[Ed. note: Jason Rogers, Sperm Whale captain and hockey Hemingway, is back for your amuse bouche. But be warned: do not take his insights as mere foam on the web: so far, he's been more spot on than Vinnie "Legs" Baggodonnouts. You are warned. Follow him now here. Thus endeth the editor's finger-wagging.]

Sasha needs an image consultant.

This will be the fourth of five meetings this season between our Caps and the Tropical Depressions, and it is time for this Washington team to decide whether it wants to spend May playing hockey or golf. Watch and learn.

The Mourning Skate: What is the length of one point? Is it the width of one puck crossing or not crossing the goal line? Is it the size of one of John “Towelie” Carlson’s skate edges slipping and giving the other team a breakaway? Is it the distance between wherever the first round of the playoffs is held and Jeff “Sgt.” Schultz’s favorite local golf course?

Rhetorical queries aside, three points now separate the Capitals from the final playoff spot. Now, if we know the Caps, there’s plenty of room for them to implode in on themselves with the unfathomable mass of a thousand suns and persist only as a hockey singularity, a black hole of puck the likes of which are rarely seen outside of Scottsdale, AZ. (Really dorks? We looked it up and it happens. Or, at least, so says Stephen Hawking. And you gonna argue with Stephen Flipping Hawking? Thought not!)

But that is also enough for the Washington Capitals to make the postseason and win, to follow the model of the Habs and Kings of seasons’ past and make an unlikely eighth-seeded run…and to tell Mike Milbury to trade it where the sun don’t shine. (heh)

In its final season of existence, the Southeast Division is going out less with a bang and more with a “meh.” But right in the thick of this maze of malaise are the Carolina Hurricanes, one-time Stanley Cup champions and current financiers of Alex Semin.

Is it surprising the Canes are in the playoff hunt? Sure. Is it mind-boggling why there is a professional hockey team in North Carolina? A louder, stronger “yes, y’all!” But with the Caps and Canes tied in points and Carolina having played two fewer games, the Capitals not only need to win, but they need teams like Carolina to lose.

They can do both on Tuesday night and kill two mocking birds with one stone, two surfers with one shark, or two Staals with one team, whichever is easiest for Carolina to understand. (We imagine it’s something to do with “bacon.”)

With that, it’s time to turn to the segment that launched a thousand Facebook statuses:

LIABLE TO LIBEL – A Baker’s Dozen Lies About Today’s Opponent

• When asked how he felt about receiving a huge new contract, Alex Semin took a slow drag from a cigarette and wistfully replied, “Complex.”
• Tuomo Ruutu’s name has the most U’s per capita of any developed nation.
• The Hurricanes’ mascot is a humanoid pig. This makes marginally more sense than their previous mascot, a still-life oil painting of Cam Ward eating a basket of Toblerones. 
• Eric and Jordan Staal now have a secret handshake that Marc isn’t allowed to do. It is called the “HurriShake.”
• Forward Chad LaRose was named after the protagonist of his mother’s favorite romance novel, narrowly beating out “Skylar LeSex” and “Rodrigo Musclegaze.” [ed: we loved those books!]
• In its proposal to purchase the Hurricanes, the State of North Carolina spelled the sport “hawkkey,” being utterly unfamiliar with it and assuming it involved birds and locks.
• In an ill-fated PR attempt, the Hurricanes tried to replace their ice with frozen sea water. The water would not freeze, and this actually made it easier for Alex Semin to dive. GET IT?!
• Eric Staal’s brow is premiering this weekend in Dreamworks’ film “Meet the Croods.”
• Sasha’s new contract with the Hurricanes is for five years– or 1,314,000 two-minute hooking minors.
• Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos is lobbying the National Weather Service to name the first storm of the next season “Corvo.” It will affect very little and quietly move up the coast to Boston before all but disappearing.
• Fans have nicknamed Carolina’s roster the “Storm Troopers,” for their tendency to be anonymous, and miss a lot of shots.
  
• The Hurricanes’ trifecta of Joni, Jiri and Jussi has garnered an official grievance from the “J-Pronouncers Union of America”. Or should have. 
• Hurricanes practice was cancelled on Friday because the NC State men’s basketball team refused to vacate RBC Arena, holding the puck over Cam Ward’s head and telling him if he wanted it so badly he could simply “jump and get it.”

The Puck Drop: Do You Binky Swear? I’ve said before that the only thing more lethal than Steven “Binky” Oleksy’s fists is his Soviet-era good looks. I’m just Putin that out there. And like the tips of the Christmas-bulbed spires of the Kremlin, Binky looks sharp at the point. Whether pulling the string and back-skating two steps to give himself a shooting lane, or cycling the puck like a well-maintained Maytag, the Pride of Chesterfield, Michigan gives us a fresh dynamism that is consistent with an Adam Oates system.

We’ve gotten used to watching Mike Green botch the zone and quarterback the point with the stability and steadfastness of a ligament in RG3’s knee. Now we can watch Oleksy operate there, and while this kid is younger and rougher around the edges than a prepubescent porcupine, we have reason to believe the future will be bright. Or at very least, less Green.

No Kvetchin’ ‘Bout Ovechkin – Look, we need to have at talk about Alexander Ovechkin. If his contract were up today, maybe I wouldn’t give him $130 million. Maybe I wouldn’t sign him for thirteen years. But there may not be a more dynamic player lacing them up anywhere in the world. He is pure kinetic energy, raw power, and emotion set in movement with a quick hop-step.

Alex Ovechkin is a tidal wave that smiles and says, “Sorry, Penguin” before crashing on the beach on destroying a village. He is the word POW! wearing ice skates. I don’t care about his even-strength goal production. You know why? Because when he scored 65 goals in a season, people said, “Yeah, but is he a team player?” So Ovechkin started passing more, and people said, “Well what about evolving his game? He’s getting older.”

So Ovechkin stopped trying to do everything and found his sweet spot low in the circle on the power play. And guess what? He has become the exact weapon we need him to be. He is not just a big gun. He is the big gun. He is a cannon packed with dynamite, cocked and loaded and waiting for artilleriet Sergeant Nicklas Backstrom to trip the hammer. This guy is a leader, he is a captain, and his numbers are proving it.

“Why am I still playing?”

The Safe Word is “Mojo”: The Rise of Role Players – Detractors will tell you the Capitals’ roster is about as deep as Bruce Boudreau’s salad bowl, and this season the numbers have supported that. Once you move beyond the usual suspects of Ovechkin, Brouwer, Ribeiro, and Backstrom, few players have really distinguished themselves with offensive production.

But in today’s NHL, you can win by committee. If tonight it’s Marcus Johansson making great entries into the zone, tomorrow it might be Joel Ward winning possession scrums in the corner. Hockey is an experiment in the inescapability of cause and effect. Goals are built like pyramids, not ladders. Every goal is the result of a hundred little battles that were absolutely necessary to win. It is not a game of pacing yourself. It is not a game of futures. Hockey is a game a million consequent nows, won or lost by tenths of seconds and widths of skate blades.

It’s life, agony, and ecstasy unable to be parceled out or separated but a few times each game. But that, itself, is the point. If you spend all your time looking for the punctuation marks, you’ll miss the sonnet. The Capitals have players who can do the unglamorous things than win teams games. The question is whether they want it badly enough to bleed and fight for it.

The Late Line: And so I, like you, will be anxiously awaiting the drop of the puck at 7 pm in Raleigh. Good luck, God speed, and Go Caps.

Chad LaRose (Photo credit: Gregg Forwerck)

Editor’s note: Doug Johnson of Puck Buddys writes for RMNB. Tweet at his face.

The Post-Mortem: So, everyone happy?  At least those with Ward and Backstrom shirseys?  Luv U Caps, but we’re tired of writing the “Tale of Two Caps” (See: Hassett, Peter) - you know, the bedraggled guttersnipes everyone wrote off after the 1st period who then come back to show their true mettlel? Memo to Bruce Boudreau and team: We don’t need drama. We don’t want drama.  Please, enough of the plucky comebacks by the adorable yet overlooked (*cough Nicky cough Greenie*) boy heros. Dickens did it before, and better. (Although, Coach, you’d make a memorable Fezziwig). Memo to Ovi:  “In addition to Russian, we’re learning how to lip read. And then we’ll learn how to lip read Russian. быть осторожным!

The Caps had a couple of busy days off after the Ducks game. While Ovi was managing ’Bench-gate,’ Brooksie, Sasha, and Coach Woods visited the Kent Gardens Elementary for a hockey clinic in the school gym. They had Air Slapshot in tow – if ‘tow’ is the right word to describe dragging along an inflatable mascot (which looked like it had become untethered from a Pink Floyd show). The video and the pics from the day were adorable. However, reports from our McLean bureau (and the school nurse’s office) tell a different story – three school kids ended up on the wrong end of some O zone penalties. Neither the players or coach addressed ‘Stick-gate,’ but Sasha was heard muttering something in Russian (“Чувствительная кожа”), as he was hurried away from school grounds.

Floyd the Barber

The Puck Drop: I think it was William Faulkner who penned the immortal line: “The South is a foreign country you always return home to.” Or was that Yakov Smirnoff? Whatever. The Caps are back on the road for back-to-back games, starting first with a trip down to the land of boll weevils and cornpone to play the Hurricanes.

Eric Staal

It’s our second dance with the Canes this season, but the first in their barn. Skinner, Staal, Kaberle, and Ward figured to figure then, and are slated to rate this time around as well. Bieber Skinner was outstanding against the Bolts, (except for the fact that perma-puberty he’s dealing with), but there are other Canes we need to watch closely.

The Set Up: Last time around we caught some flak for suggesting this place called North Carolina was little more than myth. So we did a little research. Turns out, there is a North Carolina, and it’s just north of South Carolina. Think Branson, with a sour attitude and less culture (and less Yakov Smirnoff).

The natives speak something called Carolingian, which is like how English would sound if your mouth was stuffed with hominy and fatback (as it turns out is the case). They worship an odd Hoop-God, pretend to have “colleges” and “cities”, and make money by renting out flea-infested disease shacks (called “ocean-fronts”) to pale-skinned dopes from the North, while they sleep in trees. To this fetid mix we add the Hurricanes.

The Canes 5-4-3 start suggests both weakness and toughness (a neat rhetorical trick that we think would make Orwell spit up). Weakness by evidence of losing nearly ½ their outings; strength in knowing how to hang in tough at the end. To what do they owe this paradox?

What Makes Them Hot

Tomas Kaberle

1: Like We Said.  Staal, Ward, Skinner and Kaberle are all standouts this season. Between the four (uh, three, ‘cause Ward can’t exactly get points) they’ve got… well, hella points for the Canes so far. Generally speaking, any of these guys on any given night can be good. On a bad night – for us, say – they’re all impressive. Staal has dreams of his team contending on the big stage. We’d like to laugh derisively in his face (assuming we had a step-stool) but can’t, as these four on one team could be lethal. What they haven’t developed so far is true cohesion. But…

2: Like We Didn’t. Erg. You would think a bunch of bumpkins like the Canes would be polite enough to pay attention to our earlier picks. The rest, settling down like Junior Samples on Hee Haw. Not really so much. Chad LaRose (that is NOT a porn name– we checked), a 29-year-old smoker from southern Michigan (swoon) already has 11 points – most of those assists, which makes him a genuine threat. There are others… but frankly they’re not nearly as hot. So…Chad LaRose. (Next appearing with Maxime LeStick, we imagine.)

3: Upswing. Short and bitter. Carolina went into Chicago ready to be pecked apart by the Blackhawks, and – like Tippy Hedrin – they came out the victor. Then Tampa, which has long bedeviled the Canes, was disposed of. There’s nothing we like less than an opponent building a streak while we have to defend ours. Jerks.

What Makes Them Not

Jussi Jokinen

1: Jussi Jokinen.  Normally we’d be calling him things like the Finnish Flash, the Kalajoki Cracker or just “Here’s My Card, Sailor.”  Not now. The 28-year-old left winger with more talent than should be legal (did we mention he’s totally got it goin’ on?) will be out for the next three or four weeks with a leg injury. Looks like he twisted it bad in the Tampa game. Poor guy, but good for us.

2: Division and Conquer: Nine games under their belt and they hadn’t won a single one in their division until Tuesday’s game against the Bolts. Staal may aspire to greatness, and may in fact find it in the future. The Canes –for the foreseeable future – we declare out-classed in the Southeast. Have at it, h8rs.

Crash the Net: We’re going on record as not liking the whole “Stink the first part/comeback the second part/nail-biter in the third” thing, yes? We’re not always on the best ice in other cities. The Canes (and Bolts) particularly have deviled us over the years. We think it’s all the pig-barbeque fumes. Whatever: Caps, strap your pork tight (Carolingian for ‘grab your sacks’), and play hard and fast from the outset. There, I guess we’re qualified to do a guest segment with Paula Deen now, eh?

The OT: Oh, that quote wasn’t Faulkner. Or Eudora Welty. Or Bear Bryant or Bocephus or any other giant of Southern “culture.” We just cold made it up. Boom! See that, South? That’s how we play up here! Oh, and please feel free to use that quote liberally in the future.

As Seen On TV:  Tune in at 7:00pm on CSN for another episode of The Bickersons, starring Joe B. and Locker, and for viewers down on Tobacco Road, point your backyard satellite dish up towards the heavens and pray you get a signal.

The game’s only goal. Whatever. (Photo credit: Alan Diaz)

The Capitals will face the Rangers -- who won 5-2 Saturday -- in the first round of the playoffs. (Photo credit: Jonathan Klein)

The game that impacted the Capitals the most Saturday night didn’t involve Washington at all. In fact, it took place 13 hours away from them in Raleigh, North Carolina.

With the New York Rangers beating the New Jersey Devils 5-2 on Saturday afternoon, the Carolina Hurricanes had to get the victory Saturday night to tie New York at 93 standings points. By virtue of holding the tie-breaker Carolina would pick-up the eighth and final playoff spot, getting themselves a date with the Caps.

Well, they didn’t. Carolina started lifeless and never fully awoke, with the Lightning ending the ‘Canes’ season with a 6-2 victory. Dominic Moore, Vincent Lecavalier, Steven Stamkos and Brett Clark scored for Tampa Bay while Simon Gagne and Martin St Louis added empty net goals for the Lightning. Cory Stillman and Chad LaRose scored in vain for the Hurricanes.

Joe B. Suit of the Night

Meanwhile in South Florida, Capitals and Panthers were equally as snooze-worthy. It took 54 minutes to net the contest’s opening tally when Bill Thomas snuck one past Michal Neuvirth at 13:55 of the third period. That was it. Cats beat Caps, 1-0.

No bullets, but we’ll leave you with one note. This was 11th time Washington has been blanked this season, the second highest total in franchise history.

Washington will open the postseason at home against the New York sometime in the middle of next week. The Caps are just 1-2-1 against the Rangers this season, with N.Y. handing D.C. 7-0 and 6-0 shutouts. Yelp! The NHL will announce the playoff schedule Sunday night.

16 wins to go. See you tomorrow.

For those who jumped on the bandwagon a little late, this is what happened the last time the Caps faced the Rangers in the playoffs. And yes, that is our very own Rachel Cohen holding the sign.

Caps fans are hoping she can jump for joy once more. Man, what a corny way to end the regular season.