. But the Capitals’ success has made them a darling of hockey-mad Sweden, Johansson said.

“Since they’re doing so well now I get to see maybe three or four games a month [back in Sweden],” the great no. 6 said.

How excited are Swedes about Nicklas Backstrom?, I asked.

“It’s unbelievable. The Capitals have never been a fan favorite in Sweden before, but now it’s Washington all over the place. Detroit used to be the favorite team with all the Swedes on it, but now Washington has taken over big-time.”

Johansson of course was a big part of the Capitals’ magical run to the Stanley Cup finals in 1998, and nascent Verizon Center then was a fun joint to watch hockey in, but nothing like it is now. I asked Johansson if he ever could have imagined an atmosphere like the one he was immersed in Saturday night.

“No, never. You know it’s funny you mention that, because I asked a friend of mine when I came here [for the celebration], ‘How many people for the game here tonight?’, and he was like, ‘What, are you kidding? It’s a sellout again.’

“I didn’t know it was going to be a sellout every night. I knew they had some sellouts, but not every night. It’s great. I am so happy for the team.”

Besides bringing back VIPs from the past the Capitals on Saturday night also brought back a sampling of hockey sweaters worn from every era in franchise history, and they were wonderfully and most colorfully displayed on the first-level concourse. Authentic game-worns that bore beautiful battered evidence of wars fought by Washington hockey from the very beginning.

Back into the ’80s we were again on Sunday in Verizon Center.

Craig Laughlin had a goal and two assists in that record-establishing game in ’84, Weber additionally pointed out.

I conducted a survey of print, broadcast, and new media before Sunday’s game to pulse sentiment on just how big a deal this winning streak is. I mean, should we be stopping the electronic presses over it? What was its importance in a relative and big-picture sense — does it mean as much to the players and coaches as it does to fans?, I asked press to speculate. It’d been conspicuously downplayed by the head coach all week; referenced regularly by the media covering the team; emerged as a point of lavish civic pride on 106.7 The Fan; and swelled the price of tickets for games this week on outlets like Craig’s List and Stub Hub.

I received interesting and thoughtful replies:

• In the context of what the Caps want to do this season — namely, win a Stanley Cup — no, the streak isn’t that big a deal, one writer offered;

• It sure is a big deal to Ovi, said another writer — he wants to be no. 1 at everything.

• I guarantee you Bruce Boudreau is talking to his team about matching the all-time best winning streak down there in the locker room at this very moment, offered one broadcaster.

• Ovi loves to win, offered another broadcaster, and now that he’s in a leadership role he will make this a big deal to his teammates if it already isn’t one for them.

• Still another broadcaster termed the current streak “huge” to the players and the organization as a whole. Every blogger I spoke to believed this streak to be a top storyline on the season.

I didn’t need to survey Ron Weber; the aged scoresheet in his hand told me all I felt I needed to know about his thoughts on the significance of this streak — as did his presence on Washington’s most prominent news and sports radio outlet.

From this blogger’s perspective, a streak such as this would be enormous for this city at any moment in time, but it seems especially special and endearing and chest-thumping-worthy relative to the sour and dour that characterizes so much of the rest of our professional sports landscape here. Washington really needs this wonderful winning. It’s been a long time since a big-four-sport team here could boast being this juggernaut good. And the fact that it’s the hockey team that is the studly story is a distinctive source of pride for the region’s puckheads, all too accustomed to being regarded as the red-headed stepchildren of sports fans about the region. Bask in it we will as long as this great ride races forward.

A false concern, though: the Caps are “peaking too early” in the season. There was nothing about the team’s play this past weekend, against Southeast division opponents, that suggested to Bruce Boudreau anything related to his club approaching peak performance. His players know it, too.

It is wrong, too, to look past this moment and wish instead that the playoffs were already upon us. This is history; it demands our savoring it, in a detailed fashion like a Ron Weber does, so that a following generation of hockey fans can be told about it. Moreover the hockey season has a calendar that cannot be shortcut. A Stanley Cup is cherished as it is by virtue of the long and arduous path required to claim it.  These days, we in HockeyWashington just aren’t experiencing much ardor.

Winning and HockeyWashington are now synonymous. Spend a fair portion of your Monday meditating upon that.

Ahead looms a stunningly mediocre Boston team, Zdeno Chara’s towering form virtually alone in standing between the Caps and their all-time greatest win streak. I find myself particularly in synch with the sentiment that this winning streak has become something of a personal mission for the new captain. It’s oddly interesting, isn’t it, that this historic streak has occurred less than a month into his leadership reign? Coincidence? Since Ovechkin was named captain on January 5 the Caps have won 13 of 14 games.

I wonder what sort of TV rating’s Tuesday’s game in Boston will draw for Comcast, with all-time history on the line. And I wonder as well what sort of drive and determination we’ll see from the captain that night. About the same as we saw in yesterday’s final 10 minutes, with the outcome in doubt, I think.

Ron Weber is a walking library of Capitals’ history. If this season ends in exceptionally special fashion, really spectacularly like in the stuff of dreams, and on home ice, I will want very much to be seated next to him in the press box that night, a fellow traveler with this team since day one. As the clock draws down to zero I will turn and look at the man whose voice brought Capitals’ hockey alive in my life back during the years when there was no television coverage of hockey here to be found, and ask him, “Now this is a two-point night, isn’t it?”

*****

Sunday evening email from the Hershey Bears: “We’re only about $400 short of $3,000 [needed for Jason Hartle] after our games here this weekend.” I want to send a very personal thank you out to two early Red Army action-takers in this matter, HC Young, of section 115, who was the first Caps’ fan on Sunday to relay to us a generous contribution for Jason Hartle’s cause, and Heather, an OFB follower on Twitter in New Jersey, who also chipped in generously. We’ve got two more home games this week to raise money for Jason, and we’ll come to your seat to retrieve every dollar.