The Governors’ vote was a landslide 26-4. We don’t quite know who the dissenters were (we have educated guesses), but we’re confident our guy wasn’t among them. To Ted Leonsis (and Dick Patrick), the OFB team says, from the bottom of our collective hockey heart, Thank you! With your vote you helped make Washington a better hockey town.

We are keenly aware that so small number of hockey fans in this region have no attachment to the Capitals’ Patrick affiliation of the past. And yet many of those same fans have stepped into Verizon Center on the nights of visits from the Flyers and Penguins and Rangers and felt, acutely, the different atmosphere. Ready yourselves for an entire season of it. And God willing, another generation of one of the fiercest rivalry atmospheres in all of professional sports. Our blogging team reflects individually on the moment:

Tuesday Puck Daddy identified the Caps as "winners" in the NHL's "radical realignment"

Empty Maybe: I suppose it’s odd to be so excited to see more of something you really don’t like — in this case, however, it seems perfectly natural.

I do not like the following teams: the Flyers, the Penguins, the Rangers, the Devils and the Islanders. And I’m going to be seeing a lot more of them. And not just in the regular season but in the playoffs, where true hockey hatred is forged and purified.

I get tense during the playoffs because I’m a Caps fan, and as such I know there are no sure things, no ‘easy’ match-ups. During a series against the Penguins or Flyers, however, I become positively mental. Blood-pressure raising-type mental. “Buy flowers and make reservations for a nice apologetic dinner pre-emptively” type mental.

And now I’m going to get that worked up more often.

I’m glad that the plan includes a home-and-home with every team in the league, and I’m surprised that such a radical re-shifting happened so quickly, but most of all I’m bracing myself for the playoffs. Gleefully.

Gary: I could not be more excited about the announced realignment. It’s a welcomed homecoming. More recent Caps fans probably don’t think twice about the New York Islanders. Yes they’ve been horrible for a number of years now — in no small part to ‘Genius’ Milbury — but I still hate them. Why? The playoffs in the ’80s. Similar feelings for the Penguins. Why?  Playoffs.

This realignment brings us back to our close neighbors. Short and frequent trips to the hated lands in Pennsylvania and New York.  Playoff triumphs and failures intensify with repetition with divisional playoffs. Those intense feelings carry over to regular season games.  One never really felt that with games against Atlanta or Florida.

Now the NHL needs to complete this realignment properly with the four conference names. They already know how to spell them and where they should be.

Patrick. Adams. Norris. Smythe.

Elisabeth Meinecke: One of the themes which emerged at last Thursday’s Caps-Pens battle from journalists both paid and unpaid to watch hockey games was that more games should be like the one developing below us that night: two teams that had a solid history of disliking each other elevating their level of play. Ken Dryden once said that by the time you retire, you are grateful for a good opponent, because they have only forced you to play your best. With the Caps’ new conference opponents, they’re going to be playing their best a lot more frequently.

DC SportsChick: Admittedly, I’ve only been a fan since the Southeast Division alignment, but this is a great development. It’s really hard to get excited about games with Tampa. Now, playing New York or Philly is a different story. Those are great cities to visit for an away game, and the rivalry is intense. That’s something you don’t see with Florida or Winnipeg. The realignment bring much-needed enthusiasm and excitement to the NHL.

Mike Rucki: Getting an extra home game each season against Philly, Pittsburgh, New Jersey, and the New York Rangers is a boon to both fans and owners alike. More intensity in the arena, more fans in the seats, more Ted-pleasing sold-out games. It also makes sense to keep Carolina in the division while jettisoning the Florida teams; the ‘Canes and Caps have developed a healthy dislike for each other over the years.

But perhaps most exciting is that the Capitals will have a better chance to judge their postseason chances during the regular season. With more intense play during the year, the Caps will no longer be able to finesse themselves to a division title. Now the Caps will have to succeed against bitter, physical rivals all season, and therefore should be better prepared for the inevitable postseason shift toward bruising, grind-it-out confrontations. It may be a somewhat painful transition at first, but it will improve the Capitals’ chances for playoff success by forcing the team to build the right roster — and the right attitude — to flourish in May and June.

pucksandbooks: I’m not sure I can identify a moment of greater pride being affiliated with this blog. At our inception we planted the flag of Patrick Division Reunification in the e-ground. We listened attentively to all dissent (“Atlanta’s a Top 10 market — the Thrash aren’t going anywhere!”), but ours was a position of principle and passion. So maybe this moment ought to be instructive: if you love a sport dearly, and believe rigorous reform imperative for its overall health, champion it — spiritedly, with unwavering resolve. The fight for reform may take years, but when it arrives, it’s oh so sweet — and the sweeter for the duration of the battle waged.

It’s seldom trumpeted, but hatred is part of the plasma of our sport, and the Washington Capitals have known no hatred quite like that which boiled over in the Patrick division years. And now it’s back. Seemingly miraculously!

I can’t help but think that the genesis for this amazing moment might just date back to New Years weekend, in Pittsburgh, when the Red Army made so spirited a showing at Heinz Field. Capitals’ officials forecasted 20,000 in Red marking the pilgrimage; instead, the figure was closer to 30,000, and the Army, with all of hockey watching, made the national anthem theirs and were never silenced thereafter. How could anyone have left that stadium and that atmosphere and not wondered: what if these two teams, with their iconic stars, could battle again for division titles, and in divisional playoffs?

It’s true: Chinatown today is transformed on hockey nights. It is ablaze in Red. As a Washington native I walk among the throng and have yet to grow accustomed to the spectacle, even years later. But it’s about to be transformed again. What lies ahead with Patrick Division 2.0 is the formation of elite hockey culture in a fledgling hockey town. Redskins, beware.

Still, this fall we don’t know what we most need to about this hockey club — and necessarily we can’t: How much heart, courage, confidence, and history-defying swagger will it possess next spring, when the ghosts of Washington Capitals playoffs past will want to haunt again?

So what’s to preview? What we all want to know in October 2011 is what the collective state of our hockey hearts will be next spring. We all want to know that roster adjustments and hard offseason training and finally, at long last, an exasperation with failure has settled in, and in the aggregate these factors are driving the Capitals toward a more glorious fate — one befitting their other-worldly skill, one quashing four consecutive sour endings to spring. But we can’t know that right now. So instead, we saddle up for another long season (but likely a final season of Southeast division hockey!), hoping for better things on the power play, more goals, a returned-to-form Ovi, elite goaltending, good health.

And also this: night-in, night-out character and commitment, regular occurring 60-minute efforts, pride for the crest, an identity of hard work and an earned reputation for being tough to play against. Achieving that, we in the Red Nation could pretty well allow the chips to fall where they may.

When I wonder about the fate of this year’s Washington Capitals I find myself asking questions, identifying about 10 big-picture, perhaps defining queries, the answers to which I believe will determine just how far this team will go next spring.

(1) To what extent will the Capitals successfully implement a “hybrid” system relative to the preceding two seasons, one that better utilizes the prodigious skill sets of the team’s elite talents while also bringing more lunch pail ethos and thump and snarl for the season of ugly hockey (spring)? To what extent will there be “player buy-in” for this new system, and to what extent will the team adhere to it within the cauldron of high-pressure playoff puck?

(2) Will readily identifiable leadership develop under Alexander Ovechkin — on the ice and off? There are many superstar talents in many professional sports ill-suited to roles of extraordinary leadership. In his seventh NHL season Ovechkin not only has to recapture the game-breaking production he lost last season but he must embrace the responsibilities that come with wearing the ‘C’ in his sport, and inspire his teammates in the process. They already respect him; they already acknowledge his stature in the sport. Beginning this season, Alexander Ovechkin must look the part of mature warrior, and the Capitals must look like Alexander Ovechkin’s hockey team.

(3) How big a statistical rebound will we see from Ovi? His 65 goals in 2007-08 seem an outlier, highly unlikely to be replicated ever again, but last season’s 32, relative to his talent, seem even more aberrational. In better shape, and healthier, and a lead part on an improved power play, it’s hard to imagine he doesn’t significantly improve over last season’s numbers. But by how much?

(4) Will power be restored to the power play? It was inexplicably pedestrian (16th, 17.5 percent) last season. When it slumps this team’s extra-man unit still shouldn’t fall outside of the top 10. Roman Hamrlik, a healthy Dennis Wideman and a healthy Mike Green, and a more experienced John Carlson ought to deliver a big jolt from the point. And will that bolstered blueline allow for Ovechkin to be moved back to the half-wall, where he’s clearly done more damage on the PP in his career?

(5) Will Tomas Vokoun’s longstanding regular season excellence (career .917 save pct; 2.56 goals-against) translate to the postseason, for which he has but two series’ experience (11 games total) back some years with Nashville? It’s perhaps the lone area of uncertainty with this enormous and hungry talent, who apparently turned down better offers in July to try and win a Cup in D.C. this season. His postseason numbers (.922 and 2.47) are actually stronger than his regular season ones, but he went 3-8 in those 11 games.

(6) Who will reliably win faceoffs here this year? The Capitals late last season and in the offseason bid goodbye to two of the better draw men in the entire league in Dave Steckel (62 percent in ’10-11) and Boyd Gordon (58 percent). Both Marcus Johansson and Mathieu Perreault are notably inexperienced in the art. Jeff Halpern (56 percent) should help. Two quality draw-takers need to emerge, and it would be helpful if one skated in the top 6.

(7) Is there a realm of more mature and more reliable excellence that Alexander Semin will display in what is clearly the most important year of his NHL career? He is the longest-tenured Capital today; if he fails to make improvements with respect to discipline (offensive zone and generally ill-timed penalties) and emerging as a productive scorer when the team needs it most, this is likely his last season in D.C.

(8) Much as the Capitals’ core roster has experienced growing pains in its path toward legitimate contention, so too has Head Coach Bruce Boudreau. Put bluntly: he’s underwhelmed a lot of observers with his handling of the Capitals’ recent postseasons, and in fact in the judgment of many been out-coached by less experienced bench bosses of lower-seeded clubs. This season Bruce Boudreau, too, needs to earn new regard when it matters most. Will he mature and improve as he expects his core skaters to?

(9) This hockey club’s conditioning was a hot topic during the offseason. Will this Capitals club look physically strong generally, and most especially in third periods?

(10) Don’t overlook the impact of an NBA lockout/lost season on Verizon Center especially, long a home, due to its heavy use, to one of the league’s poorer ice sheets. If there’s no NBA hoops, just how good can this ice sheet become — for a hockey team boasting many exceptional skaters and assembled to contest a fast-paced game?

Down in the basement of the Verizon Center, right where the visiting team files out through the tunnel onto the visitors’ bench, stands someone you probably don’t want to mess with.

Shawn Jewell has been a security guard at the Verizon Center for the Capitals since the building opened, and he spent the 5 years prior working at the Capitals’ old home, Capital Centre. He was a hockey fan growing up and now witnesses the game literally as up close and personal as it gets.

Shawn says he’s able to watch about 60-85 percent of the games, depending on the team the Capitals are playing. Major rivalry games, as expected, leave less time for puck observation. People around there know not to mess with Shawn (especially the fans that try to steal hockey sticks or use language). He’ll give troublemakers a look, then a discussion, and if that doesn’t suffice, it’s in their best interest if they leave the game.

But journalists and other teams also know Shawn for a very different talent:  his cooking ability. One of his signature items are truffles, which he makes in a variety of flavors (from banana to mint) and brings to games.

“I’m not very good on desserts, and truffles were easy, and then I just experimented,” Shawn says.

Despite his claim of not being ‘very good’ at desserts, Shawn’s cooking (including the truffles) has earned the praise of even his home team’s rivals. In fact, one coach for the former Atlanta Thrashers liked one of Shawn’s meals so much that he gave it a shoutout during a postgame interview.

Shawn said he’ll often invite friends over for dinner to try new recipes. Two of Shawn’s coworkers from many years ago are the most regular attendees.

“They tell me, when I’m cooking, they will eat breakfast, and they won’t eat lunch,” Shawn says.

In fact, Shawn is now putting together a cookbook with a working title of The First Date.

“It’s the meal the guy cooks for the girl on the first date,” Shawn explains of the recipes in the book. “It’s hard for guys to make that meal for the girl.”

Shawn says several of his friends are cooks, and one relative is a professional chef. Shawn learned to cook from his mother – a more meat and potatoes kind of cook, he says.

Shawn says his family wasn’t particularly phased when he got the job that allowed him to brush shoulders with visiting stars and Caps alumni. Shawn even remembers Olie Kolzig’s first game at Verizon Center not as a Capital, but as a member of the visiting team.

“Kolzig spent 17 years on that side, came out of here, was super nervous the first time, he told the guys, ‘You guys don’t understand. This is the first time I’ve ever come out into this building out of this side,’” Shawn recalls.

Photo courtesy of Leigh Paterson/CTV

The visiting team’s locker room at the Verizon Center is a dull one- gray, boring, and otherwise uninviting. However, it was recently transformed into temporary quarters for the Dalai Lama’s visit, according to CTV Washington:

And while His Holiness addressed the masses, touching on everything from marriage advice to violence in the 21st century, Canadian designer Kevin Fitzsimons was working behind the scenes nearby.

“This is the NHL players’ locker room. This is what I was given for His Holiness’s residences,” Fitzsimons said as he pointed to a “before” photo of the cement-grey room. “So I had to do a living room, dining room, a room for his monks, a bathroom. He eats here, rests here, has private meetings here.”

The Dalai Lama was in Washington to perform an important Buddhist ritual, a complex 10-day ceremony called the Kalachakra, most of which takes place at the Verizon Center, an arena usually used for hockey games and rock concerts. Fitzsimons, charged with transforming the space into His Holiness’s private daytime quarters, had just 30 hours to do the job.

“We put in walls, crown molding, lights, wainscoting, carpet,” he said. “We put in everything you can imagine.”

Fitzsimons also noted that “it smelled like sweat when we first got in there,” which is the understatement of the year. Anyone who’s been in or near a hockey locker room knows that pungent aroma well. Still, it’s an amazing feat to turn an institutional, smelly room into a haven for His Holiness in such a short amount of time.

And when he does, you ought to nod your head in acknowledgment and then tell him the story of April 23, 2011. Tell your antagonist that with about six minutes to go in the first period of game 5 against the New York Rangers then, with the Capitals clinging to a 1-0 lead in an elimination game, Mike Green, the claimant to two significant head injuries in the season’s second half, ones that robbed him of duty for 26 of the Capitals’ final 28 regular season games, instinctively slid down on the ice in the slot in front of his goaltender to block a Matt Gilroy slapshot.

With his skull.

What followed were moments of nauseating uncertainty, and the afternoon’s singular silence among the 18,000 in Verizon Center was testament to it. The NBC telecast was able to pinpoint multiple screws being dislodged from Green’s helmet as he lay stricken on the ice. Fortunately, he was up and off the ice on his own in reasonably short order, and ultimately returned to his teammates on the bench, though not for additional playing time. Bruce Boudreau noted in the postgame that had his team lost more rearguards or had circumstances otherwise dictated, he could and would have used Green. Still, Boudreau said in a much needed moment of light-heartedness, “I wish he’d get the magnets out of his helmet.”

The most predictable news in the postgame of yesterday’s 3-1 series-ending triumph over the Rangers was word of Mike Green being awarded the hardhat for his stunningly selfless commitment. The Stanley Cup playoffs boast a rich legacy of moments of harrowing sacrifice like Greener’s yesterday. Sports’ ultimate prize requires it. In a few weeks’ time we may look back on Saturday and identify it as a turning moment in the underwhelming legacy of this franchise in spring.

For Capitals’ fans, Green’s unfathomable courage ought to go a long way to absolving both this individual player’s perceived springtime shortcomings but also those of his team as well. Yesterday afternoon a very special new chapter in the Capitals’ playoff legacy was written, and it truly ought to recast the overall narrative. Tell your antagonists when next they vex you with past scoreboard failings of spring that this color and crest you support is distinctive, and eminently worthy of ardent patronage. Mike Green made it so yesterday.

* * * * *

Yesterday represented a landmark moment for the core who wear this crest. For the first time in the Era of Ovechkin, a Capitals’ team won a playoff series in fewer than seven games. As a franchise the Caps hadn’t won a playoff series in fewer than seven games in the 21st century — you have to go all the way back to the great run of ’98 to find one.

It’s almost an imperative for a team with Glory aspirations to make reasonably efficient work of their first-round opponent. The rigor of the NHL postseason exacts too much a toll to make seven-game stops a habit series after series. In addition to Green’s scare yesterday the Capitals briefly lost the services of Jason Arnott. During the second intermission media voice after media shared with me the conviction that the ensuing 20 minutes needed to be the series’ last. Almost certainly we know only a fraction of the Capitals’ full tally of significant physical ailments this spring. The Philadelphia Flyers later today may begin wondering what a healthy Chris Pronger might have meant in their series with the Sabres. Anyway, both psychologically and physically this pause in play is of paramount importance to this hockey club.

* * * * *

Rather regularly OFB readers share with us poignant reflection. “Now have a positive playoff memory on the Saturday before Easter. (I remember when history was made),” one noted in comment last night.

* * * * *

Yesterday’s outcome was every bit as important for Washington’s hockey fans as it was for Capitals’ players. It was important for our town. To state the obvious, this hockey club is the only winning game in town. The Era of Ovechkin was moving along and progressing largely as it was forecast to when it hit a devastating speedbump last April. That failure last spring ushered in an identity crisis on the ice but it also — and this has been little remarked upon I think — eroded a bit of the optimism that fans new and old here had harbored with Ovi’s arrival. I really believe that that masterful March trade deadline work by George McPhee impacted the fanbase as much as his team.

Another indelible image from Saturday: with about 3 minutes remaining and the outcome certain, in-house cameras panned in on owner Leonsis in his box standing beside his son Zach, both outfitted in red Capitals’ sweaters. The owner recognized the moment and blew a kiss out to the madly devoted, who responded with fresh frenzy. To state the obvious, you won’t find that happening any time soon out at FedEx Field.

Comcast Sportsnet’s Jill Sorenson last night told me that on her route into Chinatown yesterday she found herself in a caravan of cacophonous support for the Caps. Car horns, she reported, were made into a melodic symphony of ‘C-A-P-S Caps!Caps!Caps!,’ with drivers with rolled down windows shouting the chant as accompaniment. We are louder also on our streetways, you see.

I began sensing something special enveloping our community with this team even before Jason Chimera took Manhattan on Wednesday night. The front pages of our newspapers were profiling hockey and chronicling it with uplifting photojournalism. Radio programs in their two- or three-hour entirety are being devoted to the Caps this spring (thank you, Danny Rouhier and 106.7). I’ve even shared my sense that by virtue of the breadth and passion of enlarged media here there is a swelling of civic pride for our Caps that outpaces — out-shrieks in its car horn frenzy — the great run of ’98.

“Washington is a hockey town,” Sorenson told me last night. She’s right, and we deserve a celebration of it with hockey in May.

Games like Monday’s against Toronto lend credence to the view that the Capitals to some degree are struggling this regular season with finding an urgency of the moment. And the NHL regular season is set up to do just that. The moreso in the Southeast. I’ve pondered the possibility of this December 23, the Capitals’ opening salvo versus the Pens — a matchup that could pit nos. 1 versus 2 in the entire league — bringing a bit of renewed focus to our team. In essence, it could serve as a de facto Opening Night in a quest for meaningful hockey. HBO cameras are newly positioned to add significance to the Capitals’ pre-2011 labor.

Part of the problem is that there is no conceivable scenario by which the Caps fail to qualify for the postseason. Two teams from the Southeast look like likely postseason participants; the Caps of course will be one of them. There is the possibility, too, that the Tampa Bay Lightning could give the Caps a bit of a push for a Southeast title banner, but those have accumulated with regularity of late; like the President’s Trophy, I’m not sure what driving value another regular season feat has for this club.

So perhaps we look to the arrival of the Pens on the calendar as a launching pad for motivated hockey.

But there might be another cause for the Caps to get up a bit for the regular season grind: their standing in the local sports scene. To put it bluntly: they’re the only watchable pro game in town. Again. Every autumn in Daniel Snyder’s Reign of Terror there is a meltdown moment, when even the most loyal of the faithful recoil in anguish and disgust, and last Sunday in the Meadowlands produced that. L’Affair Haynesworth this week served up stale fruitcake as additional holiday offering for locals by the club. The Wizards we’ll take more seriously when they’re renamed and rebuilt. The Nats need their ace out of a sling, and Bryce Harper a regular in the lineup. It short, it isn’t pretty anywhere else you look.

The upset carried off by Montreal last spring did more, I think, than train-wreck a best-ever regular season for the icers — it halted a novel ascendancy for hockey here. Our city was so poised to fall so madly in love with a championship contender. The Caps deep in 2010, it seems to me, are being afforded a bit of a recount for Homecoming King.

The infrastructure for a special love affair is in place — you see it on every home game night, as mass transit reddens, Chinatown eateries become clogged with puck disciples, the sidewalks become overtaken with the Red Army. There was something intangible as a cultural moment about this past Sunday’s skate in the park by Capitals’ players and hundreds of fans that seemed to illustrate powerfully the team’s ascendancy here. It isn’t quite that other pro athletes here must hide in public from D.C. sports fans; it’s just that we don’t quite smile at their appearances the way we do for our Young Guns. It has been a startling sports culture transformation. Capitals players and management deserve an awful lot of credit for this achievement.

But it’s not enough.

How could you not fall hard for this kid?

Capitals’ players, by virtue of their youth and an interconnectedness with other athletes here, are like many of us fans of the Skins and Wiz and Nats. And they know the score(s). On some subconscious level at least they must also know the novel niche they presently fill. There’s so much more to be done with that.

Because they win and do so in highly entertaining fashion the Capitals have sold out their rink and occasioned a cultural transformation in the District. Hockey’s hip here. That’s swell; unfathomable 10 years ago, but irrefutable today. But there can be so much more. An inspired Capitals’ club could leave a seriously heavy footprint on Washington’s winter sports culture. Beginning immediately the Capitals ought to make it their mission to skate every game with both swagger and killer instinct. They cannot win every game, of course, but they do control their own destiny as it relates to passion and effort and drive. There should not be another single blown third period lead to an inferior club. Not one.

Don’t just win a lot — win with a character that bespeaks springtime success. This will convert even more masses.

Little Matty Perreault is a public relations godsend. He needs to live up to his end of the bargain, but if he does, lavish his game of playmaking wizardry and girl-swooning good looks on the local masses. He especially is a compelling photo-op at local elementary schools, perhaps leading floor hockey stick-handling clinics among schoolchildren not much smaller than he. Send him to the schools on off days with D.J. King or Jason Chimera, and allow the curious and uninitiated to see hockey’s marvelous diversity of physique.

This HBO involvement is serious business, too. It is highly likely that the 2011 Winter Classic, now just three weeks away, will emerge as the most hyped and talked about regular season hockey game in the history of professional hockey in North America. Maybe the most talked about and covered hockey game ever. HBO’s involvement in this story will do more for broadening hockey’s appeal — here and nationally — than anything NBC can fathom, for the imprimatur HBO sports documentaries offer contemporary sports is iconic. The Capitals can, beginning immediately, rise to this special moment and make sure that what the documentary cameras capture is special.

If they do so, Washington sports fans will remember, and respond.

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.