Thank you, Garrett, for uploading Coach Boudreau’s latest classic moment for all to see, and to Capitals Kremlin for posting about it in the wee hours of the morning! Definitely a fun thing to watch with one’s Sunday morning coffee.
The flattering forecasts are coming in fast and furious. The Caps are a consensus selection to win the Southeast division for a second consecutive season, but additionally, they’re commonly identified either explicitly as a Stanley Cup contender or a “dark horse” one. To quote the good living theme from the movie ‘Things to To in Denver When You’re Dead,’ these are “boat drinks” days in hockey D.C. This is rarefied air we’re breathing. But why? I think it’s worth reflecting on the factors that lead to such conventional preseason prognosticating.
Start at the top, with Head Coach Bruce Boudreau. His Jack Adams standing is impressive and nice, but what’s more salient to 2008-09 is his having guided a core group, now in D.C., that bought into what he was selling in Hershey in 2005-06, which culminated with a Calder Cup, and then, replacing Glen Hanlon in season last season, he got even more guys (NHL ones) — not least among them Hall of Fame lock and then rental player Sergei Fedorov — to buy in again, and go from worst to first in a historic regular season campaign. Gabby brought to Washington a championship pedigree, winning hockey titles on two different professional levels, and his 60-game results in the NHL last season were nothing short of startling. His is a stock you buy.
Stanley Cup hockey teams generally aren’t dominated by the heroic efforts of a lone standout talent. Think the Detroit Red Wings. The New Jersey Devils. The Edmonton Oilers. The Colorado Avalanche. The Anaheim Ducks. But in Alexander Ovechkin the Capitals seem to possess something markedly larger than just a heavy hardware hauler and a fun talent to behold. He competitiveness is as impressive as his talent, and he has very publicly stated that his hockey mission in life is to win a Cup and make Washington a hockey town. The early trajectory of his career invites comparisons especially with say Mario Lemieux’s in Pittsburgh: an afterthought franchise lifted up quite high by a sublime talent. Additionally, Ovechkin is that rare superstar who melds marvelously with all of his lesser heralded teammates. Heck, he melds well with no-name prospects at Rookie Camp. He is the face of the Capitals due not just to his standing as the planet’s greatest talent but because his teammates believe him to be. He loves leading them into battle, and they love being led by him.
If there was a commonly recognized weakness heading into 2007-08 on the Caps, it was the seeming absence of a true no. 1 blueliner, a guy who could ably and productively QB a power play and bring some firepower from the back end at even strength. Out of nowhere emerged Mike Green. He led NHL defensemen in goals scored last season. He possesses a breathtaking and dynamic skill set — and he’s just 23. If you read Corey Masisak’s feature on Green yesterday, you learned that no less than the father of Paul Coffey sees striking similarities in Green’s game to that of his son.
“Green is an atypical offensive defenseman,” Masisak wrote. “He enjoys carrying the puck, which often leads to exhilarating rushes from one end of the ice to the other. His stick-handling and creativity rivals that of Alex Ovechkin and Alexander Semin, while his vision and passing ability is equivalent of a playmaking pivot like Nicklas Backstrom.”
A team like Carolina proves that you don’t necessarily have to have a no. 1 blueline stud to win a Cup, but the vast majority of champions do. The Caps have theirs.
Another key ingredient is an elite playmaker for both the no. 1 line and the top unit power play. Nicklas Backstrom is that. Swedish hockey media years ago identified Backstrom as an heir apparent to Peter Forsberg. That may have been an unfair comparison, but in his rookie season in ‘08-09 Backstrom made a magnificent, Calder finalist transition to star center status in North America. His stock, too, is one you buy.
The center position on the Caps was one thought to be improved but still a work in progress this time a year ago. This season a healthy Michael Nylander — the team’s top scorer in the preseason — will in all likelihood center the team’s third line. The Caps will skate three productive lines this season, and that helps out a bit in the playoffs.
In the cumulative, all of these factors are significant and indicative perhaps of a good-bet-for-the-playoffs kind of club. But if I had to point to a catalyst cause for all the truly heady predictions it’d be to the perception that the Capitals’ well drafted and assembled core of young talent, which certainly includes the likes of Alexander Semin, Brooks Laich, Shaone Morrisonn, Jeff Schultz, Boyd Gordon, and Tomas Fleischmann, is collectively skating impressively now but also with their best NHL days still ahead of them. It’s a 95-to-100-pt. club on paper in the early October moment, absent the achievement of any notable production improvement among all the skilled youth. Who believes they’ve all plateaued?
Ultimately, a Stanley Cup caliber team is forged by distinctive chemistry, and this, too, is a calling card of these Caps. Something obviously special took hold in that room last spring. And it’s basically all back, ripening.
TSN has been running a “30 Teams in 30 Days” season preview, profiling a different NHL team each day. TSN turned their attention to the Washington Capitals this weekend and, while posting an encouragingly positive assessment, they fall well short of the sort of analysis one would expect from this Canadian outpost of hockey expertise.
Starting with the positive: It’s always heartening to see Ted Leonsis get well-deserved praise from those outside the D.C. hockey community, and TSN’s preview certainly accomplishes that: “Ted Leonsis is the type of owner that every NHL team deserves. He is passionate about the game and completely dedicated to giving his team all the tools that they need to win.”
Overall the article is complimentary to the Capitals’ chances this year . . . though it’s not hard to predict good things for a team featuring Alex Ovechkin and a supporting cast ranging from future Hall of Famer Sergei Fedorov to Rookie of the Year runner-up Nicklas Backstrom. It’s also easy — and not, mind you, necessarily inaccurate — to be concerned about Jose Theodore’s ability to lead the team deep into the playoffs.
But the Theodore discussion is just one example of lazy reporting in this preview. A brief discussion of Theodore’s up-and-down seasons, and the Caps’ lack of “Plan B” in net this season, is all they mention. How many teams have two starting goaltenders? Obviously if Theodore has a sub-par or injury-bitten season then the team is in trouble; but that holds true for most NHL clubs’ starting netminders.
For one of Canada’s leading sources for hockey analysis, one would expect something with a little more depth. For example, Theodore doesn’t control rebounds like Huet does, and that could present problems for the Caps’ young defensive core (at least that’s one of my concerns). Lacking a Plan B in goal? Well, sure, and ice is slippery too, thanks for sharing.
Yet the analysis gets weaker. Here’s a gem:
A healthy Brian Pothier should also help. The former Senators’ defenceman missed the last 41 games of the season with post-concussion symptoms. If fully recovered, Pothier should be able to take some of the offensive strain off of Green from the back end.
An 80-goal season from Tom Poti would help as well, and that’s more likely than Pothier taking the Phone Booth ice any time soon. The return of Pothier, a hard-working guy whom the Capitals certainly missed, is a pipe dream at this point; sadly, the prognosis is not good for him to resume his NHL career any time soon, if at all. TSN would have been better served by focusing on the players who’ve actually skated with the team in camp than to make vague assumptions that Pothier is returning. We wish him well, but including Pothier in plans for this season or beyond is silly.
Perhaps the most egregious error in the preview is the following: “By February, Washington had snatched the lead in the Southeast Division and did not look back.” Um, what? Technically the last part of that sentence is true; the Capitals did not look back, since they had to look forward at Carolina and didn’t secure the division crown until the very last day of the regular season. It’s surprising to see such lazy reporting sneak past TSN’s editors, particularly now . . . how much sloppier will their articles get when there are actual regular-season games to talk about?
The article smacks of a thrown-together last-minute term paper written by a hung over college student — do some slapdash Internet research, throw together a few seemingly safe conclusions, and don’t waste time with fact-checking or actual analysis.
Hey TSN, I enjoy Oktoberfest as much as (maybe more than) the next guy; but let’s keep the steins lidded while on the job, okay?
Bruuuuuuce! No, not Springsteen, but Boudreau: at the Washington Capitals game on Friday, November 14, the first 15,000 fans will receive this lovely gift of 2007-08 Coach of the Year Bruce Boudreau holding his hardware — the Jack Adams trophy.
BobbleBruce - photo courtesy of the Washington Capitals
One player’s name certainly is emerging from training camp’s first week — by virtue of its omission.
That of Olaf Kolzig.
You don’t hear it mentioned among the press, by fans in the Kettler stands, certainly not by Capitals’ players or coaches. Everybody seems to have moved on from the April agony and the summer transition trauma.
HockeyWashington, so consumed by the drama of L’affair Nameplate five months ago, five months later seems to have reacted to a Kolzig-less training camp with a collective “Meh.”
I for one am a little surprised. I expected some manner of media frenzy (particularly on Day 1 of camp) pegged on “this the first day of hockey without Olie in Washington in more than a decade.” But it didn’t happen, and it isn’t going to, and it’s worth reflecting on why.
There are I think a handful of factors accounting for this striking silence for a hockey hero, but foremost among them is the fact that the Capitals in goal this September have an abundance of exciting talent. Over the past three days there were three highly competitive scrimmages that took place — with jobs on the line and highly skilled players littering all three competing rosters– and yet no team ever tallied more than 3 goals in any of them. I saw scores of breakaways and a pair of shootouts, and I saw goalies winning the overwhelming majority of those showdowns. And specifically, in the likes of Simeon Varlamov and Michal Neuvirth, I saw a tandem of talent I’d never seen before at a Caps’ camp. Observers of this Capitals’ training camp, I believe, are too preoccupied with a fresh and great storyline in net to think back to that of even the recent past. Which, in Olie Kolzig’s case, represented a fading talent.
Capitals’ fans in the final third of the 2007-08 regular season saw a significantly improved Olie Kolzig in net, and with late February’s trade with Montreal they also saw scintillating virtuosity in his rival Cristobal Huet. The regular season’s final loss was on Kolzig, in Chicago, and it was ugly. Thereafter, Head Coach Bruce Boudreau rode Huet, who started and finished the team’s final seven games — all victories, culminating in a near miraculous Southeast division crown. They may not have admitted it then, but Kolzig’s defenders had to have seen the writing on the wall.
Indeed, even when new contract talks with Cristobal Huet fell apart, re-signing Olie Kolzig was never an option. The team needed to move in a new direction.
But the old netminder himself apparently didn’t see any such signs, and this leads to my third reason for the collective, quiet acceptance of his absence. When Kolzig very publicly postured that he had still no. 1 minutes and a no. 1 contract for a contending club ahead of him, he needed, for credibility’s sake, at a minimum, one or two contending summer suitors to make a play for his services. Instead, he ended up in Tampa Bay, for Matt Bradley money. The market spoke. Capitals’ management, which endured a torrent of message board tirades over their perceived handling of Kolzig, was vindicated.
Initially, most rightly viewed Kolzig’s public swagger and competitive perseverance as the byproduct of a special athlete’s pride. And most fans I think were inclined to cut Olie the Goalie a heck of a lot of slack in light of his enormous community contributions. That too is understandable. But Kolzig never articulated any acknowledgment of the team’s turning the corner, for the markedly, durably better, at a time when the rest of Washington had quickly gone hot over hockey. Instead, he remained in a self-centered posture. That I think in turn allowed many Capitals’ fans to turn the page.
A fourth and perhaps pre-eminent reason I think exists for this quasi-forgetfulness of athlete: the thirst for lasting victory. Fair or not, Kolzig, save for one Cinderella season in ‘97-’98, was associated with an organization’s mediocrity and rebuilding. For a decade solid Olie Kolzig was the face of this hockey organization, and it was one Washingtonians could be proud of. But the team — his team — always fell short. Today Alexander Ovechkin is the face of the Washington Capitals, displaying a charisma the likes of which we’ve never seen in a hockey player in this town — maybe not among any pro athletes ever in this town. Part of the primal appeal of this current Caps’ team is its being led by the greatest hockey player on the planet, but nearly just as important is its being comprised of a young and exciting core that’s going to be around for a while.
A season ticket holder I spoke with on the Kolzig subject back in April put it best: “I love Olie Kolzig,” he told me, “but I love winning more.”
Olie’s gone but of course not forgotten. How could he be? These days, we’re just too busy going about the business of following winning. We’re overdue that — and damn it’s fun.
[Check out the first published photos of the presentation of the Duchesne Cup.]
I alone among camp chroniclers am sporting a playoff beard during the Duchesne Cup Challenge, but I was also a big Gator fan.
Bruce Boudreau gets the credit for conceiving the Duschesne Cup (recommended viewing: Lisa Hillary’s coverage of it), and initially, I thought it was merely a homage to a fan- and organization-favorite former Cap, now sadly gone from us. But it’s actually more than that. It’s also a powerful reminder to the team’s prospects — particularly those drafted late, or even signed as free agents — that dedication and drive and a team-first ethos can lead to an unheralded prospect’s making a long and prosperous NHL career, against the odds. Duchesne, you may recall, was an eight-round pick by the Caps and made the team in his very first training camp. The three-day competition is also a fabulous way of generating enthusiasm among the players for the start of camp.
Recall Boudreau’s referencing prospect Anton Gustafsson at last week’s Rookie Camp in the context of his father’s name being “synonymous with the Capitals.” Now with his idea for the Duchesne Cup we have leading our team a coach who is conspicuous in showcasing his affinity for this organization’s heritage.
Does it get any better than that?
You know you’re at a Washington weekday training camp session when the snazzy suit seated next to you in the stands has an “Issue Paper for the New Congress” in his lap and is marking it up during the Zam break. We have eminently gifted policy pros in this town, ever aiding our political leadership, but it’s good to know that some of them have their priorities straight.
Players in this Cup-deciding, lunch-hour showdown are on the ice and warming up. I’ll be updating periodically.
It’s Varlamov vs. Theodore in net. 0-0 a little more than halfway through the first. As with yesterday’s scrimmage, fast-paced and hard-hitting. Each squad has had a power play. Theodore just stoned Ovechkin on a clear breakaway. Brashear returned the favor for the B squad, powering down the left wing with no one in blue swerving in to obstruct, but Varlamov flashed the right leg pad to snuff him out. Play’s been pretty balanced, with quality scoring chances at both ends.
Ovi thwarted again by Theodore in tight!
And we have the game’s first goal! Jay Beagle, at 6:29 (thereabout — running clock), breaking in all alone after a deft touch pass from Andrew Gordon along the far boards. Beagle went backhand up high just inside the crossbar and goalpost to Jose Theodore’s right. 1-0 A squad.
Oskar Osala took A squad’s third penalty of the opening frame, but Ovechkin got sprung for another clean breakaway only to be snuffed out by Theordore again! That’s two breakaways and another unobstructed chance in tight and Theodore’s gotten the better of Ovi all three times.
Fifteen seconds after Ovi’s second breakaway, he steals a puck from the B team in the neutral zone and goes in on a breakaway again! This time . . . he scores! 2-0 Squad A. That tally came with about a minute left, and the period ended 2-0. A-squad took three penalties that period but paid no price for them. Continue reading ›
Photo by OFB reader Jill Colby
Head Coach Bruce Boudreau sought an elevated sense of competition for this training camp’s scrimmages, in pursuit of which he inaugurated the Gaetan Duchesne Cup. The team that performs best in Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday’s scrimmages will win it. Today at noon was scrimmage 1, between groups B and C.
It was evident from the outset today that we were in for a different breed of scrimmage relative to previous training camps: B (blue sweaters) and C (white sweaters) skated all out, at a high tempo, were careful with line changes, and hit! Four or five times today Empty Maybe and Mike Vogel and I had our Sunday revival beverages threatened by glass-bashing from thunderous checks. And the mid-game flood was deliberate, heavy on the snow collection and water laying from 30 hard minutes of distinctly competitive and ice-mauling skating.
B-squad was coached by Gabby and Bob Woods, C by Jay Leach and Mark French. The scrimmage had the feel of a real game, except that the officiating was competent.
The scrimmage format: 30 minutes of running time, flood; 20 minutes of running time; 10 minutes of stopped time, final horn.
Some line combos for you: B (Blue) featured what may well be the best line of the three groups — Brooks Laich-Sergei Fedorov-Alexander Semin. B also had Boyd Gordon with Alexander Giroux (a mop-up goal) and Eric Fehr (strong game for him) and Travis Morin centering Donald Brashear and Darren Reid. The top C squad line had Michael Nylander centering Flash on his left flank and Chris Clark on his right. Justin Taylor, Dave Steckel, and Mathieu Perreault also centered lines for C-squad, Taylor often with Dubuc and Kygryshev and Perreault with Francois Bouchard and Stefan Della Rovere. Kyle Wilson also rotated through for the C-squad.
In terms of defense pairings, Mike Green and Shaone Morrisonn went for Leach and French’s C-squad, and were joined by Eric Mestery (impressive) Greg Amadio, and Karl Alzner (strong again) and John Erskine. B d pairings included Patrick McNeill and John Carlson; Sean Collins and Jacub Cutta; and Dean Arsene and Milan Jurcina. Jose Theodore started in net for B-squad, Brent Johnson for C. Holtby and ‘Cheese relieved them, for B and C respectively, after the flood.
On paper, B seemed stronger both in skill and experience, and that played out in the scrimmage, which while requiring an Eric Fehr empty net goal late to settle the matter for good (Blue won 3-1), was well controlled by Gabby’s guys. The Fedorov-Semin-Laich unit was easily the afternoon’s most active and impressive.In fact, Fedorov opened the scoring with about 4;15 left in the first, from a Semin helper. The stanza ended 1-0 in favor of B.
A Brooks Laich blast from the left point early in the second frame was gathered in front of the net by Alexander Giroux and tucked home for a 2-0 lead. But Tomas Fleischmann tallied in tight late in the final frame, with a little over 3 minutes remaining, and the C squad applied a bit of concluding pressure to make it interesting with the goalie pulled. Eric Fehr snuffed out the rally with an empty-netter.
I sought input on the scrimmage’s three stars from Vogs and Corey and Empty, and I appreciated their respective perspectives. But the three-star judgement I offer here is my own, and in truth the good today far outweighed any regular bad.
AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Frank Gunn
(10) Gabby from the Get-go. Capitals players had plenty of time to come to grips with Bruce Boudreau’s system, what with his arriving from Hershey at Thanksgiving. In his 61 games in 2007-08, Boudreau went 20 games over .500 (37-17-7). Had that projected over the full season, the Caps not only would have won the Southeast handily but absolutely contended for first overall in the East (with 104 points, Montreal finished 10 better than Washington). It bears mentioning that Boudreau had to learn most of his new hockey club in mid-season just as they had to learn his system. This fall, Boudreau knows his roster quite well, they know him now by the title of Jack Adams holder, and he starts the season with a club as healthy and hungry as any the Caps have seen this decade. Let the good times roll.
(9) Renewed Might on the Right. What might have the Capitals’ fortunes been in the 2008 playoffs had they had the services of captain Chris Clark and his 30-goal skills and leadership? And what might a fully healthy Eric Fehr finally look like? We should find out in 2008-09. Both have told media late this summer that they’re “100 percent” and ready to go. We know what Viktor Kozlov, Matt Bradley, and Clark can do. Fehr is the wild card. But reasonably healthy, that quartet ought to offer some much-needed scoring balance on the right side of the Caps’ forward ranks.
(8) Is Karl Alzner NHL ready? In what appears to have been the final foray for the Caps in the NHL Entry Draft lottery, for some while anyway, the Caps selected Calgary Hitmen shutdown rearguard Karl Alzner with the 5th pick in the 2007 draft. In his draft class Alzner was lauded as being the “most NHL ready” of defense prospects. Nothing about Alzner’s ‘07-08 season suggested otherwise. He captained Canada’s Junior team to yet another gold medal, and he was named WHL Defenseman of the Year and WHL Player of the Year. The Caps may find themselves with an intriguing and difficult call to make on Alzner this training camp: today he may well be one the team’s top 6 talents on the blueline, but would his long-term development be better aided with top minutes in Hershey this season?
(7) Center by Committee. The Capitals have a clear no. 1 center (Nicklas Backstrom) and, in ability, potentially three no. 2s (Nylander, Fedorov, Laich). Brooks Laich will get a long look on a wing. Additionally, there is fantastic defensive play and faceoff ability between Dave Steckel and Boyd Gordon. Bruce Boudreau is virtually certain to carry 13 forwards out of camp, and you have to believe five of them will be centers. But who sits? And who earns no. 2 minutes? Will there be a trade?
(6) Who’s no. 1 in Net — in Hershey? Rarely at the start of a new season is there intrigue about the goalie rotation down on the farm, but the goalie story in the Caps’ organization is a lead one in 2008-09. George McPhee has indicated that in Michael Neuvirth and Simeon Varlamov he has two AHL-worthy 20-year-olds; neither belongs in the E. Additionally, Daren Machesney has developed solidly in Hershey. One option could be to loan out one of the kids to another American League club. But both 2006 draft picks possess talent such that there respective stays in minor pros could be brief ones. Meanwhile . . .
(5) It’s Certain That There’s Some Uncertainty in the Washington Net. Jose Theodore was signed by Washington the moment that contracts talks with Cristobal Huet fell apart. Theodore possesses nearly 450 games of NHL experience spread out over more than 10 years. His career has been marked by moments of exemplary play commonly followed by conspicuously mediocre results. He has Vezina and Hart trophies on his mantle and pitchfork and torch scars on his gear bag. Playing behind a strong team of forwards and defenders, expect him to look like a world-beater during many regular season nights in 2008-09; the postseason will be more the barometer of his signing. Somewhat overlooked in the Kolzig-to-Huet-to-Theodore transition — all of it carried off in less than 9 months’ time — is that the Capitals’ blueline corps will have to adjust to yet another new netminder’s angles and rebounds tendencies. And it’s a short preseason.
(4) Is Semin a Star? There’s absolutely no doubt that left wing Alexander Semin is an elite, world-class talent. His wrist shot is simply one of the finest on the planet. But to date he has not put together a complete season of health and high production. With the Caps’ top-six-plus skill, 2008-09 should Semin’s season to shine.
(3) Potential Pitfalls of Press Clippings. It was just late last November that the Washington Capitals resided in dead last territory in the NHL, their rebuild strivings generating little returns. One coaching and netminder change ushered in a division title, a sold out home rink, and a wild-about-hockey Washington, and one of the great from hell to heaven rises in Washington pro sports history. The summer delivered an abundance of awards recognitions for the feat. And the Caps’ feel-good story of last season has fostered a pervasive ‘they’re-the-team-to-watch-out-for‘ forecast for this season. But the team is hardly dynastic, and they’ll compete with plenty of quality at the top of the East (Philly, Montreal, and Pittsburgh) and throughout the league overall. They’ll also have fewer games against their Southeast rivals this season — hockey’s weakest division.
(2) Golden Era of Ovechkin. If you believe Wayne Gretzky, we haven’t seen anywhere near the best yet from Alexander Ovechkin. The Great One believes that Ovi can score 90. Today the hockey world is Alexander Ovechkin’s oyster. He enjoys a best-in-his-sport status, he loves the challenge of making Washington a hockey town, and in 2008-09 he will skate in possession of the richest contract in Washington pro sports history. Now 225 pounds and a training dynamo, he is arrived at something close to his physical prime. There is among his fast-accumulating hardware one lone conspicuous omission. His aim in ‘08-09 is to secure that one, too.
(1) As Good as It Gets? There were three striking qualities about Verizon Center in the final weeks of the 2008 season: it was consistently sold out; it was overwhelmingly red and partisan (except to Pierre McGuire’s eyes); and it was gloriously raucous and loud. It was an environment that I think caught even the Caps off guard; it seemed about two years ahead of forecast — if management could even imagine such environs here at all. Was it a fluke in response to a torrid and historic run, or is that the reception that hockey is hereafter to receive, the home team now competing, likely for a sizable number of years going forward, with coveted skill, depth, and youth? Washington’s hockey fans have been the butt of disrespect and ridicule for decades. A full season of Red Rockin’ during a lot of winning may squelch that slander permanently.
None other than Nicklas Backstrom was first on the ice this morning during the opening session of Day 1 of Capitals’ training camp. He skated for about 30 minutes before the Caps pulled him off, for precautionary purposes.
A very helpful file for those of you planning on a visit to Kettler during camp: Rebecca from A View from the Cheap Seats took roll during all three sessions and has posted the players by group on her site. The Caps utilized both Kettler sheets in order to skate the three groups between 10:00 and 1:00. You can find the full schedule for training camp here.
Another terrific asset for following the preseason: Caps in Pictures, a blog devoted exclusively to Capitals’ photojournalism.
More must patronizing: Tarik’s file on the Caps’ cap-ologist Don Fishman.
Imbedded among Day One media (heavy numbers), I wondered what if any difference it would make for the Caps to have a full training camp under the direction of Bruce Boudreau. I got some interesting feedback. Most reporters, understandably, didn’t think it’d make much of a difference, as the team’s returning players had nearly 70 games with him last season.
“You saw the way they played for him the final 20 games,” one of them observed.
One reporter suggested that there would be a reasonably significant difference in atmosphere, alluding esepcially to last Sunday’s end-of-session conditioning skate (which Gabby pledged to replicate during the full camp). It’s certainly true that as a spectator you notice a marked difference in the tempo of the sessions relative to Glen Hanlon’s, Bruce Cassidy’s, or Ron Wilson’s — they are fast-paced and hectic, with meticulous drills, most definitely not for the out of shape.
On a sumptuous early autumn Saturday the hundreds and hundreds who turned out early (before 9:30 a.m.) and remained late (past 1:30), and who packed the stands and both rinks three and four deep around the glass, sure seemed emblematic of the fanbase of a hockey town.
All present and accounted for out on the ice, except of course Brian Pothier. The injured from late last season — Chris Clark, Eric Fehr, Michael Nylander, Shaone Morrisonn, and Boyd Gordon were all looking fit and fast.
Oh to be a hockey-indifferent girl in the Gustafsson household. Dad Bengt of course is a hockey legend, both as an NHL player and international coach. Son Anton is a first-round NHL draft pick, and following in father’s footsteps pursuing an NHL career with the Washington Capitals.
Father and son, as you might imagine, talk a lot of hockey together in their home in Sweden.
“My younger sister, always, after the dinner, stands up and throws the little food that she has [left] and says, ‘All the thing you can talk about is hockey’ . . . [she's] so pissed off,” older brother Anton told media at Kettler Capitals Sunday afternoon, a couple of hours after his first-ever workout in a Caps’ sweater.
“Mom’s pretty pissed off, too,” he added, smiling. “She talks [hockey] a little bit, but it’s pretty much our [guys'] talk,” he added.
Caps’ fans of both genders have been talking about the Gustafssons a lot this summer. Nearly three months since the Caps selected Anton in the first round of the draft in Ottawa, the son’s arriving in Washington to wear a Capitals’ sweater remains a striking novelty. We haven’t experienced this before; it isn’t just any Washington Capital alumnus name that’s been stirred by the draft selection but a truly legendary one — one of the all-time best ever to wear a Caps’ sweater. Anton’s being a first-round talent has whetted the appetite of Caps’ fans wondering if the son can possibly approach the achievements of father. That’s unfair but understandable.
The name Gustafsson, Bruce Boudreau said Sunday, “is synonymous with Capitals.”
Anton was late getting out to meet the media Sunday after enduring an especially hard two-hour skate with his fellow Rookie Camp campers, and then being introduced to the rigors of NHL fitness. Head Coach Bruce Boudreau concluded the skate with a solid 10-plus minutes of Herbies, a session torturous even for spectators to watch. The ill effects of the conditioning drill were most noticeable on European prospects Gustafsson and Dmitry Kugryshev. Both fell to their knees at one end of the Kettler sheet, gasping for breath. After 10 minutes of Herbies, Anton was crumpled in a corner, annihilated with fatigue. Mathieu Perreault, Boudreau admitted afterward, became light-headed and nearly feinted from the duress.
Gustafsson suffered a herniated disc in his lower back this past April, which obviously influenced his being available for the Caps at the 21st spot in the June draft. While he’s “90 percent” fit these days, he admitted that the flight over from Sweden Friday and its jet-lag, and Sunday morning’s arduous skate, had him seeking out extra and prolonged assistance in the trainer’s room. Doctors have told him that he shouldn’t expect to be fully healed for two years, but that time and training will do the trick. He missed July’s Development Camp because of his injury, but two months later he’s made good progress, and out on the sheet Sunday he showcased a strong stride . . . if not quite NHL stamina.
He will return to his Swedish team in Sweden’s second league, a level Gustafsson described as akin to the AHL in talent. His rights belong to the Frolunda organization, and Sweden’s pro hockey leagues have already begun regular season play. He will return home this coming Friday. Sunday afternoon he discussed how his team’s management, while supportive of his coming over to Washington this week, nonetheless wasn’t thrilled with losing an important player in-season. He plans to play one season more with his current team and then, in 2009-10, make the leap up to the Swedish Elite League, with Frolunda.
Anton was asked Sunday about skating in his father’s shadow.
“It’s always hard. Many expect me to be as good as [Dad.] I hope I will make it.”
“Many, many say, ‘There is Bengt’s son,’ and I want to be known as Anton. When they see my father they will say that is Anton’s dad. That’s what I want.”
Son has never watched a single tape of his father play as a Washington Capital. There are no such tapes in the Gustafsson home. Just as well — the father’s presence, for the son, looms large enough as it is.
My Friends at Comcast SportsNet:
On behalf of the entire OFB team, I want to express appreciation for your enthusiastic support of OFB and Washington’s hockey blogs, and convey my team’s anticipation for your coverage of the Caps in 2008-09. It’s our view that on a number of fronts SportsNet markedly upgraded the breadth and caliber of broadcast coverage of the Caps and hockey for the region last season, and we anticipate bigger and better things from you this season, during what may well be the most anticipated Caps’ season in team history.
Today, however, I’d like to share my concern with the thorough dropoff in hockey coverage on Comcast this summer. Please regard my reflections as aiming at strengthening an already strong broadcast product; Comcast SportsNet is home to knowledgeable and devoted hockey experts, and the outlet’s in-season coverage of the Caps is something the area’s hockey fans ought to take pride in. Your Caps’ page is terrific looking and deserves more credit for the quality of its content as well.
Around the time that SportsNet signed off from the NHL Entry Draft in Ottawa in June it more or less seemed to sign off on covering hockey for the summer, save for a brief blip (Day 1) from Capitals’ Development Camp in mid-July. Of course it’s not that there’s a frenzy of activity in hockey in July and August generally (the region’s hockey blogs slow considerably then as well); I guess my hope was to see, amid the predictable and necessary local media Redskin frenzy, very brief, very modest remembrances of last hockey season wedded with high-octane marketing messages for the new one. A few mere broadcast morsels might have gone a long way to carrying over the feel-good vibe for hockey that SportsNet so successfully cultivated last spring.
Specifically, I wonder if something more might not have been achieved with the novelty of Anton Gustafsson’s selection by the Caps at the June Entry Draft. We in Washington following the draft on TV caught one or two engaging interviews with father and son in Ottawa, but nothing substantive followed. The Gustafsson family charm — to make no mention of the novelty of the moment — seemed to beg for more broadcast product.
The younger Gustafsson’s selection really is an amazing moment in Capitals’ hisory, when you think about it. His father Bengt of course ranks among the most accomplished players in team history. He’s also one of the most accomplished coaches in international hockey, having won gold at both the Olympics and World Championships — in the same year (2006)! In June he watched his son become a first-round NHL draft pick — picked by the same club with which he fashioned a distinguished NHL career.
This very special hockey family easily could have been the subject of a special, in-depth Comcast feature. I’m imagining something like a 30-minute program — much like the one you guys produced for the Capitals’ 2006 Entry Draft — Capitals Under Construction. This time, however, the feature’s focus could have been on one draft pick and his family’s distinctive link to Washington’s hockey team.
How remarkable such a feature could have been had it melded footage of father dangling and dazzling in his classic old Caps’ sweater in the NHL’s ’80s brand of firewagon hockey with contemporary footage of son Anton just emerging as a world-class talent in Sweden’s professional ranks. The feature might also have offered the reflections of one or two or three long-time NHL scouts (European ones, perhaps) offering their comparative assessments of the games of father and son. It might not have been a bad idea, either, to solicit the views of long-standing Caps’ season ticket holders, who could have shared their reflections on father while also expressing their eagerness to see the son in action in a Caps’ sweater.
Now imagine if you’d produced such a program and aired it the night before the start of training camp next month, immediately followed by a broadcast of father Gustafsson’s 5-goal game (on five shots!) against the Flyers in 1984. What a welcome to Washington to the Gustafsson family that would have been. The feature program could have aired at least a handful of times during hockey’s quiet months of July and August, and served as a novel bit of nourishment for the region’s hungry hockey fans.
You may realize that beginning this summer many of those fans began tuning in to the NHL Network, now offered on select cable systems about the region, to satisfy their puck-lust. I think it should be Comcast’s aim to retain them all 12 months on the calendar.
Another idea for a fan-friendly feature in summer might have been to sit down with Head Coach Bruce Boudreau not long after his Jack Adams win and explore in depth — again in feature-length fashion — his extraordinary run in Washington last season. You already know how accomplished a story-teller he is; so why not roll the cameras and allow him, removed from the soundbite setting of the in-season arena, to tell his insider’s tale? My prediction is that the editing on your end would have been distinctly minimal. Washington this summer is home to the greatest coach in hockey — but who visiting our city this summer would have learned that while here?
Washington this summer is also home to the greatest player in all of hockey. Beyond Comcast’s producing something substantive such as a feature-length profiles, I also wonder at the absence this summer of quick-hitting broadcast blurbs related to Alexander Ovechkin’s remarkable rise to the very top of his sport. When he had all that hardware surrounding him in his stylish tuxedo up in Toronto in June, you guys asked us for some photos we published of it. Those stills in some fashion should have been aired on Comcast every day this summer, just for mere seconds, so that the tens of thousands of tourists in our town could have been reminded that they were visiting a city home to hockey royalty.
AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Frank Gunn
Washington Capitals Head Coach Bruce Boudreau today is in Niagra Falls, Ont., volunteering at the Hockey Resume Free Agent Camp. Hockey Resume helps out-of-work hockey players land minor league tryouts and, hopefully, contracts.
One might think Boudreau is graciously volunteering his time — returning from the NHL to his hard-fought minor league days, perhaps — but Boudreau, ever ready with a wisecrack, revealed the true reason for his appearance at the camp:
“I’m basically doing it so my son doesn’t have to pay,” Boudreau said. “They wanted something like 400 bucks (actually $325) for the camp and I said I’d help out with a practice and give their camp some validity if my son could attend for free. I did the same thing at the Roger Neilson Hockey Camp last week for my other son.”
Check out Ken Campbell’s blog at The Hockey News for more.
Here’s a great video from HockeyBarn.com — one in which stellar cameos feature Comcast’s Lisa Hillary, owner Ted Leonsis, Head Coach Bruce Boudreau, Calder candidate Nicklas Backstrom, some Ovechkin fella, and Caps’ media maestro Nate Ewell doing real good by a monkey suit. Enjoy.
This is an extraordinary American summer weekend, insomuch as it delivers something rarer than an NHL goalie scoring a goal: the arrival in theaters of a great and compelling and culture-consuming domestic movie. I’m speaking of course of the new Batman movie, ‘The Dark Knight.’ It isn’t merely exceptionally well reviewed by critics, who are discussing it in terms of Oscars and “classic.” For its Uptown Theater debut Thursday night at midnight city youths arrived to stand in line some time near 2:00 that afternoon — in Washington July heat. It will be even hotter this weekend, and thousands more, already with tickets, will stand in line hours just to get the seats they want for the screening.
If you can imagine, the nationwide midnight screenings of the film Thursday grossed nearly $20 million. To put that number in terms we hockey fans can understand, that’s a Koules-Aid kind of July budget for free agency to assemble a lottery contender for next June.
Area theaters will have Batman screenings this weekend beginning at 9:00 a.m.! The notion of arriving at any area theater this weekend a few minutes before screening and securing just a single ticket is preposterous. By early yesterday afternoon Craigslist had pages of the movie’s tickets for sale priced solidly above regular box office rate.
Yesterday I found myself marveling at so novel a cultural moment, grateful for its very belated arrival but also melancholy when I considered that Hollywood needs more or less a full decade to render it. It’s true: approximately 99.7 percent of domestic cinematic fare is altogether ordinary or outright rotten. The true gotta-see-it — because of its greatness — cinema spectacle is in frequency of theater runs not dissimilar to the prevalence of Alexander Ovechkins in NHL entry drafts. Anyway, as Americans, we have a special place in our hearts for the buzz-generators on the big-screen that actually deliver the goods. So it’s a moment indeed to savor — history suggests that we won’t see it again for quite some time.
This special moment also led me to think of something special in hockey being crafted, right here in Washington. Like the great summer blockbuster, it’s exceptionally rare for hockey here. It could very well be the case that Verizon Center, beginning this October, will be akin to the great old moviehouse showing just a single feature, for months on end, with weekend tickets very much in demand.
I wouldn’t quite call the 2008-09 Capitals’ season a sequel, however. I think in its forecasted critical acclaim, in its culminating sense of a roster’s arriving very near the peak of elite contention, it will very much be a first run of its kind.
The differences from a summer ago are rather extraordinary. In July 2007 Washington hockey fans thought they had a gifted young star left wing in Alexander Ovechkin. But in his coming off a 46-goal campaign in his sophomore season, most here hoped he’d merely return to the 50-goal club in season three. Who then thought that he’d fairly obliterate competition for the Hart Trophy last season? Today he is regarded as a game-changing force, and the greatest player on the planet.
Additionally, last summer no one even in team management knew that a no. 1 stud of a defender was already in the organization, and poised to break out. But Mike Green will enter the 2008-09 season on a short list of Norris trophy candidates.
Count Brooks Laich as a key component to a glory run in 2008-09, and yet a summer ago he was in a fierce competition among a seeming glut of third and fourth-line center candidates just to make the club. Indeed, if any of the organization’s young centers was thought to have some unexpected offensive upside heading into last season, it was Boyd Gordon, who in ‘06-07 fell one point shy of 30 and flashed a penchant for fits and bursts of well-timed production. Now Laich’s regarded as one of the league’s bright young two-way pivots. And paid like it.
Last summer, who would have imagined that a hockey legend (Sergei Fedorov) would arrive here two-thirds of the way through the season and settle a green and nervous young roster and guide it to an against-all-odds Southeast division title? And then announce, mere weeks after his arrival here, that the atmosphere in Verizon Center ranked as the best he’d ever competed in, and that despite the formation of a very well funded super league in his home country of Russia, that he’d very much like a return engagement in Washington?
There are, indisputably, one or two important areas for Director Boudreau to address in final editing this summer, one of which (the acting in net) is largely out of his control. But given that all of the East’s well built teams for next season possess question marks of their own, it’s certain that the Caps will enter 2008-09 as consensus contenders in the East. They possess star quality principal actors, on-screen chemistry in abundance, and a director newly acknowledged by his peers to be among the best in the business.
Actually, insomuch as there looks to be high-achieving hockey rostered both in Washington and in Hershey this coming season, we appear slated for long run of a great double feature.
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