Photo credit: Ian iPad

Over the offseason the Hershey Bears saw several key veterans sign elsewhere, such as future AHL Hall of Famer Keith Aucoin, 2011-12 AHL leading scorer Chris Bourque, and fan-favorite enforcer Joel Rechlicz. The team also had to deal with a peculiar problem due to the lockout: two head coaches, Mark French and new Caps bench boss Adam Oates. Capitals general manager George McPhee mandated that Hershey learn Oates’ new system, so that the organization’s minor league players could be used to it by the time NHL games started being played. All this change has seen the team scuffle to a .500 record through 34 games this season (16-16-1-1).

But now things are starting to look up. Before it was announced that the lockout had been lifted, Hershey had been getting its best goaltending of the year from Braden Holtby, who was recently named AHL player of the month for December. Stan Galiev, who had been struggling with his transition from junior hockey, is starting to look more comfortable on the ice and more worthy of his #29 prospect ranking from Hockey Prospectus. The organization also has a surplus of quality goaltenders in the ECHL knocking at the door of the AHL: Philipp Grubauer and 2012 seventh-round pick Sergey Kostenko.

On Saturday, after the Bears’ 3-1 loss to the Binghamton Senators, I asked French if this is the best he’s seen Braden Holtby play, if the sky is the limit for Riley Barber, and if Caps fans should be worried about Galiev’s early season struggles.

My full Q&A with French is below the jump.

With the lockout ending, do you think there’ll be a lot of turnover on Hershey’s roster. Are you looking forward to getting a guy like Philipp Grubauer back on the team? 

It’ll be interesting. It’ll obviously create some roster instability. I think Phillip has displayed that he can play at the American League level. At the same time we’ll be losing a darn good goalie as well.

Is this the best you’ve seen Braden Holtby play?

Probably consistently. I can think of back-to-back games in Norfolk last year where he was unbelievable. But it’s probably the most consistent I’ve seen him play over a long period of time.

Stan Galiev has been shuttled up and down this year between Reading and Hershey. Even at the beginning of the year, he told RMNB he was still getting used to playing in a new system. Have you seen a big improvement from him lately? Tonight he had a pretty strong game.

I think his game, right before we went to break, was the best game we’ve seen him play. And tonight, I really liked the intensity he played with. He’s a skilled player, but when we sent him down our message to him was “you need to play more consistently with a higher compete level.” And we wanted him to go down and try to generate a little offensive confidence. I think his two most recent games we’re seeing some results.

Should Caps fans read into the fact that the 29th rated prospect in the NHL started off so slow? Is it going to take him a few years to develop? Did playing in the QMJHL hurt him?

I think it’s a pretty big jump [from the QMJHL]. It’s a change of the system. Certainly a big change in the game. The Q is a good league, but it’s very offensive, so now we’re asking him to pay a lot of attention to different details of the game. I think the problem you have with young guys is they start thinking too much, instead of reacting instinctively. Stan, you like that he’s trying to do these things, but it probably takes away from his game. I think his game is beginning to be a little bit more defined of what he’s going to be as a pro.

How has implementing Adam Oates’ system been going? And if the NHL season starts in a few weeks, what should Caps fans expect?

Some of our success as of late… I think it takes time to implement a new system. Like I talked about with Stan, guys are trying to understand this new system, but they’re not reacting to it. We’re getting to the point where guys know it now, they know what they need to do. So I think it takes some time. I think the NHL player can maybe make the jump a little bit quicker. You know, it’s a proven system. New Jersey used it last year and went a long ways. I think there’s some really good parts. I think it’ll play really well into some of the Capitals more skilled players for sure.

What kind of upside do you see with Cameron Schilling and Mattias Sjogren? Over the next year or two, are they going to be knocking on the door at the NHL level?

Let’s start with Sjogren. We’ve seen an improvement in his game. I think he’s a checking forward. He’s a big body guy. With our team he’s been put in a checking role, and that’s where I think he transitions to at the NHL level. I think he’s more comfortable playing the North American game. With Schilling, he can skate at the NHL level right now. He’s got a real good work ethic and compete level about him. I think he’s just got to mature a little bit. He’s benefiting from his time down here and I can certainly see him as a guy that transitions to the NHL at some point.

Team USA won the World Junior Championships on Saturday. I’m not sure if you can get a guy like Riley Barber on the team this year. But what type of player do you think he is?

I’m like everybody. He kinda jumped out at me during the World Juniors. I think he’s probably going to stay in college a few more years to develop but he’s certainly a guy who can play with pace and got some real good skill to him.

Do you think Barber could grow up to be a Top 6 guy?

I’d have to see him play a little bit more but I was certainly encouraged by what I saw at the World Juniors.

Last question. When I went to Development Camp I got a lot of good reports about goaltending prospect Sergey Kostenko… about how well he played even with a bum shoulder. He told RMNB that he could barely hold his goalie stick before he got surgery. I don’t know how much tape you’ve seen of him– he recently got his first win, but are you guys excited about him as a player?

I think it was good to get him over to North America. I think with Reading especially, if there’s an NHL season, with Philipp getting moved up to the AHL, he jumps into a situation where he’s playing more. Like you, I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw at Development Camp and I certainly — from what Dave Prior and Olie believe — I think he might be a good diamond in the rough.

Photo credit: MDNA Tour Facebook page

Fifty-four-year-old pop icon Madonna made her grand return to the area this week, performing two sold-out shows at Verizon Center on Sunday and Monday. During one of the concerts, something quite spectacular happened. Something that without HD video, I could not have confirmed or believed could possibly be real.

You see, during a break in music, Madonna chatted up her fans and asked if anyone would like to write a four letter word which describes her on her back. As Madonna gazed out to the crowd, she settled on two young Swedish men in the front row — who happened to be Washington Capitals forwards Mattias Sjogren and Marcus Johansson — and tossed them a marker.

As Johansson goofily grinned and filmed with his iPhone, Sjogren scribbled “Sexy” on the back of one of the most famous singers of all-time. Really.

You’re gonna want to see this.

Video tweeted out by @ErikGranqvist.

And for those with facial recognition software, here are some screenshots for you if you’re not quite sold yet.

Yup, definitely them.

10PM Update: Is this Backstrom at the show too?

S/T to @RabiesMalin who initially retweeted the video.

Heeeeeere’s Doug Johnson of PuckBuddys fame. Tweet his face.

The Pre-Game: I think it was Benjamin Disraeli who said “Sometimes cities just suck.” Or maybe it was Don Rickles. We’re getting our historical figures mixed up.

Look, there’s nothing that stinks about San Diego, the actual place. It’s lovely. Or Phoenix, for that matter, if it weren’t for all the whack-a-doodles. Vancouver: now there’s a dandy city for you! If you can just get over all the residents piously reminding you just precisely how dandy it is.

On the other end, there are places like Mogadishu, a city that, I can comfortably assure you, sucks. Or vacation paradise Pripyat!  – home to the entombed Chernobyl perpetual light bulb. Pyongyang. Philadelphia.

Then we come to the middle ground: decent places inhabited by truly awful organizations. Pittsburgh comes to mind. Hoorah, it’s beautiful and their food isn’t too toxic and the local rumor is that there’s even a museum or something. But it’s also home to the rat burrow of unctuous fink Richard Mellon Scaife and his poisonous heirs, and the ‘Terrible Towel’, which we rank as only just below Scaife as scabes-inducing. The Pittsburgh Penguins… and Dan Bylsma. Think about that for a moment: both the Penguins AND Bylsma (and his douche-hat) compressed into one geographic point. That single distinction alone  is enough to push Pittsburgh to new title holder: Epicenter of Suck.

The Puck Drop

Every game matters. Pens games matter more. This game matters very much more.

Unless you’re living in a cave on Mars with your fingers in your ears, or are Alex Ovechkin,you understand that the swap of Coach Mustard for Coach Hunter has scrambled the Capitals squad at an inopportune time. Yes, everyone wants to be on their best behavior for the new teacher (was that a goal, Nicky?), and no, everyone clearly still does not understand what their role is on the ice (*coughWidemancough*), and whoops!, now all of a sudden players are actually expected to perform or else. (Don’t ask who or what.)

But this is not the time for scrambling. It is the time for righteous beatdowns of those self-entitled prigs in Pittsburgh. But are we ready? Ugh, I cannot believe I have to write this next section.

What Makes them Hot

Jordan Staal

1: Don’t Make Me Do This: A bunch of stuff. Players, mostly. Jordan Staal (12G 6A, plus-4), hatched somewhere in Canada, continues to prove the cynical criminality of the Staal breeding experiment. Shut out against the Rangers, and a little dry of late, he’s still a damn hard skater, one who rarely gives up and is quick to take advantage of weak defense (ruh-roh.) James Neal (14G 11A, minus-1) and vampire Kris Letang (3G 16A, plus-5) are also showing their mettle. We say vampire given Letang’s punishment from the Habs’ Max Pacioretty last Saturday, only to rise from the dead to score the GWG. Vampire or zombie? Let’s let his hair be the judge. Add to that Pascal Dupuis, Tyler Kennedy and a raft of other flightless birds that are just messing things up. They clearly command play in their zone and at the other end of the blue line, which gives us pause.

Nobody in particular

2: Really! I Can’t Do This!  Self-appointed Captain of the whiners, Sidney Crosby, is once more up to his soulless robotic ways. Scoring, hitting, scoring, smiling vacantly for the cameras. There is not enough room in Heaven or on this Earth to heap enough scorn on Sidney Crosby and his media-whoring ways. Unfortunately, on this plane of existence we need to contain him on the ice.

Hero-coach Hunter squired squads against Crosby in the early days, meaning a few years ago. “We had to put a checking line against him and pay special attention – he still scored points and goals — we limited him, anyways,” Hunter said this week.

Solution? Remember what teams did two years ago once they had to face the Ovech-ka-juggarnaut? They swarmed and gobbled him up. Gobble up Sidney Crosby this Thursday, Capitals. Unwrap him, devour him, and throw what’s left into an acid bath.

Dan Bylsma

3: For the Love of God, Please Stop! No! There is no amount of torture that will force me to admit that Dan Bylsma is a decent coach. I mean: hardly a decent human being. Like Coach Boudreau said a while back, can you really imagine Coach Douche-Hat “playing” with anyone, let alone his offspring, during the holidays? Nice staged photo op, jerk. How about you use everyone else in your life as a prop for your own mealy-mouthed self-aggrandizement? Oh wait! You’re doing the Movember thing? Really? Moustaches around the nation have done great work for raising money. But no moustache has spoken truer than that spiral cut ham rotting on Bylsma’s lip. Quoting: “Dan Bylsma’s moustache to world: ‘I hate you, and am cutting myself off from all human contact.’”

Yet he keeps winning, and keeping his stars in check. Why is there no moustache justice in this world?

What Makes Them Not

1: We Got a Warning Light. The Fetid Stink Birds have allowed only 63 goals this season, compared with our 75. Their win percentage is better, their players are performing while ours are floundering. So what’ the ‘Not’ here?

Crosby @ MSG (Photo: Reuters)

Let the H8trs rip me up, but I’m not convinced Pittsburgh is much more than a well-oiled one-trick machine. There’s no juggling like we’ve had, or locker-room turmoil (that we know of), or serious disruptions. But they’re still only a few games ahead of the Caps. This isn’t whistling past the graveyard, but acknowledgment of a truth that seems to have gotten lost lately: the Caps, almost entirely from head to tail, are the best NHL collection of talent in the last decade. Maybe not this game, or the next, but quality is going to start to shine through. As we’ve seen before, the Penguins will rise, then fall, then settle into meh; I believe they’re already showing signs of this now by their play. If I were a bookie in Vegas, I would see the warning light flashing from Pittsburgh, and adjust accordingly.

2: We Got a Red Alert. Think back to the days when the Caps would ‘get up’ for the big game. OK…I’ll give you a moment.

There! Got it? When they played like the Caps of 2009? When everyone on the bench would perform, swarming in the Dzone, crashing the net in theirs? Good…hold that image in your mind. With the exception of the newish Caps (and not all of them, as we think Halpy has been up and on his toes from the very start), our team remembers that, too. That’s the image they’re holding in their minds. That’s the visualization of performance they’re seeing and reliving.

James Neal

There’s no game bigger than this, and they know it’s happening in front of their loyal hometown. There’s no need to spur us – the team or the fans – to Unleash the Fury this game, as it begins fury unleashed, and only gets uglier from there. Red Rally Balloon? Rock the Red? It’s a Red Town Thursday, and we’re here to eat Pittsburgh’s lunch and steal their cookie.

3: We Got a Time Bomb Ticking. Dumptruck Arron Asham decided to give our Jay Beagle a pounding he wouldn’t forget. Or would, apparently if Asham had his way. As in: men with concussions don’t really remember what happened to them in the first place. In our book Arron Asham is no better than a drunk driver. No, he’s worse, actually: someone supposedly in control of his facilities (or what passes for them) who intentionally chooses to send a man to the hospital with a swollen brain injury. Nice going, Asham.

Beagle may not remember, but we do. Asham: you are a horrible human. We are watching you. There’s a timebomb ticking… and you’re not going to like it when it goes off.

The OT Shoot Out: Of all things that gave us heart this week, it was GMGM’s quick dismissal of Swedish star Mattias Sjögren. Apparently unsatisfied with Hershy Bear’s play, he sulked back to Sverige this week, fuming that he wasn’t getting enough NHL play. McPhee’s response: in a word, go. If you’re quitting on us, go. Begone. Away with you.

This, even more than Boudreau’s dismissal, has given us heart that the head office is in this to win it.

The games begin Thursday at Verizon. Come be with us to cheer on the Caps.

And remember, Pittsburgh:tick-tick-tick-tick…

Editor’s note: Download and print out some DALE signs. Like a billion of em. Make it rain like Newsies.

Photo credit: Greg Fiume

The hard part is over. Mathieu Perreault led the Capitals with five points in four preseason games and snatched the final roster spot from favorites Cody Eakin and Mattias Sjogren.

Last season he showed the ability to drive puck possession, finishing with the fourth best Corsi relative to the competition on the team, behind only Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, and Alexander Semin.

Consistency, however, was a bigger issue. He earned all fourteen of his points in just nine of his 35 games played and wasn’t able to claim a center spot that was up for grabs.

But it’s a new year, and with Boudreau giving Matty P some time up top with Ovechkin and Troy Brouwer– plus hinting he may center the second line, it’s now time to turn our attention to what we can expect from him in his third NHL season.

Using Perreault’s NHL stats to match him with players who had comparable production at the same age, we can then use the development of those peers to generate a projection for 2011-12. Stats are normalized to the 2010-11 season, so they can be compared on a level playing field despite being in different eras.

Although he is frequently compared to Tampa Bay Lightning forward Martin St. Louis because of his size, Perreault’s statistical peer group includes Joel Lundqvist, Milan Kraft, Patrick Thoresen, and even Patrick Sharp, among others. As you can see, the group is a decent match for Perreault’s sophomore season:

The development curve of these similar players show Perreault will get better in year three. The peer group saw more ice time, took more shots and increased their scoring by 47 percent, mostly by doubling their assist count.

That would make sense. Skating on one of the top two lines, which is most likely where Perreault will see a majority of his time, would make him more of a set-up man to one of the Russian snipers.

In games played, the projection is a bit more optimistic. It is doubtful Perreault suits up for half the season, but if he does, expect him to produce seven goals and 14 assists over 44 games. An improvement, but not enough to claim a full time role with a Cup-caliber team.

Garrett Mitchell attempts to headbutt Scott Wietecha into submission. (Photo credit: Chris Gordon)

After losing the first scrimmage game, Group A turned the tables on Group B on Thursday to take the second match of Development Camp, 4-3, in the shootout.

Garrett Mitchell, David Citviarese and Danick Paquette tallied Group A’s goals in regulation, while Travis Boyd scored twice along with Reid Edmondson in Group B’s losing effort. Mitchell also added the only shootout goal.

Below, I recap the game in photos.

(All photos by Chris Gordon — Click to enlarge.)

Jacob Gervais-Chouinard warms-up before the game.

Head coach Bruce Boudreau talks to the referee.

Reid Edmondson opens the scoring.

Group A ties the game.

Adam Mitchell gets hit up high.

Andrew Cherniwchan loses his balance.

Garrett Mitchell and Scott Wietecha drop the gloves.

Group A takes a 2-1 lead.

Group A goes up by two.

Group B comes back to force a shootout.

Video of the entire shootout via YouTube user freakinandpeakin

Mattias Sjogren is stopped.

Garrett Mitchell nets the lone shootout goal.

Mattias Sjogren gets high-sticked, loses tooth, remains lovely and Swedish.

When asked for his thoughts on 23 year-old Swede Mattias Sjogren, Caps head coach Bruce Boudreau had little to provide Monday morning at Washington’s Development Camp.

But three hours later, and with Sjogren missing a tooth, the bench boss was impressed.

“A minute in, I’m going, ‘Are you kidding me?’” Boudreau said. “He went around the net and I think the goalie’s stick came up and knocked out a tooth and welcome to North America.”

Just a few minutes later, however, he was back on the ice, showing little ill effects.

“You know what, that’s the one thing I’ve found about the Swedish guys that we’ve had, from Nicky and Marcus, they’re really tough,” the coach continued. “Knocked out a tooth, loosened another one but he wanted to get back out there — full marks for that.”

Additional Photos