Talented European prospects Jacub Klepis and Jame Pollock left the Washington Capitals’ farm team this week to play in Europe. The Capitals will no longer have to pay their salaries, but they will also no longer have them around to call up when their star players get injured. Klepis played half the season for Washington last year, gradually developing into a decent center, and showing signs that he could become more of an offensive force…

This weekend the Capitals won their first two games under new head coach Bruce Boudreau. WashingtonCaps.com Senior Writer Mike Vogel announced that Boudreau had turned the team around by fixing the power play. This is true, but Vogel writes that he fixed it by “promoting Nicklas Backsrrom (sic) and Mike Green to the first unit and moving Alex Ovechkin up to his more customary forward spot from the point, where he had been stationed for…

Three of the Capitals’ best five offensive players are still out with minor injuries. That’s the good news. The bad news is that, after being absolutely destroyed by the Carolina Hurricanes last night, the Caps are tied with the Atlanta Thrashers for the worst record in the East at 5-9-0. Last night’s loss would have been easier to explain if the Caps were missing ten, or maybe twenty of their best players. Two Hurricanes scored…

It’s getting hard to keep track of what to think about the Capitals this year. At the beginning of the year, they won three straight games, and even spent an hour as the league’s first place team. Then they lost a few, won one, and tried losing again. Last night, in what should have been a hopeless battle against a hot team, they put together a seven to one victory over the grammatically challenged…

Former Capitals coach Bruce “Butch” Cassidy (who famously wrote his plays on napkins, and then brought the napkins to practice) has just been fired by the Kingston Frontenacs of the Ontario Hockey League after they lost six straight games. The firing from the junior team confirms the suspicions of many Caps fans who remembered the 2003-2004 season and though the coach might have been slightly less than qualified for the NHL. Cassidy joined the Capitals…

One of the best things about covering hockey is that you get the summer off. Just ask USA Today’s Gary Graves, TV Analyst Darren Pang or the anonymous Western Canadian hockey experts on this conference call. All of them are really excited to watch what happens when Alexander Ovechkin plays with newly signed free agent center Michael Nylander. But as Ovechkin kindly told these vacationing reporters when they asked him how he felt about it,…

Last week we reported that the Capitals signed unrestricted free agent center Michael Nylander to a four year contract worth $19.5 million (U.S.). One day earlier, an Alberta radio station reported that the Edmonton Oilers signed unrestricted free agent center Michael Nylander to a four year contract worth $22 million (U.S.). Reportedly Nylander’s agent had emailed acceptance to Edmonton, but Nylander’s wife then exercised veto power over the prospect of life in the Canadian prairie….

In anticipation of 2005 4th overall pick Niklas Backstrom’s arrival from Sweden, the Capitals had already signed marginal Swedish defenseman (and former Capital) Josef Boumedienne to a one-year contract to interpret at the airport and through training camp. Therefore we have to try to look at the signing of Swedish center (and former Capital) Michael Nylander, to a four-year, nineteen and a half million dollar contract, as a hockey move. We said, “try.” Nylander initially…