Monthly Archives: May 2009

How would you rate the Capitals’ season?
“I have never had anything like that in my career. I was playing for a team that from the first game of the regular season was considered one of the favorites in the East. I was trusted [by the coach]. And in the end we went to the quarter finals of the Stanley Cup. I liked the season. It was difficult, but interesting at least because we were winning a lot.” Continue reading →

We offer up our assessment of individual Caps’ performances this past season for the express purpose of soliciting yours. Tell us what you think of each player based on what you saw.
Note the two grades for each player: one for regular season, one for post-season (e.g., “A / D” for Mike Green). “I” represents an Incomplete Grade. Continue reading →

This past weekend in Hershey, I sat near and among pro scouts from the Caps, the Bruins, the Flyers, the Senators, and the Avalanche, and while a press box full of scouts rarely views any individual hockey player with unanimity of assessment, when it comes to John Carlson, I learned, they do. Early on in Saturday night’s game one in the AHL’s Eastern conference finals a scout from a rival NHL Eastern conference team pointed out Carlson’s beyond-his-years savviness in calmly clearing a puck from a difficult spot in his own end against a fast-skating, far more experienced set of checkers from the Providence Bruins. Continue reading →

For the second consecutive evening I am seated in the Giant Center press box about five feet away from former Flyers’ peacekeeper Dave Brown. Am I intimidated? Well, let’s just say that it’s always “Mr. Brown” in my addresses to him, and I am what might be termed deferential when we simultaneously pursue refreshments. Continue reading →

The Washington Post’s expansive coverage of the Capitals extended to its editorial page this past Friday, where John Feinstein authored a magnificent assessment of Washington’s metamorphosis into a hockey town. “Every once in a while,” Feinstein wrote, “the scoreboard doesn’t tell the whole story. In the case of the Washington Capitals’ 2008-09 season . . . the journey was more important than the outcome.” Continue reading →

Game one of the American League’s Eastern conference finals Saturday night will be remembered for the play that wasn’t made, when in fact it should be remembered for the period that wasn’t played (the first, by the hosts). Continue reading →

The Times’ Corey Masisak has a nice rundown of both the injuries Caps’ players competed with this postseason and the status of some key personnel issues: Continue reading →

Day 1 orphaned from our team — it’s the toughest day of the calendar year. We’re like nomads of sport, a clan of wanderers searching in vain for some engagement with our team. It rang true and sour and somber for me Thursday morning in a way it never had before. I rode Metro to and from the office, and on both trips the cars I rode and others I saw pass through the system were disconcertingly, disspiritingly free of our team’s color, after so many months of flowering there in red. I was, suddenly, a commuter in a city without color. Continue reading →

Thirty minutes before game 7 I said to a circle of new media mates high up in Verizon Center that my gut was telling me that the dam may well burst, that so much of the preceding hockey in this … Continue reading →