They Can't Blow It Every Year, Right? Right?

I was going to do a Capitals' playoff breakdown, but, really, what is there to know?  The Caps are as puzzling as the enduring success of Jay Leno or the apparent appeal of Two and a Half Men.  In their first round series that starts tonight, the Caps may be pulverized, leaving Ted Leonsis and George McPhee to scrape the road kill off F Street.  Or...the team may wake up, be the team they are capable of being and march through the Eastern conference.  After all, the Caps have hovered a hair above a .500 winning percentage all season.  It's not a huge stretch to think they could win 16 of their next 28 games.

My optimism, as it usually is regarding the Capitals fortunes this time of year, is, if not insane, at least undeserved.  This team has broken my heart year after year.  Yet, each season I find something to cling to, something that I can point to that says, "This is the year."  This season there are actually two things that make me believe (however foolishly). 

The first is that for the first time in years the Caps come in with low expectations.  A Stanley Cup favorite in the preseason, the Caps stunk it up enough to slip in the seventh seed and draw the defending champs.  Despite what George McPhee thinks, anything this team wins is gravy.  Perhaps lowered expectations will remove pressure and help this team pull off upsets instead of choke jobs.

The second factor is Coach Dale Hunter.  Go ahead, stop laughing.  I'll wait.  No, seriously, stop laughing.  Sure, some of his coaching moves and most of his press conferences make him seem borderline illiterate.  Sure, as he does little more than chew gum and sip water on the bench, he looks more bored than my wife at a baseball game.  (She just doesn't get the grand beauty of the game.)  Sure, Hunter may just be doing McPhee a favor by keeping the bench warm after Bruce Boudreau was fired.  But maybe he is stupid like a fox.  (That's how the saying goes, right?)  Hunter has elicited stronger play out of certain guys that have been scratched then worked hard to get back in the line-up.  His style of play, if executed properly, could thrive in the postseason.  Fans have no idea what Dale is doing behind the scenes to improve this team and change the culture of playoff ineptitude.  Maybe Dale Hunter, one of the most clutch players in Caps history, becomes the most clutch coach in Caps history.

I can dream, right?  A mountain of evidence and past history suggests that my optimism is misplaced.  The beauty, however, lies in the fact that anything is possible before the puck drops for Game 1.  And if the Caps are bounced early then I have the whole spring to join America the Stupid in sitting through Two and a Half Men reruns.