Last season was supposed to be the Capitals' year.
If the NHL had stuck to its storyline in year 1 AC (After Crosby), Alex Ovechkin would have hoisted the Stanley Cup after eliminating Sid the Kid in the Eastern Conference playoffs.
After Act I -- the regular season -- things were going according to the script. The Caps cruised to the Presidents Trophy for being the top team in the league. The team became a scary offensive juggernaut. And coach Bruce Boudreau became a TV sensation by starring in some entertaining commercials.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Stanley Cup parade route through Chinatown to end Act II. The Montreal Canadiens came to town and decided to adlib. They threw away the script and found holes in the plot.
In other words, they exposed the Caps for who they were -- a highly entertaining regular-season powerhouse that wasn't built for a long playoff run.
Seven games in, Washington's season was over. And the stars on the Verizon Center stage were left wondering why the play was canceled so soon. (And who the heck was that stunt double playing the role of Jaroslav Halak, anyway?!?)
So with a new season upon us (starting Friday night in Atlanta), the script has changed. Hopefully the Caps know their roles have changed, as well. No longer is it enough to play fancy, crowd-pleasing hockey during the regular season. This team has to develop into a playoff-ready squad engineered to not only reach the Stanley Cup Finals, but win the whole damn thing.
"It's a whole new world starting this weekend," Boudreau said.
But hold your horses, folks. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. There's still Act I to get through.
"A month before the season you realize, 'OK, we have to do 82 more games before we get another chance, so it's tough on your mind," defenseman Mike Green said.
Preparing for that long playoff run is what the focus should be on, not individual records for goals and points.
"We won the Presidents Trophy and beat some records (last season), but I think what we need right now ... is to be ready for the playoffs, not just the regular year," Ovechkin said.
So what does that mean? How does a team that dominated the league a year ago during the regular season improve? It's all about learning not just how to win 6-5 hockey games, but also how to win 1-0 games, and being able to play either style on a moment's notice.
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You can liken the dilemma at the Phone Booth to that at the Igloo in Pittsburgh in the early 1990s. Mario Lemieux, the best player in the game at the time, led a high-scoring attack much like Ovechkin's Caps. But the team wasn't willing to play the dirty, grind-it-out style of hockey necessary to win a Cup. It took that team a coaching change and a trade of one of the team's top offensive weapons for the change to occur. The Pens then went on to win back-to-back Cups.
From how some of the Capitals' stars are talking, it seems they are a group that's willing to change in order to succeed.
"I think we've learned our lesson," Green said. "You need to prepare yourself for the way you're going to play in the playoffs all season. At times maybe we were winning hockey games, but we were a little sloppy.
"If everyone can buy in here quick and we can become a consistent team on a nightly basis and play our way, win or lose, then that's more important than being a run-and-gun kind of team," Green said.
A grizzled vet like Mike Knuble agrees.
"We'll have to take a look in the mirror come the end of February and March," Knuble said. "Were we playing better last year? Are we doing better at this point, or were we better last year? Are we heading in the right direction?"
Brooks Laich said no major changes have to be made, but "it's little, tiny things that, over the course of a season, add up."
"We're not ready for the playoffs yet," Laich said. "We have things that we need to improve before we get back there."
In other words, he's not looking ahead to Act II before Act I is played out.
"We just can't fast-forward to April," he said.
Knuble hopes his teammates don't reach for the remote too soon.
"Even though everybody wants to get back to the playoffs and everyone keeps talking about it, it's still a long ways away," he said. "You can't take your DVD player and move to the end. We've got a process to get there."
