By now many Capitals fans have undoubtedly heard of both Nicklas Backstrom’s place amongst Calder finalists and Alex Ovechkin’s place among Hart (MVP) finalists.

Today brought more accolades for members of the Capitals organization, as Coach Bruce Boudreau was announced as one of the finalists for the Jack Adams Award (coach of the year) and top prospect Karl Alzner laid claim to both the Western Hockey League’s Top Defenseman and Player of the Year honors.

The significance of Boudreau’s nomination can measured in part by his competition: the other finalists for the Adams Award are Mike Babcock (Detroit) and Guy Carbonneau (Montreal). Babcock’s Red Wings finished with 54 wings and 114 points, both tops in the NHL, and Carbonneau’s Canadiens finished with 104 points, the most in the East.

Alzner, the fifth overall pick in the 2007 Entry Draft, captained both the the WHL’s regular season Eastern Conference champion Calgary Hitmen and the gold medal winning Canadian team at the World Juniors tournament. Past winners of the Four Broncos Memorial Trophy (WHL MVP) include Cam Ward, Eric Fehr, Steve Konowalchuk, Joe Sakic and Jarome Iginla. Past winners of the Bill Hunter Memorial Trophy (WHL’s best defenseman) include Dion Phaneuf, Brendan Witt, Jason Smith and Chris Phillips.

From Barry Melrose Rocks:

Thanks to a tipster, I have found out about an injustice taking over our Wikipedias at this hour. Apparently, some Flyers fan out there is a little pissed that Barry Melrose isn’t crying foul for the Flyers over a play that happened last night. So, in retaliation, said fan is taking it to Melrose’s Wikipedia page. Because that’s a logical conclusion. I’m also still trying to figure out what point it is supposed to prove. More on that later. That is, if I can figure it out.

From Wikipedia:

Barry Melrose (born July 15, 1956 in Kelvington, Saskatchewan) is a former hockey player, coach, and general manager, and is currently a commentator for ESPN. He is a poor commentator with no edge. He completely ignored the outrageous call on the Flyers in game one of their series on 25-April-2008. He has given up the right to fight for what is right, simply because he wants to keep his sweet job.

Folks, we simply cannot let idiots like this run our internets. If there’s an outrageous call, I don’t see why a commentator can be blamed. They’re allowed to agree or disagree. Since when did we stop haggling the referees?!?

Oh and next time you want to pull a fast one like this, you should probably check your dates. The Flyers didn’t play tonight. Idiot.

Unsurprisingly, Melrose’s Wikipedia page has already been fixed.

While this the case of just one knucklehead Flyer fan bringing bitching into the 21st century, it’s pretty funny the Flyer faithful are finding new ways to express their “us against the world” attitude.

Well, the season’s over, so it’s only natural to look ahead to next year. In that spirit, here’s how some of the Capitals’ best prospects fared in 2007-08.

Karl Alzner (Defense, Calgary Hitmen, WHL)- The statistics for Alzner were impressive: 36 points in 60 regular season games, a +26 rating in the regular season and six goals in the 16 playoffs games the Hitmen played before being swept out of the playoffs in the WHL’s semi-final round. But Alzner’s talens go beyond what can represented via statistics: he captained both the WHL’s Eastern Conference Hitmen and the gold medal winning Canadian team at the World Juniors. Nothing is set in stone, but there’s a very good chance that Alzner could break camp with the Capitals next season.

Francois Bouchard (Right Wing, Hershey Bears, AHL) - Bouchard finished up his QMJHL career with Baie-Comeau Drakkar quite well, finishing eight in the ‘Q’ with 92 points and sixth in assists with 56, and has since joined the Bears for their playoff run. Although the Capitals are a little unsettled on the right wing after Viktor Kozlov and Chris Clark, the organization is likely going to want Bouchard to get at least one season of professional experience under his belt before they call him up for any extended period of time.

Chris Bourque (Right Wing/Left Wing, Hershey Bears, AHL) - Bourque had a solid season in 2007-08, highlighted by his NHL debut in Atlanta and a four goal night in Hershey. Like Bouchard, Bourque will probably get a look because the Capitals depth chart gets muddled on the wing after the first couple lines. Unlike Bouchard, Bourque has the attitude and experience to be a legitimate option as a depth player for the Capitals. His odds are probably largely dependent on whether or not Sergei Fedorov and Matt Cooke re-sign.

Joe Finley (Defense, North Dakota Fighting Sioux, WCHA) - In between a couple controversial incidents, Finley picked up 15 points (including four goals) for the Fighting Sioux while leading the team with a +24 rating. Finley hasn’t said whether or not he plans to forgo his final season at North Dakota and turn pro, but even if he does the towering defenseman is likely to need 50-100 games of NHL experience before he’s NHL ready.

Josh Godfrey (Defense, Hershey Bears) - The 2007 second rounder with the big shot lit the lamp 17 times this season for his OHL Sault Ste Marie Greyhounds, and scored 41 goals over his last two years in the league, a span of 128 games. Like Alzner, Godfrey was a member of Canada’s gold medal winning team at the World Juniors. It’s very unlikely Godfrey would make the Capitals out of camp, but it’s possible he could get a callup at some point in 2008-09, if for nothing other than to primarily man the point on the second powerplay unit.

Sami Lepisto (Defense, Hershey Bears, AHL) - Lepisto got his first taste of NHL action this year, playing in seven games for the Capitals. The callup was well deserved: Lepisto had four goals and 41 assists in 55 games for the Bears and his +29 rating led the Bears and was third in the AHL. Lepisto’s future depends in large part on Brian Pothier. If Pothier ends up having to retire due to his concussion-related issues, there’s a good chance the Capitals will keep Lepisto on their roster to fill his spot. If Pothier is able to come back, Lepisto still stands a very good chance at making the Caps, but it’s likely his playing time won’t be as significant.

Michal Neuvirth (Goalie, Oshawa General, OHL) - Neuvirth played for three OHL teams this season, compiling an aggregate 17-7-5 record with a 3.11 GAA and a .910 save percentage. Barring some unforeseen set of circumstances, Neuvirth will start next season in either South Carolina (ECHL) or Hershey (AHL).

Mathieu Perreault (Center, Hershey Bears) - Perreault led the QMJHL in points (114) and assists (80) in 2007-08. The 2006 sixth rounder joined the Bears at the end of their playoff run, playing three games without registering a point. With Nicklas Backstrom, Michael Nylander, David Steckel and Boyd Gordon already firmly entrenched in D.C. (along with the fact the Capitals probably want to see Perreault add some bulk to his 166 pound frame), Perreault will likely spend 2008-09 in Hershey.

Sasha Pokulok (Defense, South Carolina Stingrays, ECHL) - Pokulok hasn’t progressed the way the Capitals would have liked and he was sent down to South Carolina (ECHL) after 44 games with the Bears. Pokulok performed well in the East Coast League, notching six assists in five regular season games and four assists in ten playoff games. Still, questions remain about Pokulok’s durability and mobility. Pokulok will most likely start next year with Hershey.

Keith Seabrook (Defense, Calgary Hitmen, WHL) - Seabrook struggled through a disappointing season for the Hitmen in 2007-08, notching only four goals and 13 assists in 59 games. On the plus side, Seabrook was a +4 on the season, although that number might not be where Caps fans would want to see it either, considering that the regular season Eastern Conference winning Hitmen had 15 player with better ratings.

Semen Varlamov (Goalie, Lokomotiv Yaroslavl , RSL) - Varlamov gained a great deal of valuable experience this past season, playing in 44 games for his Russian team, going 27-15-0 and posting a 2.45 GAA.

Even though they have been eliminated, there’s still a decent among of news coming out of the Capitals’ camp today:

• Nicklas Backstrom was announced as one of the finalists for the Calder Trophy today. Not surprisingly, the other finalists were Chicago rookies Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews. Each has a knock on them: the two Blackhawks have the potential to cancel one another out and Backstrom suffers from the “anyone would have a good year playing with Ovechkin” attitude. I personally think Backstrom deserves the trophy because he has the best all-around game at this point. Kane is an offensive force, but is unpolished on defense and Toews is a very good defender and physical player, but he doesn’t have the offensive skill to make the kids of plays Kane and Backstrom can.
• Olaf Kolzig has taken his nameplate off his locker and skipped a mandatory team meeting. To me, this suggest Kolzig doesn’t consider himself a part of the team any longer. Guess it’s time to open those contract negotiations with Cristobal Huet and try and get him signed before the Capitals end up taking a chance on Ray Emery.
• The defense situation is starting to get complicated: Brian Pothier’s career may be finished and Steve Eminger is expected to get a qualifying offer. Hopefully Pothier does what’s best for himself and his family in the long term, even if it isn’t the best for his NHL career. As for Eminger, the Caps should bring him back. He’s better than John Erskine and is more consistent and has more offensive upside than Milan Jurcina. A defense corps of Mike Green, Tom Poti, Shaone Morrisonn, Steve Eminger and some combination of Jurcina, Karl Alzner and Sami Lepisto sounds pretty good to me (especially if the Capitals adress their need for a physical defense-first defenseman as well).
• The covert operations have ended for this season and the Caps have subsequently let the cat out of the bag on injuries. Per Tarik El-Bashir: “Boudreau said that defenseman Shaone Morrisonn played the past two weeks with broken jaw, which made it tough for him to eat. He also said Mike Green was hampered with hip pointer (suffered in Game 6) and a foot injury last game, and that Boyd Gordon had a torn hamstring in the playoffs. Boudreau also said Ovechkin was suffering from a nagging injury, which is why he didn’t practice for the last month of the regular season.”

Lastly, for now, I’ll leave you with this quote from Matt Bradley, which sums up how most Capitals fans are probably feeling today:

“It’s going to take a while for this to sink in. What we did this season was good, I guess, but we still could have gone a lot further in this.”

or: How the NHL’s Feel Good Story of the Year Became an Embarrassment to the League

Capitals 2, Flyers 3 (OT)

The Capitals first playoff series in five years, along with the team’s most exciting season in a decade, came to an unceremonious end at Verizon Center last night as Joffrey Lupul tucked a rebound behind Caps goaltender Cristobal Huet to win the game, and the series, for his Flyers.

This series held so much potential for the NHL: a matchup of past Patrick Division rivals, the league’s most exciting player in Alex Ovechkin, most improved teams in the Caps and Flyers, the feel-good story of the year and even the “good versus evil” angle pitched as the plucky comeback kids battled the reincarnation of the Broad Street Bullies. Yet the story of this series was officiating from Game 1 until Game 7 and ultimately played an undeniable role in the series’ outcome.

Capitals fans will be upset about the Flyers’ second goal last night’s game and rightfully so: it was an embarrassingly bad missed interference call on the part of the referees. But it’s not as if this were the only bad call (or non-call) and it’s not as if the poor officiating never benefited the Capitals; to insist otherwise would be sour grapes. But between the non-calls on the Flyers who goaltender interference throughout the series, the bad call for goalie interference by Viktor Kozlov, a missed double-minor high stick by Nicklas Backstrom on Mike Richards, the officials not noticing the puck going out of play in last night’s game and too many missed interference calls to count (it’s illegal to set a pick in the NHL now, shouldn’t referees know that?), the NHL came across as a league unable to drag competent officials out even for a playoff series.* The result: what could have been a shining moment for the league instead became an embarrassment, the only saving grace being the hope that the casual fans the NHL would have been appealing to in this series don’t know enough about the game to realize how much of an impact the referees had.

As much of a right as Capitals fans have to complain the problem here goes well beyond this game and this team - with how closely this series was contested and the repeated poor officiating, it’s impossible to say how things would have played out if the referees had done well, and it’s certainly no guarantee that the Capitals would have won.

The larger issue is a league-wide one. The NHL is doing a pretty good job of crawling its way back towards respectability in the major sports world: ratings on Versus and NBC are up, attendance appears to be up, Sidney Crosby and Ovechkin are true “crossover” stars, the league’s Winter Classic was well received and many nontraditional markets are being revitalized. But many long-term fans have noticed the deteriorating officiating over the last couple seasons, a problem which seems to getting worse almost every game. It seems strange, but the problem of the NHL’s rapid expansion might not be spreading the hockey talent too thin but rather in coming up with enough people to adequately officiate these games.

*It’s also worth noting that, excluding automatic penalties like high sticking and puck-over-the-glass and matching roughing, slashing and fighting calls, the officials called 27 first period penalties, 20 second period penalties and 13 third period penalties. Sure there’s bound to be some discrepancy but fewer than half the number of calls in the third than in the first? That’s a clear example of referees putting their whistles away. While that approach has it’s proponents, the fact is that a penalty in the game’s first minute should also be a penalty in its last minute.

We’ve all heard about how Jaromir Jagr has stepped things up when his team has needed it. Given that, it’s nice that Jagr is finding another way to make an ass of himself:

Capitals 3, Flyers 2

I’ve never really been one to believe that a young team needs to “learn” how to win playoffs games. After all, a team is playing the same sport they’ve played countless hours in their lives to that point and although playoffs games do have a different feel, one would expect the players to be prepared for them given how much the players do know about hockey. Yet it seems that almost every year a young, talented team fails to live up to its promise in the postseason.

Thus far this year it has been the Washington Capitals, who dropped three straight to the Philadelphia Flyers after a comeback victory in the first game of the series between the two teams. The Capitals do appear to be learning however: they played much better in Game 4 than in Game 3, and better in Game 5 than in Game 4. Given the Capitals’ impressive run to end the season and the fact that they seem to be finding their groove the question is: is the pressure now on the Flyers?

After all, the orange and black missed their first opportunity to close out the series on Saturday afternoon when they let the Capitals come out and dictate the flow of play. Game 6 is going to be the Flyers best chance to close out the Capitals because if they lose the Capitals going in to a Game 7 at home, with momentum. While the Flyers do have the home ice advantage, the home ice advantage comes with pressure; pressure not just to win but to win in style and to please the crowd (especially in Philadelphia, where fans can be…unforgiving, to say the least). The Flyer faithful love their team’s Broad Street Bullies persona and that, coupled with the fact that Capitals controlled the physical play on Saturday, means the Flyers have the potential to put themselves on the penalty kill both early and often. Playing against a Capitals team that’s clicking on the powerplay for the first time this postseason the Flyers could be down and out if they succumb to the pressure of trying to close out the series at home and become undisciplined.

Capitals 3, Flyers 4 (OT)

For the first time this season, the Capitals lost a must-win game, and in heartbreaking fashion too. Allowing Mike Knuble the time and space to get two good whacks at the puck in the second overtime session cost the Caps the game and will send them home down 3-1 in their first playoff series in five years.

It wouldn’t necessarily be unfair for Capitals supporters to question some of the officiating during last night’s game (and after this season the league should definitely run a clinic for its officials on “goaltender interference” and when setting a moving pick is supposed to be a penalty these days), the Capitals have by and large shot themselves in the foot in this series, going the better part of the first three games with nothing in the way of clearing their crease, crashing the Philadelphia net, or consistent forechecking, all while trying to do too much with the puck. The good news is that the Capitals seem to have corrected these problems. The bad news is, of course, that they’re now down 3-1 in this series.

Do the Capitals have one more great comeback left in them? Should they even have hope of winning this series? History, statistics, the series to this point and perhaps even common sense say ‘no’. But if there’s any team, in any year, that can do it, it’s this team, this year. The most important thing for the Capitals to remember at this point is that they can only make up one game at a time. The focus needs to be on wining in front of their home crowd on Saturday afternoon and trying to garner some momentum. If they can do that, well….hey, you never know.

Sometimes I wonder if there really are sports gods. Then I remember than no major Philadelphia team has won a championship in nearly 25 years.

During the Capitals 2-0 loss to the Flyers is became pretty readily apparent that they need to make some changes to their gameplan if they hope to succeed in picking the win in at least one of the two games they have this week in Philadelphia. The changes that need to made include:

(1) Scratch John Erskine. This isn’t number one necessarily because I think it’s the most important one, but I do think it’s the most obvious. Erskine can hit pretty well and he can fight, but that’s about all he has going for him; for Erskine a successful game is one where he doesn’t give up a scoring chance because of his suspect skating ability or take an unnecessary penalty. I like Erskine as a reserve defenseman but why he’s playing while Steve Eminger, who’s quicker, more agile and has more offensive upside, sits in the press box is a mystery to me.

(2) Improve play in front of the nets. It didn’t come back to bite the Caps in Game 2 but they were still letting the Flyers have far too easy a time setting up in front of Cristobal Huet, and that’s something the Capitals aren’t going to be able to get away with for an entire series. At the other end Caps players are going to the net but they’re doing so only to look for rebounds and as a result aren’t creating near enough havoc in front of the Philadelphia net in terms of screens, potential deflections and drawing penalties.

(3) Simplify. In the neutral zone this means looking for a pass, only carrying the puck when there’s space and dumping it when necessary (I’m lookin’ at you, Ovechkin, Green and Semin). In the offensive zone this means getting pucks to the net, getting traffic in front of the net and battling in the slot for rebounds rather than endlessly passing the puck while looking for a perfect chance. Last game the Capitals passed up more good scoring chances that I could count.

None of these changes are particularly complex, but I’d expect each of them to pay dividends.