[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.

[Ed. note:Today, the latest member of the PuckBuddys team hits the ice. Jason Rogers currently hangs his hat in Virginia, has studied in Paris and worked in China (always one step ahead of Interpol). But where ever he is in the world he’s a Caps fan through and through. He knows the game and we're not holding that against him. Jason currently sports #8 – and the “C” – playing center for the Manassas Sperm Whales. Srsly. Give him a follow on twitter.]

Morning Skate: Well, Saturday’s game against the Devils sure was fun to watch, no? Alex Ovechkin bowled a Magician, and the whole team clearly ate their morning Oates with breakfast. It was a real big-boy win against the defending Eastern Conference champions for this Caps team, and like a really nice yard with an unmarked septic field, hopefully something they can build on. Today, Southeast Division rival Carolina Hurricanes blow into town like a hot, smelly belch from the South. I hope they brought illegal fireworks.

The unbearable lightness of being Sasha

The Puck Drop: There are a couple big plot points to this match-up for the Caps. The first, of course, is the Return of Sasha. Yes, the man who once shared a banner with Voldemort is coming back to Verizon. If I had to guess how Semin feels about this, I would play the averages and assume he doesn’t care.

But I predict the Verizon faithful are going to let him have it, with a few scattered apologists wailing, “Guys, but that wrister!” He’s been an alright pickup for the Hurricanes with three goals on the season. Or, differently, as many as Ovechkin had in his last game. And speaking of Ovechkin, my God, we might get to see Ovi absolutely train track Sasha in the open ice. Think about that, and salivate over it. I need to go change.

The second big plot point is that the Caps have a chance to take two more points off of a division rival’s plate and put it onto theirs. As Jeff Kleiman said on Twitter: “The Southeast Division has really ‘just become a dumpster fire’.” With no teams over .500 and the winner of the division likely to have fewer points than the eventual eighth seed, there’s not a reason in the world the Capitals shouldn’t rise from this trash pile like Rocky over the city of Philadelphia. If they keep playing like Saturday, we could well have a new banner to hang from the rafters at Verizon, even if we have to shake the coffee grounds and band-aid wrappers off it first.

So that’s about where we’re at, which brings me to where we’re going next, and a segment I call:

Liable to Libel: A Baker’s Dozen Lies About Today’s Opponent

• The Hurricanes have petitioned the NHL for permission to change their name twice: once to the Katrinas in 2005, and once to the Sandies in 2012. Let’s see what 2013 brings.
• Eric and Jordan Staal learned to possess the puck so well by being made to fight over scraps of meat tossed to them by their parents, unable to ween all 37 of their hockey-playing children.
• North Carolina ranks first in the US in occurrences of adorable children’s ice cream scoops falling off their cones and making them cry.
• @AlexSemin has blocked @tbrouwer20
• Raleigh, North Carolina was originally called Staalopolis, named for the dinosaur of the same name. It’s true.
  

  The Staal Family

• If you rearrange the letters in Cam Ward’s name, it spells Raw Clams.
• Alex Semin is actually trying really, really hard, guys.
• Passersby often stop the Carolina Hurricanes on the street and say, “Boy, it’s obvious you’ve won a Stanley Cup.”
• Seriously, Alex Semin wants this more than anybody.
• When approached by the league about the possibility of Raleigh hosting an NHL franchise, Mayor Tom Fetzer reportedly began foaming at the mouth and firing a pistol wildly into the air like Yosemite Sam.
• Jussi Jokinen prefers for his first name to be pronounced, “Juicy.”
• The entire cast of Les Mis were all Staals and performed under pseudonyms.
• South Carolina is really grateful the team chose to call themselves “Carolina,” and is totally gonna make it up to North Carolina.

Hot And Hotter: Here’s who and what I’ll be keeping an eye on in tonight’s game at the SIM Card:

1. Ain’t Eight Great? - Much like Hansel, Ovi is burning hot right now. And in DC we’re basking in this fairweather praise like cool whip from Katy Perry’s brassiere. In the home-and-still-home against the Devils, OBestkin played like a Russian with a fire lit under him, with a meteoric ‘See what I did there?’ rise that many would tell you was long in coming. In addition to finishing his checks with gusto and roaring into the zone on breakouts, finally – finally – his buckets and buckets of shots started to hit pay dirt. Whether playing the 1812 Overture from the top of the circle, or creating room for himself with a little dink-and-dunk puck play, the Russian Machine seems to be revving up. Woe unto the rest of the league if he is.
2. The Ebb and Flow of John Carlson - Once hailed by the Screen Actors Guild as the world’s greatest living actor, my jersey-sake #74 has been a sore subject for me this season. J.C. Superstar was once the roll bar on our Miata, keeping us secure when the cycle got rolling on us, pinning us to the boards sharply when we lost our way, and other shallowly extended metaphors. He made smart, lockdown plays in his own end, and was never the weak link going the other way on the rush. Early this season, Spike Strip was blowing tires nightly and leaving Holtby on islands like his name was Tattoo (children, go look it up.) Lockouts are tough on young players to whom acclaim has come quickly. Big things are expected from you, and accomplishment is no longer a pleasant surprise. It’s demanded from you, and Captain America now seems to be lifting himself up off the mat and coming out swinging. He’s keeping pucks in the zone, working the wheelhouse on the power play like Steamboat Willie, and winning footraces to the puck. Also, I bet if you stuck a fork into his hair, it would stand straight up. And that’s gross, but I respect it. [Ed note: Johnny cut his hair!]
3. “Now I ain’t sayin’ he a goaltender, but he ain’t messin’ with…” We’ve been a hot mess between the pipes, like the area rug of a crack house. We have a list of old boyfriends like an experimental trip through Europe: Cristobal, Jose, Semyon, Michal. But Holtby could be our guy; a just-inked, two-year deal underscores that. We all fell in love with Braden during last year’s playoff series against the Bruins when he stared down that little twerp Rich Peverley like a consummate boss and stood on his head so long he got CTE. Yes, Braden Holtby will give up goals if you don’t play defense in front of him. Just like that other guy – what’s his name? - Oh, everyone. But boy, if you give this kid a a demi-snowball’s chance to make a stop, 9.31 times out of 10 he makes the save over the last four games. He’s making quick decisions with the pads and ought to take that glove with him over to Nats spring training. We’ve had our share of streaky goalies, but Holtby could be our Windex man. He’s currently starting in the most consecutive games of his career, and we may be able to keep doing so thanks to the shortened season. I hope that in so doing, he can find his groove and keep doing his weird, Jedi thing.

And with that, I leave you to eagerly await the drop of the puck at 7pm tonight at Verizon. Let’s go get ‘em, boys.