Minor Leaguer Makes a Major Impact
Boudreau Has Spurred Capitals to Edge of Playoffs

By Mike Wise and Tarik El-Bashir
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, April 5, 2008

Before a critical game against the Carolina Hurricanes on Tuesday night, the owner of the Washington Capitals decreed via e-mail that all team employees and fans wear red, to convey the effect of a "red-out" at the 18,000-seat Verizon Center. Ted Leonsis was more than pleased to find that his coach had received the memo.

"How cool are you?" he said to Bruce Boudreau, who had buttoned his loud dress shirt. "You're wearing a red shirt. You got the message."

Said Boudreau: "I'm embarrassed to tell you I didn't know it was a red-out. I just wore a red shirt."

Leonsis chuckled relating the story. "Who wears a red shirt with a suit?" he said. "Bruce has a red shirt -- that he thinks looks good. Our coach? He's out of central casting."

The studio pitch goes as follows: Rumpled, bald and rotund Canadian toils in minor league outposts as a coach and player for 33 years. Finally gets his big chance. Takes over sad-sack losers in the nation's capital, where he guides the National Hockey League's most electrifying young player and a bus-load of his former minor league kids from the brink of oblivion to the cusp of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The plot continues tonight at Verizon Center, with the Capitals having stunningly won 10 of their past 11 games and ignited their dormant fan base. They are poised to become the first team in NHL history to rebound from 14th or 15th place at the midpoint of the season to qualify for the playoffs, a feat they will achieve if they beat the Florida Panthers tonight. They also will win the Southeast Division, and earn the No. 3 seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs, with a win or an overtime loss (teams are awarded one point for such losses).

Since the Capitals summoned him from their minor league affiliate in Hershey, Pa., on Thanksgiving day, Boudreau has transformed a tense, methodical team under former coach Glen Hanlon -- the Capitals began the season a dismal 6-14-1, the franchise's worst start in 26 years -- into a bunch of free skaters who shoot, score and play a pulsating, attacking brand of hockey.

Alex Ovechkin, the team's Russian-born, 22-year-old star, has been the biggest beneficiary, having scored 51 goals in the past 60 games under Boudreau. Ovechkin has 65 goals for the season, the most an NHL player has scored since Mario Lemieux in 1995-96. He should be a lock to win the Hart Trophy, the league's most valuable player award, especially if Washington makes the postseason.

"I'm always in awe," Boudreau, 53, said as he stood a few feet from the team's practice rink in Arlington on Thursday. "Not too many coaches get a chance to coach Alex Ovechkin. . . . There are days when my wife and I pinch ourselves."

Said Crystal Boudreau, whom Bruce began dating 18 years ago: "We used to watch the NHL all the time together. Now, it's like, 'Wow.'

"He never got bitter," Crystal added. "Once in a blue moon there was a, 'I can't believe that guy got a job,' but in every situation he's ever been in, Bruce has always taken the high road. I'm the one who always dreamed up revenge."

Washington never has been regarded as a hockey town. The Capitals had the worst reported attendance in the NHL for the first three months of this season, but attendance spiked after Ovechkin signed a record 13-year, $124 million contract extension and the team began its climb in January. The Capitals have attracted crowds of 17,000 or more to Verizon Center since the start of February, including six sellouts in that time.

Television ratings also have gone up, though the NHL continues to attract a paltry viewership compared with other major sports. Comcast SportsNet reported a 1.6 rating for Tuesday's Carolina game, representing about 37,000 households, and a 2.7 rating -- or about 62,000 homes -- for Thursday's victory over Tampa Bay. It was the highest-rated Capitals game since the network launched in 2001.

The maestro of such an about-face may be one of unlikeliest leaders in the history of Washington sports. Stubby, often unshaven, a walking fashion faux pas, Boudreau was born and reared in Toronto.

He grew up fantasizing about playing for his beloved Maple Leafs, who made the kid's dream come true -- sort of. Boudreau was called up from the minor leagues and sent back down 26 times and never was with the team for a full season. He played against NHL immortals Bobby Orr and Gordie Howe at the end of their careers, but Boudreau himself ended up as a career minor leaguer, plying his trade for the Johnstown Jets and others for 17 seasons.

After his playing career ended, he coached for 16 years in six minor league cities.

"I don't know if I was quite Crash Davis," he said of the character Kevin Costner played in "Bull Durham," "but it took me a few years to understand, 'If I did this, this and this, I'd be up there.' I didn't pay that price."

Boudreau caroused. He was allergic to the weight room. He didn't practice as well as he should have. "It was a combination of everything," he said. "Back then, everybody went out. I don't think that was as big a problem. It was more an on-ice situation why I never made it.

"I never believed it until I became a coach and said: 'You know what? I wouldn't have liked the player I was until I got older.' "

It's no coincidence nine players on the Capitals' roster played for Boudreau in Hershey, where he led the Bears to the 2006 Calder Cup. Much of his success is built through trust over time.

"One of the big things he is for is being fair," said Brooks Laich, a 24-year-old forward who played for Boudreau in Hershey and, like many of his former teammates in the American Hockey League, is having a career year. "He was overlooked for so long. I'm sure he sat there thinking: 'Are these guys that much better than me? Why am I not getting my shot?' "

Before being hired to coach the Capitals, Boudreau was destined to become a caricature of an extra in the 1977 cult comedy "Slap Shot," which in fact he was. He made $1,300 for two weeks of work.

"Next to what I was making in the minors, it was almost like a month's pay when you include the expenses," Boudreau said. "Best two weeks of my life at the time."

As the Capitals were almost finished mauling the Hurricanes on Tuesday night and tying Carolina for the Southeast Division lead, players tried in vain to shove their coach into the view of a video cameraman assigned to capture Boudreau's likeness on the overhead scoreboard. He kept moving away, uncomfortable with the attention.

"I waited 33 years to get this chance and I hope I don't have to go back to the American Hockey League," he said. "I hope I stay here. But if I had to go back to the American League to make a living, I wouldn't have a problem with it. It's still hockey."