Category Archives: Washington the Hockey Town
A Rink, a Team, and a Town Becoming One
By pucksandbooks
Sunday, October 12, 2008
It’s about time to begin awarding a game star to the home crowd at Verizon Center. The atmosphere there for hockey now has no rival within Washington’s sports landscape.
During his post-game show last night, WTOP’s Jonathon Warner, commenting on the atmosphere of Verizon Center for the Capitals’ home opener, told his listeners that Caps’ fans had picked up right where they’d left off last spring — cramming the rink in a sea of red, and creating an electric home-ice advantage for the home team. He was right. I knew Saturday night’s game would be a sellout, and I also knew that thousands would be heeding the Caps’ call to wear red. The Caps were raising a division championship banner to the rafters, and commemorating a remarkable turnaround in 2007-08. It promised to be festive.
But there was something distinctive about this hockey home opener relative to all others preceding it in Washington. In the leadup to it this week you could sense about town a prestige for this evening. It wasn’t just that the ticket was hard to come by, a genuine hot commodity. It was that there was in the city a real and pervasive anticipation for hockey’s return. Washington today seems aware that the boys in red on skates are a premiere form of entertainment. And the locals want to be a witness to it.
It’s uncommonly clogged trying to navigate the sidewalks of Chinatown before and after Capitals’ home games now, and the humanity moves in a common color. The drab grey and tunnel black of underground Metro is pierced by a blossom of rose-red love for the hockey team on game nights.
Saturday night I saw teenage boys and girls in the stands with their faces and torsos painted red. I saw women with red dye in their hair. I saw nearly 20,000 people attired and tattooed and painted and dyed in a common passion. And my sense was that many of them weren’t in the rink for one night only.
I first noticed a dramatic change in the atmospherics of the Phone Booth last spring, near the very end of the regular season, at the height of the standings surge. For the Capitals’ pre-game warmups a solid three or four thousand fans, uniformly cloaked and coated in red, encircled the team in its warmup end in the lower bowl, standing the entire time. They weren’t arrived in a typical trickle but rather amassed on time in a stunning show of solidarity. Ovi’s Red Army. Each successive game, through the playoffs, delivered more of the same.
I saw the same thing Saturday night.
About 5 minutes into period 2 Alexander Ovechkin knotted the game at 2, and this unleashed three levels of “M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!” roof-shaking serenadings. The home crowd is so in love with its luminous left wing.
The best part of this is that he appears to be every bit as much in love with his admirers in the rink.
Then of course he sealed the victory late in the third Saturday night with one of his patented power slides across the slot and nearly-knock-the-cage-off-its-moorings wrist unleashings, sending the red rink into delirium. Comcast’s Lisa Hillary interviewed Ovechkin in the victory’s aftermath, and it seemed to me that more than half the rink remained to serenade him freshly with their “M-V-P” chants. Of course Ovi soaked it up.
These sort of dramatic and infectious demonstrations of love between city and athlete don’t occur every day or year or even decade. Cal Ripken was devotionally admired by Orioles’ fans, but in the stadium during his playing days, on a nightly basis, the baseball atmosphere was largely without distinction. In Verizon Center during no. 8’s shifts one gets the sense that 40,000 eyes are on Ovi; when he scores, 20,000 throats seem to sing.
Now consider this: we are merely at the infancy of this F Street love affair with hockey.
The Wait Is Over
By The OFB Team
Friday, October 10, 2008
The calendar today informs of our arrival home. On this early autumn Friday night we’ll return home from work, kick off our shoes, open up a cold one, and settle in for the opening of the most highly anticipated hockey season in Washington Capitals’ history.
This autumn, it doesn’t suck to be us.
And we’ll actually have two remarkably talented hockey teams to follow — the Caps and their American League affiliate the Bears. Hershey opened its season this past Wednesday night, on the road in Wilkes Barre, and the scoring summary from the game attests to the farm club’s potency (five for seven with the extra man!).
How will OFB cover what is forecast to be an exceptionally special hockey season in D.C.? It’s a question we grappled with all offseason, and some clarity in the matter has arrived of late. The ‘Web is fundamentally dynamic, ever evolving, and we feel that OFB should reflect this. We know that we don’t want to “blog in place,” if you will; we want to pursue fresh coverage challenges and angles. Because OFB is distinctly reader participatory, we welcome coverage suggestions from you.
Three of us will be attending virtually every Caps’ home game this season, and we’ll all be well equipped to capture and record what strikes our fancy. A couple of things won’t change, however. First and foremost, we do what we do here because it’s fun for us, and because it’s an outlet for our collective passion for the planet’s greatest sport. We believe that there’s long been vast under-reportage of hockey’s passion in these parts, and we want to play a small role in remedying that.
We’re aided in our endeavor by a partnership with the most pro- new media sports organization in all of professional sports in North America — and maybe the world. We couldn’t do what we do without the support of the Washington Capitals, and that support starts with the majority owner and extends down through the entirety of the team’s communications staff and includes men and women even within the team’s sales staff.
It can’t be overstated: to the extent that the Capitals enjoy a robust on line profile — and we agree with Mr. Leonsis, who this week told us that the team is a greater global and national story than they are in their home city — they’ve reaped what they’ve sowed for some years now in taking a bold leap of coverage faith with their new-media relations. We hope its a relationship in its mere infancy, and we’d like to see other fresh blogging voices emerge and join the party. We’re particularly excited to follow our friend Pepper and his first full season of blogging coverage of the Caps from New York, with the Red Skate. Pepper’s already doing a great job of keeping an eye on things down on the farm.
Speaking of that farm club, following the Hershey Bears this season will be easier than ever thanks to some big technical upgrades courtesy of the club’s communications pro and play-by-play voice, John Walton. Walton will, on a weekly bassis, host the first-ever podcast for Hershey hockey, “The Old Barn Hockey Show.” And the audio for every Bears’ game will be streamed thanks to a new partnership with SportsJuice.com. Archives of Bears’ games will even be available to fans with the agreement.
Of course, at OFB, we’re planning on following the Bears a bit live in person on a handful of occasions, again. We’re also hoping that one trip up north is of the novel variety.
Collin McKinney Sees Life Through Hockey [Part II]
By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
[Miss Part I? Click here.]
What kind of job does a suddenly blind-in-the-middle-of-his-life man perform? For two years Collin McKinney didn’t see anything at all. Eventually, he could see out of his left eye an area “about the size of a 50-cent piece.” His medical remedies more or less exhausted, McKinney contacted the Virginia Department of the Blind and Visually Impaired. The work options offered him there — “moving paperclips” was how he described the meager administrative listings — were a poor fit for his broad and varied educational background and work experience.
But back in his Fairfax neighborhood, McKinney had developed an affinity for taking care of dogs belonging to his neighbors. He’d walk them during business hours, care for them during neighbors’ vacations. He developed a reputation for being something of a “dog whisperer,” effectively training unruly canine rascals on his block. Dogs and a blind man, working well together. Who knew?
Post- NHL lockout, and now fairly a fixture at Caps’ games, McKinney was enjoying himself and the friends he was making from the experience. Except for one set of fans: Buffalo’s.
“Buffalo fans are the worst,” McKinney told me. “They actually stole my blind stick one time from me at a game.”
Now you’re certainly reacting as I did as those words arrived on my ear — Buffalo Sabres’ fans . . . did . . . what?
It was two seasons ago, during the final game of the 2006-07 campaign, at Verizon Center, the one that was sold out, lamentably largely due to wave after wave of belligerent Buffaloan.
“Thank God I could see a little bit, because they decided to play keep away with my stick, and I managed to grab it back, which surprised them, I think,” McKinney related. “I couldn’t believe people would do that. They were so obnoxious and so foul-mouthed.”
As shocking as this story is, having been in Verizon Center that day (Washington’s hockey bloggers hosted an end-of-season party at the Chinatown Clyde’s after the game), I look back and think that something like this monstrosity was entirely plausible amid so large an ornery and inebriated set of visiting fans. Not all Buffalo fans in Verizon Center behaved badly that day, of course, but a striking and surly subset most certainly did.
“Collin,” I told my dinner partner, “there really was something about that day that was distinctive in a very bad way. A lot of people had a bad experience that day, although what you describe is off the charts — sub-human, really. Our team was lousy, theirs was in first [place], and the scene was just unruly and altogether unpleasant.”
Wanted: One Hockey-Loving Ocularist
In early 2008, as Collin McKinney grappled with the reality of having his right eye removed and replaced with a prosthetic, his “twisted” sense of humor set upon a novel idea. He was fitted with a standard prosthetic eye, but he again wanted to summon his passion for hockey to help alleviate his trauma. He had been in contact with an area ocularist to try and get the Capitals’ logo etched on a second prosthetic eye. In other words, when you looked Collin McKinney in his replacement eye, he wanted you to see his passion. But first he needed the team’s permission.
“I have a twisted sense of humor,” he told me. “If something horrible like this is going to happen to you, you better have a sense of humor about it at some point, because if you can’t laugh, you end up sitting around doing nothing, wasting away.”
“I just thought it would be funny and cool, ‘cause it kinda shows what I’m into.
“I don’t get tattoos,” he added with a laugh.
McKinney wrote Capitals’ owner Ted Leonsis, seeking permission to use the team’s trademarked logo on a prosthetic eye. He sent the owner his request in a letter. And the owner replied.
“‘Wow,’ I think was his very first reaction,” McKinney noted. “‘You really want to do this?’”
“I think he thought I was a kook at first,” McKinney said with a laugh.
The request, McKinney pointed out, required more than just the owner’s blessing — that of lawyers, as you might imagine. Capitals’ attorneys were consulted, but also ones from the NHL’s league offices. Ultimately, McKinney got the team’s permission, and that of the league. He also received an invitation from Leonsis to take in a game in the owner’s box, where he could model his passion-prosthetic.
Now comes the hard part. The personalized prosthetic comes with a $3,000 sticker price. McKinney, an early recipient of Social Security due to his disability, subsists on $12,000 annually and some additional, modest money from helping out his Fairfax neighbors by walking their dogs and performing odd jobs.
“There’s no way I can afford that,” McKinney noted. “But now I know that there’s an ocularist in town who’ll do it. That’s what is important to me. If he had turned me down I had already Googled the entire country for others [ocularists]. I’d have contacted every one of them. It’s not something I’m going to give up on.”
At this point I wanted to reach into my back pocket, pull out my fraying black leather wallet, open it and turn it upside down and empty out all of its contents in this cause. Problem there is that that wouldn’t have purchased McKinney a temporary tattoo.
“Things are thrown your way in life,” Collin McKinney told me over our final sips of Monday night beer. “You just have to find a way to move on.
“This idea I have for ultimately winning over . . . getting the better of, my misfortune, it’ll happen one day. I believe that.”
In my nearly 35 years as a Caps’ fan I thought I had terrific reason on top of terrific reason to support this city’s pro hockey team, and to champion its cause. Over the years it had hockey heroes — Rod Langway, Dale Hunter, Olie Kolzig, Peter Bondra, now Alexander Ovechkin — wear its sweater. It had endured, in searing and endearing fashion, a brush with death, a thrilling run to a Stanley Cup finals, a sale to a hockey-town-constructing-committed owner. And the drafting of a franchise-altering and anchoring talent. But in September 2008 I found the best possible reason yet to be a Caps’ fan: Collin McKinney wears our team’s colors, and life can’t attack his hockey heart. There’s a life-long, no-trade clause in Collin McKinney’s allegiance to the Caps. He belongs to us.
Fairfax’s Collin McKinney Sees Life Through Hockey
By pucksandbooks
Monday, October 6, 2008
[Part I of II ]
In the moments leading up to my meeting Collin McKinney, 42, of Fairfax, I readied myself for a seriously sad encounter. There are newsworthy triumphs and tragedies in life every day, and all I knew of McKinney was that he was a huge hockey fan and that he’d endured a sudden and unimaginably tragic misfortune a few years back. This was to be a happy hour meeting devoid of the happy, I imagined. But adversity, I learned over the course of two hours in McKinney’s company, even of the most shocking and harrowing kind, can summon untapped resolve and renewed purpose within the afflicted. In Collin McKinney I found the story of a man who endured one of life’s most savage blows, turned to hockey as a comfort on his road to healing, and emerged an inspiration to his Northern Virginia community.
Life in general didn’t deal McKinney, an Arlington native, much of a strong hand to begin with, health-wise. He’s diabetic, and he battles thyroid and heart problems. He also has severe arthritis.
“I have a lot of bills and pills,” he told me with a chuckle.
When I met McKinney in Ballston on a recent Monday night he stood at the very entrance of our restaurant waiting for me, wearing his Alexander Ovechkin Caps’ jersey so that I could easily identify him. I noticed the black sweater enveloping his frail, 150-pound, world-weary frame, and a blind stick in one hand.
Over our first beer he shared with me the tale of his very first Caps’ game, back in 1986. Somebody had given him tickets at work. Collin took his brother to the game.
“I had a blast, and I was hooked,” he told me.
His attendance at Caps’ games in the immediate years that followed was sporadic; working a handful of modest jobs in offices and maintenance, he attended as often as he could on a modest salary. But one visit to the old Capital Centre that featured a Peter Bondra hat trick upped the ante. He became a puckhead of the first order. Today his home is a shrine to all things Capitals — he has three sweaters, signed hats, “every ‘Rock the Red’ towel ever handed out” he noted with pride, and scores of signed player cards and photos. He owns a Caps’ Tiffany glass lamp, a Capitals’ rug, a big wall hanging of Alexander Ovechkin. “T-shirts like you wouldn’t believe,” he emphasized. I asked him how many games he attended during last season’s stirring run to the Southeast division title. “I think pretty much every one,” he told me. McKinney’s email prefix starts out “bonzai.”
“I just love the Caps, I just love hockey,” he told me. “I used to be a giant Redskins’ fan, but that’s taken a back seat to hockey.”
A Life Forever Changed
On May 10, 2001, McKinney, then working his way through more school with three jobs, was in a hallway at his job at Neiman Marcus. He dropped a paper, bent down to retrieve it, and met a brutal fate.
“There was a guy doing trash, and he had a whole bunch of folded over cardboard boxes,” McKinney began. “He came up as I was going down . . . and he caught me across the bridge of the nose.
“Both of my retinas detached.”
In an instant Collin McKinney’s world went black.
“I dropped a piece of paper and my life changed forever,” he said.
He went immediately to an ophthalmologist. “‘You need surgery and you need it now,’ he told me,” McKinney related.
His left eye was operated on first, as it was believed to be the more seriously damaged. That surgery proved moderately successful, and today McKinney has, in conditions of bright light, a tiny bit of vision out of it. But during surgery on his right eye McKinney woke up out of the anesthesia, bringing the procedure to an immediate halt. In the delay between his second surgery on the eye, damaged nerves failed to regenerate. His right eye began to die.
Thirty-plus years of battling diabetes greatly complicated both the surgeries and the recovery.
“Diabetes, what it does, it produces very weak blood vessels in the back of the retina, so they had to go in and laser them, and that’s what caused me, ultimately . . . to lose everything,” he explained.
“What made me blind is my eye would hemorrhage, the blood vessels would burst and my eye would fill up with blood and I couldn’t see through it. I could see for like a week and then all of a sudden I’d have one of these hemorrhages and I’d be blind for four or five months.”
McKinney endured this fluctuation between partial vision and total blindness for fully two years. His right eye literally bled to death. Then it started shrinking.
“Once is started shrinking, it started pressing against the optic nerve, and this went on for five years, and the pain started getting so intense that I had to go on some pretty heavy painkillers,” McKinney told me.
“I don’t know about you,” he added, “but I don’t do drugs very well. It was a pretty ugly time.”
“It was highly depressing,” he said, with obvious understatement. “It got to the point where [the eye] just had to go. That was this past June.
“I finally just said, ‘Look man, it’s gotta go, it’s either that or I gotta go.’ I just couldn’t go on [in that pain].”
McKinney and I were seated in a booth in a chain restaurant surprisingly crowded on a Monday night. As I listened to him detail his tragedy I worried about him getting emotional and overcome with his story’s sadness, but it was apparent early on that I was in the presence of a young man of exceptional fortitude and perseverance. He relayed his circumstances to me without the slightest semblance of self-pity. He’d had seven years to live with his misfortune, and in his narrative there was no account of buckling under the woe.
McKinney went through more surgical procedures and specialist visits than he can tabulate. Neiman Marcus kept him insured for a solid year while he was out of work and receiving treatment initially, but McKinney’s pre-existing conditions transformed a bad accident into a malevolent mishap — one he was left to grapple with with only the support of friends and family.
“It was quite a life-changing event,” he said. “I was scared. I didn’t know to operate as a blind person. To learn all that I had to in mid- life, was . . . a weird stream.”
“I couldn’t take care of myself — I couldn’t see. I couldn’t check my blood sugar levels.”
Fortunately, McKinney has family in Northern Virginia. His father passed years ago, and he moved in with his mother, today his principal caregiver.
“I couldn’t get through my daily existence without her,” he said. “I had to go to a lot of doctors. She got me through all these different surgeries. She knew what I needed.
“Thank God she was there.”
Determined to try and establish some normalcy in his life, McKinney enrolled in Northern Virginia Community College, in some computer training programs. Computer programming, he explained, is a relatively common pursuit by the vision-impaired. But programming he found boring. Next he tried business classes, but the further he went along with those the more he realized how limited he was by virtue of being unable to work in common business software.
McKinney had a friend whose father went blind, and their intervention helped him in his early struggles.
“I was lucky I got a really good teacher who taught me how to get around with a [blind] stick, how to get on Metro.”
He spent “seven or eight” months departing his house only for followup surgeries and doctors’ visits, and another four months after that “just sitting around.”
“I was sitting there in my house trying to figure out what to do with myself.” Continue reading ›
The Selling of a Six Pack to a Southerner
By pucksandbooks
Friday, October 3, 2008
A brand new colleague in my office, Victoria, not yet six weeks in her new gig, hails from Gulfport, Mississippi. She’s a young twenty-something, bright and engaging, and while college on the West Coast and two brief employment stints in D.C. have well dulled her Mississippi drawl, it’s still abundantly clear that she’s a seriously southern girl. We’re happy to have her. Like others her age, Victoria enjoys meeting friends after work for cheap beers at happy hour. As you might imagine, her family, most of whom still reside in Mississippi, has zero connection to the sport of hockey. Victoria has a boyfriend named John who hails from Oregon and who works for the Department of Energy, and Victoria has reported to me that he has no interest in hockey whatsoever. All of this made what the two of them did on Thursday rather startling to me.
I pass Victoria’s work station each morning en route to my office. Thursday morning near 9:00 I was startled to see on her computer screen the Washington Capitals’ web site. She was perusing it. Naturally, I asked her why.
“I didn’t make it to a single game last year,” she told me. “I don’t want that to happen again this year.” Victoria the Delta darling was searching the Caps’ site for hockey tickets for her and her boyfriend.
Turns out, Victoria had been to a Caps’ hockey game before, in 2006, during her first-ever visit to Washington. It made an impression.
“It was fast-paced, high energy, and I loved the way the crowd got into it,” she told me.
“I got the bug I think,” she added.
A bug for hockey!, said the Dixie doll.
Now Victoria’s ticket search became my search on her behalf. Prior to her lone NHL game two seasons back, Victoria had attended a Mississippi Sea Wolves hockey game as a young teenager back home. The Wolves, of the East Coast Hockey League, were once coached by Bruce Boudreau. Fate, I thought.
“That was the first I’d ever seen an ice rink,” she noted with a smile. But it was her experience years later in a big-league rink in the big city that made the lasting impression.
I asked Victoria why she hadn’t made an appearance at a Caps’ game last season, when they’d become so hot a story in town.
“I changed jobs within DOE last year, changed offices, and I was just so busy with all the changes.”
I never push hockey as a cultural experience among my co-workers, but if they stop by my office and ask questions about the sport, I answer, in generous, often gratuitous detail. I’ll give them two-and-a-half hours of my time, if I’m busy, and discuss my game-playing scars, my fake teeth, ‘Slapshot’ and Killer Kaminski. Last season a nuclear engineer from London from our third floor, a very slight former rugby player named Adrian, stopped by my office the morning after watching Alexander Ovechkin for the first time on television.
“You can’t take your eyes off him,” he explained, highly animated, his eyes wide and arms gesturing wildly. “We’d have loved to have had him on our pitch!”
I guided Victoria to the Caps’ ‘Six-Pack’ plans. They seemed budget friendly to a young professional couple. We perused all of the plan options, comparing the ratio of weeknight to weekend games. We decided that the ‘Original Six’ slate was the most appealing, offering as it does both next Saturday’s home opener against the ‘Hawks (sold out) and that snazzy late January Saturday matinee against the Wings.
“Are the Wings good?” Victoria asked me, reminding me, forcefully, of her regional naivete.
She still had to sell the investment to John, but first I wanted to make sure that she could still land that Six Pack, cause I knew tickets were flying fast. I told Victoria to find seats first and make the selljob to John second.
My suspicions were well founded. A Caps’ sales rep informed my Project Puck Convert of that plan’s unavailability. Victoria, I could tell, was close to crestfallen. Now this really became my mission.
“Let me reach out to a friend,” I told her. “No promises, but let me see what I can do.”
Actually, before I could have a phone chat with a Kettler Capitals friend that same sales rep pinged Victoria with the idea of going to the Original Six set but sitting in different seats for the games. Perfect.
“I’ll go with you if John won’t,” I assured.
Victoria’s boyfriend actually put up no resistance at all. In fact, Victoria reported his being excited by the investment.
“He’s excited because I’m excited,” she said.
“Last year, I saw everyone on Metro dressed in their red sweatshirts and their red jerseys,” she explained. “Sometimes, I couldn’t even get on the trains they were so crowded.
“I wanted to be one of them.”
She is.
How a Cup Contender Candidate Is Identified
By pucksandbooks
Thursday, October 2, 2008
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.
Tales of Heroism from Hershey
By pucksandbooks
Monday, September 29, 2008
Be wary of skipping past the comments to our files. For one thing, we think we are regularly on the receiving end of some of the most thoughtful and insightful comments of any hockey blog. For another, there are moments when the sentiments of readers’ hockey hearts are more deserving of publishing than our own . . . as with the instance of a mother discovering a photo published here of her son receiving a hockey stick from Oskar Osala, and her deciding to enrich the lives of OFB bloggers with her family’s fabulous story.
“What a thrill! We are the parents of the young Bears fan who got the stick from Oskar on Friday night. Our son is an obsessed Bears fan, and was over the moon when Oskar handed him that stick. My husband and I are long time Bears fans, and some of our first dates were at games at the old barn. We were at the last game there and the first at Giant Center.
“Friday night was such a great time for us, because we all just love our hockey, but for our family it means a little bit more. Please indulge me with a little story about why we love the Bears, and look forward each season.
“Our son (the one in the photo) was born in Guatemala. He was still there waiting for our adoption to be completed when he was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 9 months. He began treatment while still in Guatemala, and continued treatment when he came home to us in October of 2003, just after his first birthday. We were thrilled when his Oncologist at Hershey Medical Center told us that despite the fact that he was on Chemo, we could still take him to the Bears games. Our son LOVED hockey from the first minute. It was hysterical to watch him so focused on the game. He was so funny trying to move around and watch around those “rookies” who would get up during play. We were able to continue to take him to all of the games.
“He was treated with Chemotherapy until July of 2004. We thought all was clear until March of 2006 when he had a local recurrence of the cancer and once again had to start Chemo, and this time also with radiation. He treated that [treatment] from March until August of 2006.
“We were fortunate to have many friends and fellow hockey fans who arranged at that time for Bruce to meet Frederic Cassivi, and from that first meeting our son had found a favorite. The Cassivis were so good to us, and over the years we have come to call them friends. We were able to make every home game of the playoffs and of the Calder Cup Final, in between lengthy stays at the hospital. Just after the Calder Cup win, we were able to go to the party at the Giant Center, and the photos we have of our son and Frederic with the Cup are ones we will treasure forever. Our son had no hair and was obviously sick, but his smile is the only thing you notice in those photos. Frederic and his family came to visit Bruce in the hospital, and so did Coco the Bear. I have to tell you that we felt incredibly special to be part of such a wonderful Bears family.
“Bruce is now 2 years off treatment and is doing fantastic. He is healthy and doing everything that an almost 6-year-old should be doing, and more.
“We try to get to as many practices as we can, and we love going to the Arena because we can be so close to the players.
“The bottom line is that we also love that old Arena . . . my husband and I love it because it means a lot to us to have started our lives together at the games, but we especially love it because our son LOVES it even more . . . he can climb all over the seats and get right up next to the glass to tease with the players and try to pick out the ones he already knows.
“And every now and then he can make a connection with a player like Oskar . . . a young kid himself who took the time to stop and say hello to a little hockey fan, and to offer something that to Oskar was just one of his sticks, but to our son it was magic . . . a link to a player that means so much . . . and a moment that brought tears to his mother’s eyes.
“Thanks for that, Oskar . . . and thanks to the Arena for the memories that were and the new ones that are still being made.”
Open File: Duchesne Cup Championship
By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
[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 ›
It’s Getting Dazzling in the Competition for the Duchesne Cup
By pucksandbooks
Monday, September 22, 2008
This Gaetan Duchesne Cup competition, I’m starting to really dig it; I think the Caps may well wanna keep it around a while. Sunday’s first scrimmage was entertaining and good fun, but Monday’s, which featured Alexander Ovechkin in a competitive environment for the first time in the 2008 camp, was on a whole ‘nother level of spectator feast. Play today was a good deal more wide open than on Sunday.
Ovi — it’s no longer “Ovie”; the re-branding apparently took place over the summer, and among some good-natured ribbing in the media work area over the weekend, the WaPost beat reporter was tagged “Tariki” — wasn’t first out of the dressing room for today’s noon scrimmage, he was second. Slacker.
I imagine one Keith Aucoin might remember this September in tales years hence to his grandchildren. He found himself at center at puck-drop today between Ovechkin and Viktor Kozlov.
It was A versus C today, with Squad C in a must-win role. During the 10:00 a.m. opening session only the self-employed and vacationing were in attendance (about a dozen of us). But as noon neared, a very healthy ‘businessman’s special’ for hockey mushroomed — there were probably a couple of hundred on hand.
Forget about Hershey, Michal Neuvirth made a compelling case for the Caps keeping him in D.C. this season on Monday — he was under a barrage in the first stanza and turned aside all but one shot. Many of his stops were scintillating. Ovechkin dashed and dangled and lasered shot after shot. Mike Green made like Bobby Orr — over and over again. Karl Alzner continued to impress, including thwarting a bull-rushing Ovechkin in the first stanza with seeming ease. Sami Lepisto looked slick and poised. Eric Fehr is creating a buzz this camp with a cannon shot. And a center-right wing combo slated for Hershey this season — Mathieu Perreault and Francois Bouchard, excelling for a second consecutive day — was so often the authors of odd-man breaks that it looked like they were perpetually playing on the man advantage. Rather early on Squad C coaches Jay Leach and Mark French flipped their initial top line of Nylander with Chris Clark and Tomas Fleischmann (who played very well in their own right) and gave big-time minutes to Perreault and Bouchard. They were double-shifted; they were rested for a single shift and returned to the ice; they were used once for the entirety of a power play; they were everywhere. They were that good.
Bouchard’s skating, perhaps a weakness in his draft year, is vastly improved. Perreault is an impact pro hockey player — right now. Ovechkin had him lined up for an open-ice shoulder smash-a-roo that the under-sized Quebecois pivot deftly avoided, keeping the play moving up ice. In the offensive zone he consistently managed to maintain puck control and create time and space and scoring opportunity for his linemates.
Is there a commuter train to Hershey from Union Station — one that leaves every Friday say at 4:00?
Neuvirth was opposed by Brent Johnson at the other end. Michael Nylander opened the scoring by finishing a scramble that ensued after Neuvirth made a heart-stopping snuff-out of a Chris Clark one-timer from his center. And Squad C really controlled play in the opening, running 30 minutes of clock. There was no shot counter, but had there been, it might have read 18-5 for the team in white.
In the second frame, Varlamov replaced Neuvirth and Daren Machesney replaced BJ. Squad B got its act a bit more together in the 20 minutes that followed a prolonged intermission (three passes of the Zam (Olympia, actually) were required to generate a playable sheet — that’s how hard and fast a skate started the scrimmage). Near 5 minutes in, Viktor Kozlov missiled a wicked wrister through a dense scramble in front of ‘Cheese’s net that no one saw to knot things at a goal apiece. B’s pressure later generated a 5-on-3 power play advantage, and would you believe it, Quintin Laing successfully hurled his body at an Ovechkin point blast to help keep things even.
In the third frame, Chris Bourque tallied with 6:53 left, but Chris Clark lasered a top right shelf snap shot past Varlamov (it was Nylander’s second point on the day) with a little over three minutes left. After the scrimmage ending horn and some uncertainty as to how to reach a conclusion, Gabby, taking in the scrimmage from on high with the owner and GM, barked down instructions to shoot it out. Kozlov and Ovi scored for B, and Chris Clark’s failed shot rendered his squad eliminated from the inaugural Gaetan Duschesne Cup.
Tarik shared with me some fast-emerging details about the Duchesne Cup trophy. The team has apparently spent upwards of $500 on it, commissioning it from afar, and is working desperately to get it to camp in time for a timely presentation.
Your four stars of the scrimmage, as awarded by this blogger:
1. Michal Neuvirth. (Yes he played only half the game, but he was that good.)
2. The Perreault-Bouchard combo
3. Mike Green
4. Mike Denney, Caps’ season ticket holder, visitor this past weekend to Portland, Maine, from whence he returned with a 12-pack of Shipyard seasonal — one of America’s great microbrews — and presented it to moi before noon Monday. Now that’s a way to start a vacation. Incidentally, there is no sign at Kettler that reads, ‘Do Not Feed the Bloggers Beer.’ Just sayin.
Travel Agents Need Not Apply: My R&R at the September Rink
By pucksandbooks
Monday, September 22, 2008
Welcome to my vacation. This week I have friends recreating in Switzerland, Canada, and Virginia Beach. Meanwhile, I’m spending my week-long R&R at Kettler Capitals. No offense to my traditional vacation-traveling friends, but I think mine the most alluring, fulfilling, and restorative of getaways. And yes, most exotic. You could offer me a cruise, a secluded and gorgeously rustic mountain chalet, a week in a massive suite at a 5-star, swanky hotel in a happening town, and I’d turn them all down in favor of my perch in the rink atop a parking garage.
About five or so years ago I began the puck-afflicted habit of of burning a week’s leave at opening week of Capitals’ training camp. I travel enough as it is with my day job, but even if I were a desk jockey I’d still make this annual pilgrimage. At the risk of overstatement, it carries and delivers a genuinely spiritual dimension for me. I guess it has something to do with being a native Washingtonian and being in love with the game and being a survivor of the Save the Caps campaign way back when and never tiring of watching world-class hockey players up close and personal. I just don’t take for granted that this magnificent sport resides in my hometown, and so at the very start of each new season I schedule a series of dates with it to feed and express my affection.
I understand perfectly well the allure of soothing breezes on tropical islands, or golf getaways out in flesh-friendly temps. But this week I’m watching world-class hockey and blogging in bluejeans and a sweatshirt in a well-refrigerated rink, among friends; at the end of this week my skin will be Elmer’s Glue pasty white, but my hockey heart will be euphoric.
Each morning this week I’ll Metro down to Ballston and leisurely sip coffee and chat puck for hours each day with the likes of Mike Vogel, Corey Masisak, Tarik El Bashir, Lisa Hillary, Nate Ewell, and perhaps a couple of bloggers who’ve snuck out of the office for an hour or so to take in some scrimmaging. Over the years I’ve known colleagues who’ve burned a week’s leave merely on long-neglected household chores. My week is much better than that.
For my friends in Canada, my vacation — far from requiring a defense or justification — is viewed as a literal fantasy camp, the type of week they’d very willingly plop down $2,500 to replicate.
Late last Friday afternoon the parting exchange I had with my boss was rather amusing.
“So where are you going next week?” he asked.
“A parking garage in Ballston,” I replied.
“How exotic,” he returned.
Beyond getting reacquainted with rink friends after summer’s adjournment, week 1 of camp typically delivers September’s special storyline: that unheralded individual who seizes the attention of the coaching staff and the media, catching them completely off guard, breaking through and injecting a palpable buzz in camp with his play. It happens just about every camp, and it’s something special. It’s Jan Benda one year, Matt Herr and Jacub Cutta another. Alexander Volchkov remains one of the most impressive training camp performers I’ve ever seen. It’s absolutely true: he could do things with the puck that his countryman Ovechkin a decade later can’t even dream of. I hate how thoroughly wretched and fleeting his career turned out to be, but still I savor some of the dazzling displays he authored in drills and scrimmages.
That’s the other thing about camp — you see on display the elite hockey player’s full compliment of toolbox treats. Over the weekend I watched transfixed as Alexander Semin scooped up a puck and dangled it on his blade in the air, as if he were a lacrosse player, while skating fairly quickly. During camp, players always are on the ice early, sometimes many minutes before scheduled drills, just because they want to be. I love that about them. If you merely attend games guys then are carrying out the coach’s system, and reacting to the conditions of the game that night. But here, at the dawn of a new season, among the even the oldest players, you see the enthusiasm of a boy at play. Donald Brashear was tossing a puck across the full width of a newly made sheet of ice yesterday — still very wet — with Alexander Semin. But they weren’t snapping hard, accurate passes onto one another’s blades but rather lofting soft tosses that often landed near the feet of one another; it appeared to me that they were trying to make small splashes onto one another.
One day this week my old man will drive over the Bay Bridge really early one morning and take in a full morning and early afternoon of camp with me. He rang me over the weekend to find out what time he should leave, taking account of traffic of course, so that we were seated in the stands in time for the very first drill of the day.
I can’t wait for him to get here.
Ten Top Storylines for the Start of Training Camp 2008
By pucksandbooks
Saturday, September 20, 2008
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.
Training Camp Day One Cursory Musings
By pucksandbooks
Saturday, September 20, 2008
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.
Something Big Is Already Built
By pucksandbooks
Friday, September 19, 2008
In a very real sense, the Ballston Massacre yesterday represented the culmination of the Capitals’ rebuild. Last September, Capitals’ owner Ted Leonsis decreed that the rebuild was over, asserting that his young team was primed for playoff contention. But being rebuilt as both Leonsis and General Manager George McPhee targeted 5 years ago, I believe, means more than that; I believe it is represented by what we’re seeing out at Kettler this September: the parent club enjoying the chic designation as Cup contender, and certainly an across-the-board classification as elite in the East. But also, concurrently, below them, resides a dozen-plus dazzling talents in juniors and the minor pros. With the team’s scouts consistently identifying gems in each year’s draft, the organization’s talent pipeline is annually replenished.
Yesterday’s 7-0 shellacking of Philly — a game that wasn’t anywhere near as close as the score indicated — means nothing. And everything. Nearly every single member of what will constitute the Capitals’ opening night lineup next month was standing hard by the glass in one corner, following the action intently. They were drawn there, presumably, by the novelty of yesterday’s matinee: the first-ever NHL exhibition in the facility. But they’re all also computer literate and not oblivious to the buzz that’s been circulating on line this week about the likes of John Carlson, Oskar Osala, Simeon Varlamov, Mathieu Perreault, and scores more recently acquired kids. A well rebuilt organization, I’d submit, is one in which the present is a consensus contender as well as one within which the vets are checking the rear view mirror for skilled and fast-skating youth, hard charging on their heels.
It is true that the Flyers yesterday were without two prime young talents, Claude Giroux and JVR. Neither, however, plays defense or tends goal, and suited up they might have succeeded in making the score 7-3. The Caps, it should be noted, were also without a pair of first-round talents (Joe Finley and Anton Gustafsson). Interestingly, the heavy duty damage inflicted yesterday came from the very late rounds and even free agency: Travis Morin, Mathieu Perreault, Steve Pinizzotto, Viktor Dovgan, Jay Beagle. Oskar Osala was conspicuous throwing his fourth-round weight around.
A veteran puckhead follower of the Caps needed about one hour of the opening day of autumn skating out at Kettler to see the difference that 5 years has made in the organization’s acquisition and development of prospects. That was the emerging theme for me during an upwards of 5 hours spent there on Sunday, and listening to voices far more expert than mine ruminate on the breadth and quality of this organization’s personnel.
Once upon a time, veteran members of the beat pack told me, the Washington Capitals made a habit of hurtling highly drafted kids more or less straight into the big-league lineup, with hardly any apprenticeship in the minors, and shortsightedly shortchanging their development. Jacub Cutta’s presence at 2008’s training camp is an instructive case in point. Back in 2000, Cutta arrived in Washington as an 18-year-old rookie out of Swift Current of the WHL. He had an outstanding camp that autumn, without question. He certainly was one of the best six or seven rearguard performers then. But really, shouldn’t he have been patted on the back, commended for his competitiveness, and immediately returned to the W for at least another year, rather than thrust into the opening night lineup? Then head coach Ron Wilson, himself a former NHL rearguard, must have assumed that he could manage Cutta’s rookie year just fine.
In reality, though, how many 18-year-old defensemen are ready for an 82-game NHL season?
The Capitals did return Cutta to Swift Current, where he played fewer than 50 games in 2000-01. But it’s possible he did so with some sense of failure, his development cycle oddly meandering at its outset.
Others classified as very youthful could be identified as having been microwaved into the big leagues during the first half of this decade – Brian Sutherby, Kris Beech, Steve Eminger. Today, however, there’s a whole new mindset in place when it comes to developing prospects, and this, joined by now consistently adept drafting and superb pro scouting, has the Capitals in 2008 right where management dreamed of five years ago.
Of the 67 players who will skate at Kettler Capitals in Rookie and Training camps this month, fully 23 were drafted in either the first or second rounds of the NHL draft. All are accorded an appropriate apprenticeship. Just as encouraging is the emrgence of contribtor and star quality potential from later rounds (Osala, Perreault, Lepisto, Dovgan). Those of you who paid a visit to Kettler this week before the vets (save Ovechkin!) reported, found a compelling reason to go out so early: there were really good hockey players all over the ice.
I cannot make mention of these changed fortunes without acknowledging the wholesale change in media acknowledgment of the role that a robust development pipeline now plays in the organization’s overall health. Once upon a time, we who cared greatly about the weekly progress of draft picks had a lone web address (hockeysfuture) to peruse. In season the beat reporters of both big papers will chronicle the feats of the kids in juniors and down on the farm. As will the blogs. The Caps’ web site is metastasizing into a multi-media warehouse of feats present and years-off promisi