Tonight is the NHL's annual awards show. Alexander Ovechkin, who has won both of the NHL's scoring titles, is nominated for both of the league's most valuable player awards as well. Two other Capitals could be honored tonight. Bruce Boudreau is up for Coach of the Year, and has a slim chance. Nicklas Backstrom is nominated for Rookie of the Year, but the honor is predicted to fall upon Chicago's Patrick Kane. Ovechkin's fellow nominees......

Alex Ovechkin, the NHL's 2006 rookie of the year, has already won 2008's Art Ross trophy and Rocket Richard trophy as the league's top point scorer and goal getter. Now he's finally been named a finalist for the Hart trophy as the league's MVP. Ovechkin, meanwhile, is waiting to join the Russian national team for hockey's World Championships. The team, of course, would love to have him, but it's taking some time to find insurance......

In the column of news that we could have told you months ago, the Capitals have agreed to a long-term contract with coach Bruce Boudreau, who led the team to win 37 of 61 games after taking over midseason. This is the kind of first-season coaching record that will have Caps fans forgetting the triumphant debut of Bruce Cassidy. In the department of news we've been telling you for weeks, Nicklas Backstrom has been officially......

It's over. Last night, the Caps lost game seven in overtime to the Philadelphia Flyers. They will now face the dreaded eighteen hole golf courses of McLean, and their own personal workout regimens. Led by the season-long heroics of Alexander Ovechkin, Mike Green and Olaf Kolzig, the team came back from 14th in the East at New Years to third place in the East with home ice advantage in their first playoff series in five......

If the comments on last Friday's Caps Briefing didn't give it away, the Capitals don't get a lot of respect in other cities around the NHL. We had thought this changed in the last month when Alex Ovechkin led the league in goals and points, led the team into the playoffs, and became the consensus pick as the NHL's MVP. Boy were we wrong. Friday night the Caps overcame a two goal deficit and beat......

It is a great time to be a Caps Fan. We've seen media coverage of the guy who brings his trumpet to the games and the rock bands who have sung the team's praises. Today we'd like to take the time to check in with a different kind of superfan. A kind of superfan you, as a blog reader, may be able to identify with. Today's superfan is one of the leading alltime posters on......

Friday night the Caps open their first Stanley Cup Playoff series in what feels like twenty-thousand years against the Philadelphia Flyers. The first six games of the series have all been picked up by national television stations. The team's meteoric rise to the playoffs has even inspired a heavy metal theme song. What makes this the most anticipated Capitals playoff series ever? For one thing, there is a great symmetry between the opponents. The Capitals......

Who would have thought that adding former MVP and three time Stanley Cup winner Sergei Fedorov would help a Caps team on the playoff bubble? Who could have predicted that picking up Christobal Huet, last year's NHL leader in save percentage, would make the team noticeably better? If you could have told us that adding these two preeminent veterans without giving up any professional players in return would make a big difference, then we'd like......

Ovechkin flipped the puck high in the air, spun around in a circle and then batted the falling puck like a baseball. Chris Osgood easily stopped the absurd shot, but the event was judged on style points....