Tomorrow at 12:01 P.M. EST hunting season for free agents officially opens. GMs are loading up the trucks with ammunition (new practice facilities, hot young superstars) and sustenance (a hefty increase in the salary cap to over $50 million), prepared to wait in the tall weeds for that trophy to hang over their mantle.

…okay, I have to stop the hunting metaphor there, because…ick.

It is, next to trade deadline day, one of the biggest personnel movement days of the year in the NHL. The days leading up to it are filled with whirlwind predictions and frantic last minute signings of players on the cusp of becoming UFAs. Undoubtedly the decisions made tomorrow and over the next few days will be picked apart by so-called “experts” and armchair GMs alike – the reality is only time will tell which signings are blockbuster deals and which ones are busts.

But whether you buy into the NHL spin of this year’s pool being extremely deep or the more pessimistic (and likely more realistic) point of view of SI’s Allan Muir, it’s sure to be entertainment. Will Tampa finally get the goaltender who won’t become a liability…or a scapegoat? Can the Ducks hold onto the core of their Cup-winning roster? How many Buffalo fans will leap off their roofs as Drury and Briere hightail it out of town?

And most importantly here in DC, will the Caps address the few gaping holes in their lineup that everyone knows are there? If you read the pundits, of course, you know that we’re going to sign Daniel Briere and Brian Rafalski. No, wait – make that Scotty Gomez and Scotty Hannan. Or…hmm. How about Jeremy Roenick and Andy Sutton? (At least Mike Green’s head would be safe.)

Hey, I hear Peter Bondra may be available. For a change.

The important thing to remember, something that far too many people forget this time of year, is that it’s not about making a big splash necessarily. It’s about making the right one. You need more than future hall-of-famers to win Stanley Cups, and the Caps aren’t going to win it with one offseason of signings. Do they need to make some noise, be it by free agency or trades? Absolutely. Will I weep into my pillow if they don’t sign a Chris Drury or a Scott Hannan? No.

Hell, I’ll take a Michael Nylander and a Tom Preissing and sleep well – they’re not sexy names compared to some of the others but they’re hard-working, character guys with, get this…skill. I’m sold.

And don’t be scared off by the lack of rumblings in the rumor mill involving the Caps. If you know this team and this organization at all you know that GMGM keeps his dealings close to the vest, revealing nothing until he has to. Maybe he should have been in charge of the uniform unveiling…

Of course, let us not forget what July 1 also represents – Canada Day! On July 1, 1867 the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec were officially combined to form the Canadian confederation. And although complete (sort of) independence from the British crown wasn’t fully achieved until 1982, it marks the beginnings of their very long path to becoming the great hockey-loving nation we know today.

So in honor of the country that took me in for four years and the province that gave me my beloved Habs, let’s all join in together with the Canadian national anthem the way it’s meant to be sung, en français and in English:

It’s summer. It’s hot. July 1 is still two days away. It kind of makes you want to jump off a building, doesn’t it?

Well, fear not, loyal readers! Straight from the Cheap Seats, here are:

1. Watch “The Goal” over and over on YouTube until you’ve memorized Joe B.’s call word for word, ending with “Simply sensational!” Perform it at family gatherings without being asked.

2. Reenact “The Goal” on the tiled floor of your kitchen or bathroom.

3. Create miniature versions of each of the Capitals and set up a diorama scene depicting your favorite game from this past season. Bonus points if you make a tiny flying Briere suspended in mid-air…oh, CapsChick, no. That crosses the line into tasteless. (Or maybe hilarious? Come on, people, he was fine! You know I wouldn’t say it if he’d been really badly hurt…)

4. Watch baseball. No, really.

5. Watch soccer. No, not really.

6. Make a Sidney Crosby voodoo doll and think of fun places to stick the pins.

7. Go into downtown DC and pretend you’re a tourist – add a fanny pack and a confused expression while staring at the metro map for extra realism.

8. Buy an air horn and sit on your couch, alternating three blasts with shouts of “Let’s Go Caps!” (The neighbors will LOVE you!)

9. Grow a mullet.

10. Play the Comcast Sportsnet SportsNite Summer Drinking Game (patent pending):
- take a drink if one of the anchors stumbles over their lines or mispronounces a local athlete’s name
- take one drink if they show a Nats player dropping the ball; take two drinks if it’s Ryan Zimmerman
- chug a beer every time they show a 300 lb football player running around in the 100 degree heat
- chug a six-pack if he passes out
- do a shot of tequila if they show Manny Acta looking like he’s going to cry
- down a bottle of vodka if Teddy Roosevelt wins the “Running of the Presidents”
- do three baby shots whenever they show or make reference to Tiger Woods’ wife and/or new baby
- throw the bottle at the TV if they make some joke about calling the kid “Tigger”
- drop a Jager bomb whenever they air a ‘highlight’ of the Nats giving up more than 3 runs in an inning (proceed with caution, that one could get dangerous)
- do 5 shots whenever they show more than a 30-second clip of Mystics basketball
- do 10 shots if you recognize any of the players
- take a drink if they use the words “Orioles manager” and “fired” in the same sentence
- take a drink if they show footage of a Red Sox or Yankees game that doesn’t involve a local team; take two if it’s a Red Sox vs. Yankees game
- finish off your entire liquor supply if they talk about the Caps’ rookie camp at all

11. Watch the clip of Semin throwing the puck at the net during the Caps-Leafs game. Then do your best impression of Chad Kilger’s best impression of a whiny 5 year old.

12. Find a picture of your least favorite player and use Paint or PhotoShop to give him a pretty new look – I suggest an evening gown with matching handbag.

13. Read every post ever written in your favorite blog (*cough*A View from the Cheap Seats*cough*)

14. Come up with an ending for the following joke: Ovechkin, Crosby and Phaneuf walk into a bar…

15. Paint the Caps’ new logo all over your car/house then ask people to guess what team you root for.

16. Perfect the dying art of origami.

17. Surround yourself with a dozen empty folding chairs and throw on a tape of a Caps’ game. Ah, just like being there, isn’t it?

18. Enter a high dive competition under the name “Sidney Crosby”.

19. Watch Washington Post Live. NO, NOT REALLY.

20. Create paper dolls of the unrestricted free agents and dress them up in little jerseys as they sign with new teams.

21. Travel to the small Canadian towns where your favorite Caps live and knock on everyone’s door asking if they are Capitals fans.

22. Stage a Chris Chelios’ lookalike contest among the neighborhood bulldogs and pugs. Winner gets a liver snap and a contract extension.

23. Go to the race track and bet on the #8 horse in every race.

24. Make up a dirty version of Stompin’ Tom Connors’ “The Good Old Hockey Game”

25. Do your own “Slapjack” stunt, complete with padded eagle costume.

26. Search for the meaning of life using only Google.

27. Go to a hotel and order everything on the room service menu. Then when it arrives, clench your fists and say “OVECHKIN!” Repeat at your own risk.

28. Walk the streets of Buffalo wearing a Chris Neil jersey…just to see what happens.

29. Set up a silent vigil outside Verizon Center with flowers, candles, and a blown-up picture of Kris Beech.

30. Call up Kansas City’s Ticketmaster outlet and ask for 10 tickets to the next KC Penguins game.

31. Go to a Nats game, sit behind home plate, and yell out “Nice save, Olie!” every time Brian Schneider blocks a wild pitch.

32. Go to a Mystics game, sit courtside, and yell out “Put the biscuit in the basket!” every time someone shoots the ball.

33. Write Ted hundreds of e-mails a day begging him to switch the jerseys back to black…just for fun.

34. Go ice skating and yell out “toe pick!” whenever someone falls.

35. Go to a friends’ birthday party in spandex underclothes and try to light their birthday candles with a blowtorch.

36. Order nothing but “wodka” drinks at your local bar…pronouncing it “wodka” every time.

37. Watch major league lacrosse to hear Joe B.’s dulcet tones. (I wonder if anyone “scampers into the zone” in lacrosse?)

38. Visit a sports bar and complain loudly about the lack of hockey being shown on the TV screens.

39. Walk down the street with a hockey stick and spear people in the groin; if you get stopped by the police, simply point out that Briere does it all the time without punishment.

40. Spend a night in jail.

41. Get on a bus or the metro during rush hour and wait until its really quiet, then randomly yell out “Hat trick, Alexander Semin!” and see who stares.

42. Go to a children’s soccer team and recite the speech from ‘Miracle’ to the team that is losing. If that doesn’t work, try the speech from ‘Animal House’.

43. Rearrange the shelves at your grocery store so that the peanut butter and cookies are all on the top shelf.

44. Make a life-size replica of your favorite player out of Popsicle sticks. Add glitter and macaroni for extra flare.

45. Give in to the NHL’s subliminal messages and just build that damn shrine to Sidney Crosby already.

46. Watch any hockey game from last season and count the number of phrases that could double as dirty euphemisms.

47. Sit in the corner for the rest of the evening after realizing you spent 2+ hours thinking only of dirty euphemisms.

48. Dig up your old Caps’ music videos from the late ‘80s and sing along at the top of your lungs. (Come on, you know the words: “Double trouble, that’s what we’ve got…what are we gonna do? Double trouble, that’s what we’ve got; the Capitals red white and blue.”)

49. Start referring to your cubicle at work as the “sin bin”. Stand up occasionally and bang on the wall, hurling insults at your boss as they walk by.

50. Look for a new job.

51. Host a “Mighty Ducks” trilogy marathon, joining in with the chants of “Quack, quack, quack” with full enthusiasm. If anyone is left standing, follow it up with a bonus showing of “Youngblood”.

52. Go to the beach. What, you think they all have to be insane? It’s summer, go to the beach!

53. Walk around for an entire day saying nothing but “my name is Inigo Montoya…you killed my father…prepare to die” over and over and over. And over and over. And over. Throw in the occasional “aaaaaaaaas yooooooooou wiiiiiiiiish” just to throw people off.

54. Play 6 degrees of separation using your favorite hockey players. Bonus if you can get from Mike Eagles to Shane Doan in less than 6 steps…or at all.

55. Hold a “Blades of Steel” tournament and award the winner a tiny replica Stanley Cup, which they must then parade through the streets.

56. Cut out real estate listings in the Pittsburgh area and mail them to Sidney Crosby.

57. Stop random people on the street and ask them, “Do you know #8?”

58. Send Chris Drury a free, one-way plane ticket to Washington, DC everyday until he gives in. Include a note offering him the use of your couch until he finds a place to live.

59. Clean your house from top to bottom using your old Jagr jersey as a dust rag.

60. Go to an ice cream parlor and ask for free samples of every flavor, then leave without buying any.

61. Finally rent and watch Citizen Kane.

62. Understand why you had never rented and watched Citizen Kane after falling asleep halfway through and waking up with a cheese doodle stuck to your face.

63. Teach your two-year-old child/cousin/niece/nephew/etc. to clap whenever you say “Ovechkin”…or to boo whenever you say “Jagr”.

64. Brainstorm fun new names for potential lines next year. For example, in an alternate universe you could have the Fleischmann-Steckel-Ovechkin line…or as I call it, the Steck O’ Butter line. Thank you, folks, I’ll be here all week! Try the veal.
[Okay, yes - Fleischmann's is a brand of margarine, not butter but come on - Steck O' Margarine just doesn't sound as good.]

Extra Cheap Seats challenge: if you actually do any of these things, film it, stick it on YouTube and send me an e-mail so I can share it…I’m always happy to provide a forum for people making asses of themselves.

The question came up earlier today as to where I got these random quotes. Some of them have been contributed by friendly readers (and are attributed as such) but mostly it is from a lifetime of watching too much TV and too many movies…and getting excited whenever the briefest mention of hockey comes up. After that its just a matter of tracking down the exact quote using whatever information I can remember and our good friend Google. Ah, the inner workings of a blogger’s life – thrilling, no?

Here we go – I’ll ease you in with a pretty simple one, entry #5:

Man: Oh my God! A penalty shot with only four seconds left. It’s your child versus mine! The winner will be showered with praise; the loser will be taunted and booed until my throat is sore!

Now here’s the toughie – if anyone knows it, I’ll be shocked. I’m even using two quotes from the same scene just to help you out, but I don’t know that it will. Oh, and good luck using Google on this one…I’ve checked, if it’s on there it’s buried deep in the vastness of the interweb. So there.

#1: Perfect? It’s a hockey game.
#2: It’ll be fun. There’ll be cheerleaders and clowns, people doing the wave.
#1: You have no idea what a hockey game is, do you?

Girl A: It’s cold in here.
Girl B: It’s the ice.
Girl A: Oh my God, there really is ice. Cool.
Girl B: What are you doing here?
Girl A: I’m hockeying.
Girl B: That’s not a word.

Give it your best shot – good luck!

It’s official – Scott Stevens will join fellow distinguished candidates Al MacInnis, Mark Messier and Ron Francis in the Hockey Hall of Fame November 12. For those of us who watched him develop into one of the league’s best defenseman here in Washington, there was never any doubt.

Stevens may have hoisted the Cup with New Jersey, but I will always remember him wearing the Capitals’ jersey first, whether he was lifting the crowd out of their seats with yet another bone-rattling check at center ice or smiling down at me from my Donald Duck orange juice growth poster.

Ah, memories.

Nothing more I can really say about Scotty that isn’t put more eloquently by Mike Vogel…so congrats, Scott. It is a well-deserved honor to be sure!

(Slightly belated) “Name That Obscure Hockey Reference” time, kiddies…which henceforth will be known as NTOHR, because that title is too long and I’m too lazy.

We’ll kick today’s contest off with entry #3 (provided by OFB’s own OrderedChaos):

Three men are playing a hockey video game…

Man 1: I wish they still had fights in this game so I could bitch-slap Wayne.
Man 2: What? They don’t have fighting anymore?
Man 1: Doesn’t that suck?
Man 2: Why’d they get rid of the fighting? It was the best part of the old version.
Man 3: I think kids were hittin’ each other or somethin’, man.
Man 1: Yeah, but you know what Smitty*? You can make their heads bleed in this one.
Man 2: Make somebody’s head bleed.
Man 3: C’mon man, we’re in the playoffs.
*Name changed

Here’s entry #4 – again, look for clues in the quote as to location and other hints that may help you narrow it down. And yes, I’m aware that they’re picking on the Capitals. The one time they’re mentioned in a pop culture reference and that’s how they’ve been portrayed. Yay.

Man 1: You guys go out?
Man 2: John* had Capitals tickets.
Man 1: Good game?
Man 2: You know what I’d do if I… No, it wasn’t. You know what I’d do if I owned a hockey team? I’d hire a sumo wrestler. I’d give him a uniform, transportation, 500 bucks a week to sit in the goal, eat a ham sandwich, and enjoy the game. My team would never get scored on.
Man 1: Your team would get scored on constantly.
Man 2: Maybe, but we’d sell a few tickets.
Man 1: Yeah, ’cause sumo wrestling sells out all the time in big hockey towns.
Man 2: My idea’s totally unviable?
Man 1: Well, you’re a Democrat. It’s a pretty big club.
*Name changed

If you know both, great – if you know one, great. We continue until someone correctly identifies both (don’t forget to identify the characters, too), so take your best shot!

I’ll tell you, these get harder every day. The next round goes up at 8:23 pm EST tonight and I assure you its a toughie, so get those thinking caps on!

It’s funny, I was just about to fire off a nasty e-mail to all of my blogger playoff pool participants who have yet to pay up…when I realized I hadn’t even written my love letter to the Caps. Oops. Now some would say that this entire blog is a giant love letter to the Caps sprayed with perfume and sealed with a kiss, and should therefore serve as adequate payment for falling short in my own pool. I’m guessing those people aren’t among the others who are stuck writing schmaltzy stuff about a team they pay little or no attention to…so here goes.

I was born into this crazy, mixed-up world of Caps fanaticism, a product of a hockey-mad father whose devotion to this team of ne’er-do-wells is practically etched in the annals of Washington sports history. Legend has it that while in the womb I kicked to the strains of “Let’s Go Caps”; that I was born already wearing a tiny Caps jersey; that my first words were “what the Caps really need is a good scoring-line center”…

…but I digress.

It’s not just a product of my raising that has me writing innocuous rants about a hockey team at two in the morning – after all, my younger sister hasn’t known a player’s name since Joe Reekie wore the eagle and my older sister, while a thoroughly passionate Caps fan in her own right, still maintains some semblance of normalcy in her fandom. It is that normalcy, that sanity, that seems to have skipped over me altogether and left me to pour out my hockey-related hopes and dreams here day after day amid the indifferent masses of our nation’s capital.

Washington, DC is not a traditional sports town. You have in this city of roughly 600,000 people residents from up and down the east coast, across the country, around the world (and approximately 95% of the city of Pittsburgh). With that transience comes a lack of unity, particularly when it comes to sports. To be a product of the DC area is a rarity; to be a lifelong fan of a local sports team, even more so. Throw in hockey fan to that equation and you might as well be one of those stuffed dodo birds at the Smithsonian.

It’s never fazed me, though. Sure, I get the funny looks and I’ve heard the knee-slappers about going to a boxing match and seeing a hockey game break out (ha…ha.). But it doesn’t matter. Because something about this team has gotten under my skin. I don’t just mean this particular crop of youngsters who will skate out onto the ice in their shiny new threads come October; I mean the entire team – the history, the heartache, the hope, all of it. I can’t shake it, and I have no desire to do so.

My earliest memories are of Rod Langway, Scott Stevens, Mike Ridley, Mike Gartner, and Bengt Gustafsson; of white pom-poms with plastic handles and organ music; of pizza goals and the Patrick Division. Of playoff hopes and playoff losses. Of lying on my stomach in front of the TV, watching in awe as my team took the ice, knowing that they couldn’t lose while I watched…no matter how many times they did.

There is something special about a franchise that can frustrate you to the point of tearing out your hair then in one fell swoop suck you right back in again. It is an indefinable quality that brings us back year after year, but “it” is there. It’s how the team survived those disastrous first few years of existence. It’s how they fill the arena on opening day despite the heartbreaking end to the previous season just a few months before. It is the downfall of a team one year, only to see it reawakened by an influx of youth and vitality the next; the departure of one superstar only to see him replaced with a brighter one.

These days it isn’t easy to be a Caps fan. There’s a lot of hurry up and wait, a lot of rebuilding and evolution and growth, a lot of talk about the future when all we want is to see the present. There are promises being made and expectations being set – and whether those expectations are realized remains to be seen. We won’t know the outcome until the puck drops in the fall, or until the final whistle blows to signal the end of another season.

But when is it ever easy to be a Caps fan? That’s not why we love this team. If we wanted to pick a winner, we’d have jumped on the Red Wings bandwagon, ridden the coattails of the Hurricanes, flown in a ‘V’ with the Ducks…but we didn’t.

Instead we stand by our team, fully aware that someday our ship will come in and victory will be that much sweeter because we earned it. We enter each year with collective amnesia, forgetting the horrors we have witnessed in the past and approaching a new season with the bright eyes of an eternal optimist. We revel in the veteran leadership of Olie Kolzig and Chris Clark, in the grit and work ethic of Matt Pettinger and Brian Sutherby, in the skill and youthful exuberance of Alex Ovechkin and Alexander Semin…and in the future hopes of Niklas Backstrom and Karl Alzner.

And we wait for another year to begin.