An inexpertly devised offseason plan

First of all, congratulations to the Hershey Bears on their second consecutive Calder Cup and third in five years. The Bears have now come as close as any team in the American Hockey League to creating any sort of dynasty.

Many parts of the Washington Capitals’ organization deserve a lot of credit for the success of the Bears, and not just for the obvious – championships. The Bears have effectively served the Capitals so that when a Capitals’ player goes down via injury, the Capitals plug a player in from Hershey and don’t lose a beat. Maybe most of all, the Bears provide the young players in the Capitals’ organization a winning atmosphere from top to bottom and a chance to experience hockey at the championship level.

I watched Hershey lift the Calder Cup a handful of days after the Chicago Blackhawks lifted the Stanley Cup in Philadelphia. All this lifting of a hockey trophy in such a short time frame makes me want to see the Washington Capitals earn something a bit more than a meaningless President’s Trophy.

Capitals fans want a Stanley Cup. The Capitals have nothing left to prove in regular season play, and in fact, have demonstrated just how little a regular season can potentially mean to a team. Capitals fans want playoff success. 121 regular season points is cute and everything, but the real season begins in mid-April.

Over half the teams in the league make it into the playoffs, so the regular season is essentially played to figure out who doesn’t make the playoffs. Once the playoffs start, every team is equal. Every team has to win 16 games. A President’s Trophy-winning team has to win just as many games in the playoffs as a team that made it into the playoffs on the final day of the regular season by winning a shootout.

The Capitals need to develop a playoff team. The following is how I think they accomplish that, in no particular order of importance.

Fix the penalty kill. All regular season and during the Capitals’ first round series with the Montreal Canadiens, the penalty kill was stagnant and lacked any sort of consistent pressurization of the puck handler. The Capitals settled into a box on the penalty kill and let the offense dictate the play entirely too much, as the Capitals allowed the opposition to stickhandle and pass at will. The Capitals just weren’t nearly mobile enough within their box. Like I’ve said before, this isn’t bantams, where coaches are happy if their kids just manage to stay in a box. An NHL penalty kill needs to, like, move around.

The Capitals did manage to see how a good penalty kill operates against the Canadiens. In short the Canadiens were very mobile in their box, as they pressured the Capitals’ puckhandlers without over-committing, thus forcing the Capitals to cough up the puck time after time. The Canadiens also had very active sticks to take away passing lanes, especially to Alex Ovechkin. The Canadiens’ movement in their box on the penalty kill shadowed the movements of Ovechkin, and they were able to minimize his effectiveness greatly.

Before committing huge years and dollars to a free agent defenseman, the Capitals must take care of fixing their fundamental philosophy on the penalty kill. Without a new philosophy, no defender or penalty killer will be able to execute to his fullest potential.

More dump and chase, less finesse. When I interviewed former Capitals’ defenseman Brian Pothier in the preseason in September, he told me that it would do some good for the Capitals to dump and chase at times.

Apparently Pothier knows what he’s talking about.

In Games 3 and 4 of the Montreal series, I felt like the Capitals truly played playoff hockey. They withstood the Canadiens’ initial thrust in the first period that comes with playing on the road in the playoffs. They received excellent goaltending from Semyon Varlamov. They went away from their regular season style of scoring goals, and instead played dump and chase.

I want to focus on what Pothier harped on — playing dump and chase hockey. When the Capitals played dump and chase against the Canadiens, they wore the Canadiens down by late in either second period in Games 3 and 4. The Capitals allowed players like Mike Knuble, Jason Chimera and the fourth liners to cycle along the boards and wear down the Canadiens’ defenders. After all, the Capitals were faster than the Canadiens and gave up nothing to the Canadiens in terms of size, so a dump and chase game was conducive to the Capitals. Once the Capitals had worn down the Canadiens, the Capitals’ skill advantage took over. The result was two road wins.

In the five other games of the playoff series against Montreal, the Capitals tried to win the way they did in the regular season. The dump and chase in both instances was an aspect of the game that was not utilized, but rather, finessing into the the offensive zone was the preferred method, not the necessary dirty work along the boards. Dangling into the offensive zone might work against the Florida Panthers or Atlanta Thrashers, but it simply does not work against a well-coached defensive scheme in the playoffs.

A big culprit of this is Ovechkin, the team captain. Countless times against Montreal, he rushed up ice on the left wing one-on-one with a defender. Each time, Ovechkin tried to stickhandle through the defender or shoot through the defender’s legs. Each time, the puck was either poke-checked away, blocked, or ended up in the safety net. Hell, this hardly works in the regular season. Ovechkin needs to adjust his game, and the Capitals’ entire first line needs to adjust a bit 5-on-5 to lessen their dependence on the Ovechkin one-on-one along the left wing. The first line needs to have more dump and chase and more tic-tac-toe passing into the zone.

Starting with training camp in September, the Capitals have to impress upon their players an offensive philosophy suited for the playoffs, and that’s playing dump and chase. It may not be as pretty as the dangles, but it’ll be much, much more effective come mid-April 2011.

Greater equity of ice time during the regular season. Here are selected ice time averages for this past regular season among forwards –  Ovechkin, 23:06; Nicklas Backstrom, 21:03; Brooks Laich, 19:57; Alexander Semin, 19:21; Knuble, 17:50; Eric Belanger, 14:05; Chimera, 11:46; Eric Fehr, 11:24.

As I outlined a little bit above in the post, the regular season really doesn’t matter too much. Just get into the postseason tournament and everyone who makes it starts from scratch.

So with that in mind, does it really make sense that Ovechkin is averaging over 11 minutes more than Chimera and Fehr on a per-game basis in the regular season? Does it really make sense to extend Ovechkin and Backstrom in the regular season the way that head coach Bruce Boudreau did? Is all of this really necessary?

(In fairness, it’s not Boudreau’s fault if Ovechkin decides that he’s going to skate a 90 second shift, but I digress).

Now, this is not to say that less ice time for star players would have enhanced their production in the playoffs because they would have had fresher legs. I have no idea if they would have had fresher legs.

But I do think it’s a good idea to delegate ice time in a far more equal manner in regular season games, especially in some of the absolutely meaningless late-season games that the Capitals played this year. Greater ice time for players like Chimera and Fehr mean a greater opportunity to create chemistry on the third and fourth lines, and thus creating a better chance for the bottom two lines to make an impact in the playoffs. Greater equity of ice time across the roster means less of a dependence on Ovechkin, Backstrom, Semin and Co.

Ovechkin can play 25 minutes in the playoffs. No problem there. To me, it’s just totally unnecessary for him to average over 23 minutes in regular season games.

The regular season ice time seems reasonable for defenseman save for Green, who averaged 26:01. Just seems unnecessary to me. These are relatively meaningless games he’s averaging 26:01 in. Shaving a few minutes off that, as long as big, bad John Erskine isn’t taking over those minutes, wouldn’t hurt.

Greater accountability. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one going crazy when Boudreau went through his list of excuses once the Capitals were beaten by the Canadiens. I’ve outlined my fear here that the Capitals won’t make the necessary tweaks during the offseason because they’ll be hiding under their list of excuses:

“We ran into a hot goalie…we ran into a bad matchup…we put a ton of shots on net but the goalie was really good…we were the better team, but the other team got lucky…we had flight problems…blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada…”

Stop whining. Take accountability for your shortcomings and fix them. If you get beat, you get beat. But please, stop with the excuses.

Greater killer instinct. The Capitals didn’t show up in time for the start of Game 5 of the Montreal, as the Canadiens scored two quick goals in front of a stunned Verizon Center crowd. Hell, the entire game was full of Capitals’ players aimlessly skating around the ice a la your Friday night public skate at the local rink. As Boudreau put it, there were a lot of passengers on the ice for Game 5.

So here the Capitals were, with a 3-1 series lead with a chance to close out the series against Montreal at home. No way the Capitals want to go back to a rabid Montreal playoff atmosphere.

And the Capitals had passengers for this possible close-out game at home?

I don’t know if it’s a mentality that has to change with some players, or what the issue is, but nevertheless, if some players have trouble pumping themseleves up for a possible close-out game, I’m unsure what can snap them out of that menality. But the memory of blowing a 3-1 lead should give them at least a little more of a killer instinct next year, shouldn’t it? Shouldn’t it???

No goaltending musical chairs. The goaltenders next season will probably be Varlamov and Michal Neuvirth. Figure out who the No. 1 goaltender with no less than six weeks left in the regular season and stick with him. Capitals fans thought Jose Theodore was that solid No. 1 goaltender this year, but the inconsistency that has plagued him throughout his career caused a mid-series goaltending switch for the second consecutive postseason.

At a minimum, a team needs an Antti Niemi-like playoff performance to win a Cup. Varlamov or Neuvirth will have to provide it next year, and it’ll be up to either goaltender in the first four months of the season to win the No. 1 job, and it’ll be up to that goaltender to keep that No. 1 job through the playoffs.

Acquire a second-line center and a defenseman. When the NHL free agency frenzy begins on July 1, the first thing the Capitals should and probably will end up signing is a second-line center. All regular season and throughout the playoffs, the second-line center was constantly shuffled between Brendan Morrison, Tomas Fleischmann and Belanger. The Capitals can’t have that kind of lineup inconsistency in the playoffs, especially on the second line. Consistency breeds chemistry.

To me, it comes down to the Capitals needing a legitimate second line center to maximize the abilites of both Semin and Laich in the playoffs. Incoming free agent center Matthew Lombardi of the Phoenix Coyotes would seem to fit the bill quite well. His speed could mesh well with Semin, and Laich could play the role that Knuble plays on the first line.  

The Capitals, once they acknowledge their faulty penalty killing philosophy, need to acquire a defenseman that can take pressure off Green. The Capitals need a good penalty-killing defenseman that can play north of 20 minutes in a playoff game and assure that the Capitals need not ask Green to kill penalties. Green showed he’s not ready to lead a defensive corps in the playoffs.

Top defensive free agents Anton Volchenkov (Ottawa) and Dan Hamhuis (Nashville) probably wouldn’t fit into the Capitals’ salary cap. But Lombardi’s teammate with the Coyotes, shot-blocking defenseman Zbynek Michalek, would come at a friendler rate in terms of the salary cap and would look very good rockin’ the red as the Capitals’ top defensive defenseman.