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.

Are you gonna try to pick up the Caps as an Eastern Conference team at all?

Yeah, I’ve kind of followed them a little more, being in Washington now. And when I’m up there–hopefully when I’m up there, if I’m up there–I’ll get to go catch a couple games. Because they’re one of the fastest teams out there. It’s exciting to watch.

The only point of mockery is that Detwiler has a blue Crosby jersey; at least he has the Ovechkin jersey to balance it out.  Be sure to read the D.C. Sports Bog for more on Detwiler’s favorite players, old-school hats, and thoughts on fans who put their own names on the backs of jerseys.

Strange, isn’t it, that every season, right before the All-Star game, a few stars suddenly pull groins or tweak knees or develop some other unknown “upper-body injury” (Loose eyelash? Pimple? Belly-button lint
accumulation?)  Medical researchers really need to explore this
phenomenon, known as AllStaritis.

No, I’m not talking about
Sidney Crosby, who may pull out of the game.  Crosby wants to go, but
is being talked out of it by doctors and Penguins management.

Of course it’s not Crosby who is making the decision; it’s the team who are the bad guys and who are saying he shouldn’t go.  Here’s what CBC Sports reported:

Team officials had said on Wednesday that Crosby would play despite a left knee injury suffered in a Jan. 14 game.

What say you now, Duthie?

But this isn’t about Crosby.  Duthie’s real aim is to slam, among others, Nicklas Backstrom for bailing at the last minute:

But it is the last minute scratches which are a major headache for the
league.  There is an unwritten rule from the NHL that if you pull out
of All-Star Weekend, you better miss at least the game before the
All-Star break, and the first game after it.   Of course, this is
impossible to enforce…Washington sophomore Nicklas Backstrom looked fine against Ottawa Tuesday night, but he’s pulled out too.

And how is that enforced, exactly?  Are the All-Star police going to show up and nab Backstrom?  What’s his punishment- watching 24 straight hours of Carrot Top?  Eating Spam?  Getting his hair cut in the U.S.?  Sheesh.  Backstrom’s official statement was fair:

“This year I felt like it made more sense for me to give someone else
that opportunity and use this time to rest and prepare for the second
half of the season with the Washington Capitals.”

Doesn’t that go along with Duthie’s point, that the ASG is a tool to market the players?  Backstrom’s replacement, David Perron of the Blues, is an up-and-comer who leads his team in assists.  He was also in last year’s YoungStars game, and his addition to the roster is certainly a valid one.  So what’s the problem if one player doesn’t go, and another one goes in his place?  Give Backstrom a break- like Crosby, he deserves one too.

Update, 1/23/09: Looks like Gary Bettman has, in fact, put his tiny foot down and is penalizing players who bailed- which is why the Canadian Diving Team Captain is now in Montreal for the weekend.  IwoCPO has a good perspective on the issue.

For those of you watching on TV, you can always print out this post and yell at the others in the comments. Consider the comments to this post an Open Thread, as requested, to share your joy or vent your frustration during tonight’s proceedings.

It is a little surprising, however, that these stats belong to a netminder earning slightly more than eight hundred thousand dollars in salary, less than double that of Tyler Sloan, and who is named Brent Johnson. You can remain philosophical and skeptical about BJ’s emergence in the first month of the Capitals’ season, and think his a Cinderella story with midnight at the near — how could a largely backup backstopper better a nearly $5 million dollar, former Vezina and league MVP winner? — or you can take BJ at his preseason word, and acknowledge that this was part of his plan for 2008-09. 

What I like best about Johnny’s story this season — admittedly in just its prologue — is that he fairly forecasted it, telling media this past summer, not long after the Capitals had signed free agent Jose Theodore, that he thought he could compete for the no. 1 job in net. Bold talk from a backstop who hadn’t known sustained starter status in the league in fully six seasons.

And yet, BJ’s play shouldn’t be all that surprising in light of the conditions he confronted this fall. Had the Caps been successful in resigning Cristobal Huet in the summer, it would have again been crystal clear what Johnson’s role would have been this season: backup again, as he’s always been in his career with the Caps. But the Caps were left a jilted bride at the free agency altar by team Huet, seized upon a controversial plan B in inking the erratic Theodore, and Johnson prepared himself for 2008-09 accordingly.

Starting and expensive NHL goaltenders occasionally get hurt and give way to backups who over-perform or simply make the best of the unexpected situation, infrequently but occasionally leading to goalie controversies. But that obviously is not what has happened between the pipes in D.C. this fall. It’s a startling reversal of fortune for “Johnny” insomuch as just last spring he was relegated to third in the Capitals’ netminding rotation behind Cristobal Huet and Olie Kolzig. Often he couldn’t even get practice ice during the team’s stretch run to the Southeast title.    

This morning, his stats suggest that Johnny is the sixth-best goalie in the NHL right now. It’s about time we got to know a little more about the new no. 1 in Washington.

Brent Johnson was drafted 129th overall by the Colorado Avalanche in 1995. He is a big goalie — 6 ’3, a tad over 200 pounds. He broke into the league in 1998-99, getting six games that season with the St. Louis Blues. After an American League apprenticeship with Worcester, he became a full-time big-leaguer in 2000-01. He went 19-9-2 in 31 games with St. Louis that season. He went 34-20-4 in 58 games with the Blues in ’01-02. From 2000-03 he boasted a pretty stellar slate of goals-against averages: 2.17, 2.18, 2.47. His save percentage all three of those seasons was at .900 or better. In 232 career NHL games he has a .903 save percentage and a 2.60 goals-against. Consider, though, that 56 of those games were with the very rebuilding Washington Capitals of 2005-07.

He’s only appeared in the NHL postseason twice (with St. Louis), and while his record in 12 games then is an uninspiring 5-6, his goals-against is a gaudy 1.84. He suffers from a league-wide reputation as a career backup, but at age 31, about a year younger than Theodore, he’s far from washed up. What he hasn’t had the past six seasons is a legit opportunity to compete for a no. 1 job. This fall that appears to have changed.   

“Johnny” is the grandson of NHL Hall of Famer Sid Abel, and the son of NHL goalie Bob Johnson. He married a Burke, Va., girl named Erica in 2007. He’s embraced this region and its pro hockey team, serving as a reliable backup here and, just as importantly, forging strong relationships with those paid like, and anointed, his betters at his position.

In sports the backup at key positions often earns the home crowd’s sympathy and underdog urgings. This fall Brent Johnson is doing that, but he might also be saving a season.