Coming into this hockey season, Brent Johnson was even more of an afterthought than usual. After leaving Johnson in the press box to watch games and leaving him on the bench to watch practices at the end of last season in favor of Olaf Kolzig and Christobal Huet, the Caps replaced those two aging starters with former NHL MVP Jose Theodore. Johnson battled through training camp to regain his NHL backup job against a couple of highly regarded European teenagers, and figured to start 20 games in Theodore’s shadow, while possibly taking up a few new hobbies and obsessively rereading Dostoyevsky’s seminal Notes from the Underground.

Yesterday, the NHL named Johnson its third star for the previous week. The honor followed three consecutive starts with a 2-0-1 record, including wins against (then) division leaders New York (R) and Carolina. Not one to rest on this entirely unexpected laurel, Johnson followed it up with a win last night against Tampa Bay and their new backup, the aforementioned Caps star Olaf Kolzig. The win extended Johnson’s unbeaten streak to four games, but it also legitimized him as a Capitals goalie in a manner equivalent to Siegfried’s defeat of Wotan, Luke’s conquest of Darth Vader, or W’s execution of Saddam Hussein.

Kolzig, for his part, said some really nice things following last night’s loss to 19 of his close friends and former teammates. The veteran of 16 Capitals seasons told the Post’s Tarik El-Bashir that Johnson has emerged as a goalie, and that he (Kolzig) feels proud of him. Even though Johnson has become as good a goalie as his longtime mentor, he’s still got a long way to go before he proves himself quite as classy.

Photo by Eli Resnick