The skies are partly cloudy overhead with a high of 84 degrees and the winds are blowing a blustery four miles per hour. This can only mean one thing. Hockey is back in the Nation's Capital. Of course the Capitals would hardly know it tonight as they start their season in cold, rainy Atlanta, Georgia. At least they'll be home tomorrow to play Carolina.

For the third year of probably only three years, the NHL has a division-heavy schedule where each team plays eight games against each of the other teams in its division. For Washington, this means four visits to Georgia, four visits to South Carolina and eight trips to two different cities in Florida. It also means playing a lot of games against teams that they didn't used to care about, but by now they're finally starting to hate.

For instance, tonight's game against the Atlanta Thrashers would have been meaningless a few years ago because it doesn't snow in Atlanta and they had never won anything. Then, two years ago, the Thrashers hired the Caps' all-time leading scorer and last year they somehow won the Southeast Division. Along the way, the Caps started to really respect them.

Tomorrow night the Caps play their first home game of '07-'08 against the Carolina Hurricanes, a team full of old has-beens with very few teeth left who missed the playoffs last year and have done nothing to be proud of since winning the 2006 Stanley Cup. Last year the Canes traded away the best defensive prospect in team history for someone who was ready to help them win right away. They did this because the rest of their players were knocking on retirement's door and they wanted one more shot at the title before everything fell apart. Then they missed the playoffs.

This year they have the same aging lineup. Instead of letting their players retire with dignity, they've kept them all around, and even traded to get back the one that got away. Later in the year, we expect geriatric captain Rod Brind'Amour to trade his skates for a walker, but right now, after four months of rest and relaxation, the Hurricanes provide a solid test for Washington's mostly green lineup.

One player to watch on Saturday is Dave Steckel. The Los Angeles Kings made Steckel a first round pick in 2001 because he is very tall. When the Kings gave up on getting any offense out of Steckel, he signed with the Capitals and has played a couple of very solid seasons with the Hershey Bears. In a preseason game this year, Steckel won six consecutive faceoffs against Brind'Amour. Faceoffs are a cross between a jump ball from basketball and a sumo wrestling match. A linesman drops a puck between two centers and the centers get the puck away from each other by any means necessary. Faceoffs require strength, quickness and great hand-eye coordination. Brind'Amour has been one of the best in the league at faceoffs since before dinosaurs evolved. If Steckel can repeat his feat on Saturday, he'll find himself playing in the NHL for a long time.

The season begins on a rare note of national optimism. The Capitals will be a pet project of ESPN columnist Scott Burnside, as he chronicles their widely expected triumph over expectations. We're not ready to join the chorus of journalists chortling that the Caps will make the playoffs until we hear that goalies Olaf Kolzig and Brent Johnson have started taking prozac, gone into therapy or otherwise found some way to cope with the prosaic monotony of an eighty-two game season, but we are excited to continue bringing you non-stop coverage of the greatest name in sports: Alexander Semin.