First Ovechkin Then Boudreau: How Lucky Can the Capitals Be?

Boudreau restored discipline to the lines and line changes. He implemented a more aggressive offensive and defensive scheme. He's the first coach since Wilson to understand the importance of rolling out two scoring lines and maintaining balance. He even added a more defensive forward to the 2nd line to improve Semin's psyche to not feel as though his line is always scored on.

As Hanlon coached the team Backstrom was slided to the wing position and away from his natural and future center position. What a bungled decision. Why have someone that will be playing their entire career at center begin to learn a new position in a new league when he'd learn quicker and be move productive at his natural position and even more productive at the end of the season approaching the playoffs for the time well spent at the start of the season. If not for injuries and a fortunate series of events that brought Boudreau to DC, Backstrom may still be mired down at the wing. Luckily Bruce knows hockey and makes the right decisions for all of the wrong decisions that have been made. Backstrom's dazzling skills continue to grow with every game as his stats under Boudreau have flourished. Not since Wilson coached the Caps have so many coaching decisions been so right.

Bruce has lifted the mired down Caps from bottom dwellers in the Eastern Conference to the Southeast Division leaders. All be it that the division would otherwise facing a fight for the last playoff spot if not for the third division in the conference.

So far the Caps have removed Ron Wilson whose players were beset by a team record high number of games lost to injuries by players. Wilson migrated to an extreme defensive scheme that gave the team the best chance to win. It was ugly but the Caps were winning again. They may have called Wilson a player's coach but until Boudreau at least he was an NHL Head Coach. That was arguably one of the best coached season's to come within a couple of points of the playoffs for such a poor and injury riddled team.

Following the departure of Wilson, the Caps have bungled their way through coaches as they hired a relatively unknown and unproven NHL Coach in Bruce Cassidy. His minor league teams were constantly stocked with up and coming talent for the NHL. Rumors were a flutter of his incompetence, lack of discipline, and ridicule of players and their family. The team was stagnant, spacing and skating with speed up ice was awful, and the treatment of Bondra disgusting. Moving Bondra, the team holder of multiple scoring records, to a lesser and fighting line for every two bit thug to finally take their shots at him was disgusting. At one point during the season, Bondra was on the second line and was a more productive line than Jagr's line. What did Cassidy do, but break up the 2nd line to produce a much better 1st line for Jagr and not understanding that forcing teams to choose which line to defend would allow one line to score and not completely dampen the scoring on other lines. Balance and roles/responsibilities are essential for a good flow and scoring.

Boudreau makes none of the mistakes of Cassidy and understands what's needed to coach a veteran team unlike Hanlon. Boudreau appears to have more in his magic bag of coaching tricks on all levels than Hanlon who ultimately replaced Cassidy.

The Caps have been lucky as they've moved onto their 3rd consecutive minor league coach. It doesn't appear that Boudreau was sought after or was always the man lying in wait as the team's next and greatest coach, but the right man in the right place at the right time. After all, if Hanlon was replaced at the end of the prior season would Boudreau be coaching right now probably not, but lucky for the Caps not having contingency plans for coaching and player scenarios has paid off well this time.

The Caps also were fortunate in their plan to "give up" making the playoffs and have a fire sale with the impending lock out and salary cap. Does anyone remember the year before the salary cap in the NFL? Most teams are prepared but someone hit the panic button and apparently the DC area must have a monopoly on the panic button as Casserly purged such players as Clark and Sanders to bring in Tim McGee, an aging Carl Banks, the leader of hurries and undersized Al Noga. All of these players were not what was initially invisioned and soon were released from the Redskins as disappointments.

Likewise the Caps purged and restocked the team with inferior talent giving up a most likely playoff berth where anything can happen. Abe Pollin may not have sunk the huge dollars into the team like fans would have liked, but once making the playoffs with Langway, he always did his best to green light trades to give the Caps help to make the playoffs in years the Caps may not have made it. Remember this is a league where half the teams make the playoffs and before expansion more than half made the playoffs. So as the Caps continued to surrender the playoffs for losses and if not for a lucky turn of events that occurred as a wonderful ping pong ball hit #1 in the year Alexander Ovechkin was available in the draft. What would have happened if the Caps hit #3? Who would there be to build around and how many more years would Caps fans suffer for a poor decision and a bungled history of drafting since the early 90s.

If considering statistical probability, the odds of drafting Ovie and having Boudreau work out so successfully must be pretty low so how far the team goes with Boudreau nobody knows. He appears to be doing everything right and the team has responded with winning hockey and worthy of making the post season. The only thing that is a given is that there'll be plenty of ups and downs as though Inspector Clouseau manages and owns the team.