Lighting the Lamp Sure Is Fun

Attendance is only one reward for the Caps' stunning turnaround since Coach Bruce Boudreau arrived 14 months ago and, helped by waves of young stars arriving from Hershey, turned a tail-ender into a Cup contender.

The Caps' TV ratings are up 130 percent. Merchandise, which leapt last season with new jerseys and logos, has jumped another 40 percent. The average time-per-viewer at the Caps Web site is the highest in the NHL. In part that may be because of Web-centric owner Ted Leonsis. But new Caps fans may also need more time online to learn all the exotic stuff they want to know. (Like that the Red Wings beat the Penguins in the Stanley Cup finals last year.)

At rare moments, everything seems to come together in a rush for a franchise. That's where the Caps are now. It's not just that the multiyear building plan of General Manager George McPhee and Leonsis bore fruit last year and that more youngsters have arrived or improved this season, including Karl Alzner (20), Nicklas Backstrom (21), Mike Green (23) and Alexander Semin (24) along with Ovechkin (23).

Simultaneously, the whole experience of Capitals hockey has improved. The District, after urging by Wizards owner Abe Pollin, upgraded the main HD video board and sound system as well as the ribbon boards at Verizon Center. So Caps games are now a red-pulsing light and rock show. A new director of game entertainment (Scott Brooks) arrived in November 2007, just as the Caps hit coach-firing bottom. With the franchise inaugurating those new red-to-the-max uniforms, he got to revamp the look, sound and feel of the Caps just as a new winning team was identifying itself.

You cringe at the Nats' pregame schlock, right? Or cover your face when too-much-is-never-enough FedEx Field perpetrates some new offense to the memory of classy RFK? The Caps have it right, down to clips of Al Pacino and Gene Hackman in movie pep talks or a deranged Christopher Walken demanding "more cowbell!" on SNL.

"This is cool," my wife said. "It feels like a sports event that's not in Washington." Okay, that hurts.

But it's about time somebody clicked. The Wizards haven't raised the roof since they were Bullets. The Nats get a free park, then fuss about the rent. So turns out, it's Caps fans who get to be proud, get to tell us what we've been missing. The restaurants around Verizon Center are full of them, most in Caps jerseys.

Who thought the District would have "red-out" crowds worthy of Nebraska football? Or fans who are delighted to mug for Verizon Center cameras as they try in vain to pronounce "how do I get to the airport" in Swedish.

"Where are the vendors?" my wife asked a fan.

"No vendors at a hockey game, lady," he said. "If you block these people's view of the puck, they'd go off on ya."

"Good," said my wife. "I've always hated vendors."

When the Caps arrived long ago, the town assumed that, given a few years, we'd love 'em. Learn the sport, so foreign to Washington at the time, then adopt our new homegrown stars and get hooked. But it never happened.

The team stayed awful too long, lost its novelty, then turned inward to core hockey lovers for viability. Sound a bit too much like the Nats trajectory, so far? When the Caps finally got good, they were usually a bit boring. Even Ron Wilson's Stanley Cup finals club never lit the fuse like this bunch.

Sometimes, over the years, the Caps have been sportswriter spinach and fan repellent. And sometimes, they've been fun. But they've never been a thrill, never been the best show in town, never been the team whose tickets you gave to your family for Christmas. Until now.

It's a strange new place we find ourselves, to be sure. But we can probably learn to enjoy it.