Monthly Archives: September 2010

More News On Young Prospects

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Our staff is very impressed with two young center prospects, one of them in Cody Eakin.

We are drafting and developing multiple young centers now.

That is a tough position to fill.

Backstrom will be here for years.

Marcus Johansson looks like he could develop into a very good center.

Cody Eakin too.

And there are others as well.

We have done a very good job of managing our salary cap and of developing young players to make our line-up now and to have even younger players ready to make the team in the out years creates real competition.

And ups the pace and tempo at camp. Everyone has to look over their shoulder.

And everyone plays hard in preseason games.

We are 2-0 after winning on Saturday night in Nashville 2 to 1.

Blatche and McGee Extended

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Youth must be served.

We must be loyal to talented young developing players.

Talented, quick big men are quite hard to find.

We believe we have two top developing big men here and I am pleased both have been extended.

And they don’t have to play for contracts now this coming season. They can play for each other and have a focus on team success.

This was a smart move and a predictable one if you have been listening to what we have been preaching about our plans to be go young; go big; and keep our young core together.

Thank you. See you all on Monday night. And I hope the folks who opine away on this Washington Post blog will come out to George Mason, too, at midnight on Monday and then buy some season tickets as well. That would be great to see. We are counting on you to turn your passion into attendance and support, deal?

True But

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We have cap space. We have many prospects in the system. We can make deals if and when we feel we need to improve. George and staff have flexibility. What we didn’t want to do this off season was make a big headline-making move and get stuck with a long term expensive contract that hampered us from keeping our core group of young players together.At the same time, we are loyal to our young and developing players. When we draft a player high and they have great success at Hershey; win rings; do everything asked of them; and they really understand the system we play, we have to let them play if they earn the time in camp. And the preseason.

That is part of our covenant. That is part of who we are and why young players believe in us and want to play here and sign long term deals. We will play young players if they are a better player. We trust them.

Every team needs to improve in some aspect of its line up. We have flexibility built into our system. We have cap space. We have an abundance of young players throughout the system. We are well situated.

The season is just starting. Let us see who can play. Let us see the character of this new team. Let us be open minded and objective. I am happy we are playing younger players if they earn their ice time.

I Can’t Wait For The Season To Begin

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We have to get out of the zone of hype. And talk. And being with so many media folks, as nice as they are.

We have to start playing some games.

And be focused on small units of work; shifts; plays; periods; games. Game by game.

The regular season matters. A lot!

Every game has worth - two points. Our fans deserve our best effort in every game.

We need to qualify for the playoffs. We need to become a highly functioning team.We cannot take anything for granted.

We have to stop talking about last season and last season’s playoffs. We have to stop talking about next season’s playoffs.

We need to focus on game 1 in Atlanta. And then home game number 1 against New Jersey. And so on and so on.

The NHL is highly competitive. Our division has improved a lot. We have some great unknowns related to our team. No one will hand anything to us.

We need to do the work. We need to undergo the drama. We need to drop the puck.

While I am happy our franchise now has some relevance and is popular, the media onslaught can be overwhelming at times. There is a lot of noise out there and it will soon be time for us to just focus on the signal that a new season brings. Go Caps!