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(photo by Brian Murphy)

It’s impossible not to like Washington Capitals defenseman Karl Alzner. In addition to being a highly-touted prospect, Alzner is also the most bloggable personality on the Caps.

Well, the last time we spoke to him was last week when the front office had some tough decisions to make regarding the roster and the salary cap. With guys like forwards Tomas Fleischmann and Sergei Feredov getting healthy and returning to action, there was a very real chance that Alzner could have been sent down to the minors, not because of anything he’s done on the ice, but because of his salary cap number.

Fortunately for everyone involved, general manager George McPhee was able to get creative and find a work around meaning for the time being, Alzner remains in D.C.

We caught up with the talented rookie yesterday after practice to see how he’s handled all of the uncertainty.

The last time we chatted, 30 priests walked by us as they left the locker room. You were worried that you might get some bad news over the weekend. Did you pull one of the priests aside and have them put in a good word for you?

(Laughs). “I didn’t get a chance to,” Alzner said. “They escaped. But it seems like that’s what I did because I got a few more days right now. Maybe it was a little bit of good luck that they came by. Maybe they said something on their own.”

Maybe they could just sense how badly you wanted to stick around …

“Maybe, there’s a good chance they could have felt that,” he said.

The best quote from you last week was that now you get to go buy groceries. What’s your mindset these days? Are you living week-to-week or what?

“Lately it’s been day-to-day,” Alzner said. “We go to the grocery store at 4 o’clock every day and buy dinner. We don’t do anything else, in terms of food. Now I’m just trying to let it all go and relax. I’m going to try and live month by month, if I can. Maybe I can settle down and relax.”

That’s a little easier said than done, right?

“Way easier said than done,” he said. “Yeah, it’s not easy at all. It’s been ride the last week or so.”

Speaking of food, what are your plans today? Did we hear something about you and some teammates hitting up Chipotle after practice?

“Yeah, I’m having a little bit of burrito,” Alzner said. “I don’t know when, but I’m starving right now. I think if I start eating pretty soon, then I’ll be able to finish the whole thing. If not and I have a little snack, then I probably won’t be able to put it all down.”

How did the Chipotle trip come about?

“I’m not sure,” Alzner said. “Its a little promotion thing that they’ve got going on. Some fans won some contest where they get to have lunch with us. It’s fun for us. We get a burrito out of it and get to meet a couple fans.”

When’s the last time you got to eat junk food?

(Laughs) “Well, lately I’ve been eating it too much,” he said. “Every time we go to the movies or something like that it’s hard not to. It’s hard to resist the good selection that they’ve got. But I’m on a bit of a health kick right now, so I’ll make sure when I put in my order for the burrito that it’s chicken, rice and vegetables. That’s it. No guacamole. No nothing else.”

That’s just mean, man.

“To me, it still tastes good,” Alzner said. “It’s still a good thing.”

Well don’t let us hold you up. Enjoy your lunch and hopefully you’ll still be around this time next week.

(photo by Luis M. Alvarez)

With nearly everyone on the roster finally getting healthy the Washington Capitals will soon face some difficult decisions.

Forwards Tomas Fleischmann and Sergei Fedorov return to action tonight against the Columbus Blue Jackets, which is great news. What’s not so great is that these guys returning to action puts the Capitals’ salary cap situation perilously close to the limit, meaning general manager George McPhee has some tough decisions to make in the very near future.

The one good thing to come out of the ridiculous amount of injuries Washington has battled this season is that many of the team’s top prospects have found their way into the lineup. On a near-weekly basis, it seems the Caps are calling up yet another player to fill in for an injured teammate. No one has done a better job of maximizing this opportunity than defenseman Karl Alzner, the fifth overall pick in the 2007 draft.

Not only has Alzner thrived, logging at least 18 minutes of ice time in 17 of 19 games, but he’s also had a positive impact on others. Since being paired with Alzner, defenseman Milan Jurcina has looked much more at ease on the blueline. Once a big body with loads of potential but not much to show for it, Jurcina has transformed into a completely different player (someone who actually looks like he belongs on the ice when the game is on the line). Jurcina’s confidence seemingly grows every shift he has alongside Alzner. With that in mind, it’s not much of a reach to suggest that sending Alzner back down to Hershey could also affect Jurcina, as well as the rest of the Caps’ defensive unit.

We caught up with Alzner after the Flyers game to see how his transition to the NHL game is going and to get his take on his uncertain future.

How comfortable do you feel these days?

“You know, I feel okay right now,” he said. “I mean, I’ve felt better. Sometimes I get a little nervous making plays with the puck, but I think that’s just natural for a guy in my position. I’ve just got to relax and not worry about the whole getting sent down and all that stuff. That’s the main thing that weighs in your head. I’m not going out on the ice thinking ‘I can’t play with these guys’ or ‘these guys are better.’ The only thing weighing on my mind is something like that, getting sent down.”

How are you going to react if, once everyone gets healthy, you get the unfortunate news that they’re going to have to send you back down to Hershey?

“I’ve just got to realize that it’s going to happen sooner or later most likely, unless something else goes down,” Alzner said. “That’s the way it works and I’m lucky to even get a chance to play this many games this season.”

Would it frustrate you though? We know you don’t want to take it personally, but it’s kind of hard not to, right?

“Yeah, you get frustrated,” he said. “You want to be in the place where you grew up dreaming about, and that’s right here. To get such a long taste, it’s like when I was at camp. I was at camp for over a month and then to have to go down, you really get used to it. Any change is like that is usually disappointing.”

Since we, here at Homer McFanboy, are qualified to speak on behalf of all Caps fans, we’d like to say that we sincerely hope the front office is able to find a way to keep Alzner in town. Much like he’s gotten used to being here, so to have we. We’re very used to seeing him anchoring an improved Capitals defensive unit that has been a large part of the team’s record-setting season thus far.

Just remember, the Capitals were 11-7-3 before Alzner. They’ve gone 16-4 since. That says all you need to know about the kid.

(photo by Luis M. Alvarez)

The Washington Capitals came into Tuesday night’s game with seemingly everything right in the world (some would say they even had God on their side).
The Caps’ 26-11-3 record was the best in franchise history through 40 games. Their 17-1-1 record at the Verizon Center was the second best in the NHL (behind San Jose’s 19-0-2 mark at home). They were also tied with the Sharks for the NHL’s best winning percentage when scoring the first goal of the game (.826). The Caps were second place in the Eastern Conference, had the fourth most points in the entire NHL, and a 10-point cushion over Carolina in the Southeast Division. Like we said, there were countless reasons to rejoice.

But none of that mattered Tuesday night. Not with the Philadelphia Flyers in town.

Sure, the Caps had won nine out of their last 10 games, but that one loss was a 7-1 drubbing in Philadelphia, Dec. 20. Even coach Bruce Boudreau admitted the teams don’t like each other, while also openly acknowledged the fact that the Flyers kept their top players in the lineup well after the 7-1 game was all but over didn’t sit well with his team.

And, oh by the way, this is the same Flyers squad who eliminated the Caps from the postseason in a game seven overtime thriller the last time they visited the Verizon Center. If this was an old-school wrestling match, the announcers would be talking about how much “personal animosity” these two teams had towards each other heading into this “slobberknocker.”

“We have to be ready,” said Mike Richards, of the Flyers, leading up to rematch. “We kind of took it to them last time, and we have to understand they’re going to be gunning for us.”

So what happened once the puck dropped and these two worthy adversaries collided?

Well, the Caps drew first blood just 19 seconds into their first powerplay and just 2:10 into the contest on a Nicklas Backstrom tally. The Swedish center was standing on the doorstep and slammed the puck past Flyers goalie Martin Biron.

The Flyers came into the game with a league-best 13 shorthanded goals. Call us crazy, but we’re of the mindset that one surefire way to keep them from adding to that total is to score 19 seconds into every powerplay you have.

One thing we’ve noticed this season is that the Capitals get into trouble when their top skill players get too cutesy. If guys like Backstrom stop trying to make the perfect pass and instead crash the net with regularity, then there’s not many teams that can stop this high-powered attack.

Oh, and the last time these two teams faced off, Flyers goalie Antero Niittymaki made 25 first-period saves without allowing a goal. This time around? Biron gave up a goal on just the fourth shot of the night. Biron sir, you are no Niittymaki.

At this point, we leaned over to a fellow media member in the press box and wondered allowed how the Capitals would look after their initial surge. It was fairly easy to predict a fast start for the good guys, what with Boudreau poking his players with a stick leading up to the game and all. But how would they look once the game settled into a groove? No team can keep that level of intensity for an entire game, so what effort would the team have during the second and third periods?

The answer was … well … unanswered. Clearly the players were still giving their best effort, but the second and third periods featured uneven and sometimes sloppy play. One shift the team looked great. The next, the Flyers players seemed to be moving with a higher sense of urgency. After several near misses, the Flyers finally tied the game at 1-1 when defenseman Braydon Coburn scored a powerplay goal 23 seconds into the third period.

In perhaps the only suitable ending for such a highly-touted regular-season matchup, three regulation periods weren’t enough to decide things. Neither was an overtime period, for that matter, which meant a shootout would decide things.

As recent history has shown, the Caps aren’t very good at shootouts. In fact, one might go as far as to say only two players on the current roster are reliable in the one-on-one format – forward Victor Kozlov (who is great in shootouts and not so good in the playoffs) and goalie Jose Theodore (who was 10-3 in shootouts for his career).

As luck would have it, those two were enough to get the job done. Theodore turned away all three Flyers players and Kozlov scored the lone shootout goal to give the Caps their 18th win in 20 games. While winning the 41st game of the season doesn’t guarantee anything, it does go a long way to give this team confidence that they can win in a variety of ways. They’ve shown they can matchs goals with the best of them, but winning these low-scoring affairs is also vital – especially come playoff time when defenses tighten up and scoring is at a premium.

Perhaps most of all, the Capitals beat the Flyers. Was it as satisfying as a 7-1 drubbing or ending a rival team’s postseason hopes? No. But it’s a start. And what logical Caps fan couldn’t be satisfied with that.

The Capitals, like most teams, have a 24-hour rule. They’ll enjoy the win for the rest of the night, but the next day, its back to business as usual. When the puck drops Friday night and the Columbus Blue Jackets are in town, the last thing on their minds will be the Philadelphia Flyers or some media-driven rivalry between goons. We suggest fans do the same. If the rest of this season is any indication, there will plenty more to cheer about between now and the end of the regular season.

(courtesy photo)

Just before the puck dropped and the Washington Capitals took on the Philadelphia Flyers, we found ourselves walking alongside Capitals general manager George McPhee as we headed towards our seat in a very crowded press box. Unable to pass up the opportunity, we asked GMGM a fairly simple question – do you have a good feeling about tonight’s game?

“I very seldom have anything other than butterflies,” was his reply.

What McPhee failed to mention at the time was that the Caps had a secret weapon in their corner.

As everyone knows by now, the Caps exacted a little revenge on the Flyers with a 2-1 shootout victory at the Verizon Center last night.

The Flyers came in to the game knowing that they can beat the Caps. They did it in the postseason last year and they did it again via beatdown last month. The Caps? Well, they might very well be one of the league’s elite, but there are still a few teams that seem to have their number. And clearly this Philadelphia squad has been one of them.

As fans headed out of the Phone Booth, many credited stellar goaltending by Jose Theodore as the reason the Capitals came out victorious. While it is true Theodore is playing the best he has since arriving in D.C., it appears the Caps also enlisted the help of a higher power Tuesday night.

While we were waiting near the Caps locker room to conduct an interview with defenseman Karl Alzner after the game, we witnessed something we can confidently say we’ve never seen before.

In addition to the various players and equipment managers shuffling up and down the hallway, there was George McPhee, who was followed by roughly 30 priests from the Institute of the Incarnate Word in Chillum, Maryland.

It turns out Raul Fernandez, a part owner of the Washington Capitals, invited these fine men to attend the game and get a little VIP tour of the facilities, which set the scene for the most bizarre and improbable moment in our young blogging career.

Imagine 30 priests huddled in the Capitals locker room, easily filling the room to near maximum capacity. Then, imagine Capitals superstar Alex Ovechkin coming out of the showers wearing nothing more than a towel. He heads to what would typically be an empty locker room only to discover the room has been temporarily taken over by holy men. What’s more, one of the priests is actually posing for a photo in front of Ovechkin’s locker … and wearing his helmet. Seriously, you can’t make this stuff up.

Right about then Alzner comes out as 30 priests shuffle out of the locker room and on their merry way.

Um … Karl, have you ever seen anything like that in a hockey locker room before?

“Never in my entire life, no,” he said pretty much in awe. “I think they might be a little upset if they heard some of the language that goes on in a locker room, but yeah, that was kind of interesting. I didn’t know anything like that was happening.”

So be honest, you guys are trying to win over The Big Guy for a run at the Stanley Cup, aren’t you?

“You know what, that’s not a bad idea,” he said, still laughing at what he just witnessed. “If that’s what they’re doing, then that’s pretty cool. That’s pretty cool for some of them to come see the game and visit the locker room like that. We’ll take any help we can get. That’s cool with me.”

If what we suspect is true and a higher power is indeed at play here, then we feel confident in telling fans everywhere to mortgage it all and bet the farm on the Capitals to win their first Stanley Cup in franchise history. We couldn’t just sit on this secret, for some reason we felt inclined to “spread the good word” and share this insider information. So unless you’re an atheist, or worse – a Devils fan – we highly suggest you take advantage of the situation while you still can. Just be sure to give back your tithes and offerings, or at least tip your bartender, when you win big.