Two years ago, trapped in the doldrums of summer, I put forth this list of things we could do to chase away the No Hockey Blues.

Somehow this offseason seems even longer than that playoff-less stretch of time. The stir craziness has set in. The heat and humidity and lack of hockey is starting to get to all of us. As August creeps slowly closer it appears this list of activities should once again come in handy…with perhaps a few updates, of course.

So get ready to shake off the cobwebs of summer and launch yourself into a whole new list of offseason activities!

And as always, proceed with caution.

1. Drape your replica Southeast Division banner over your shoulders and run through the streets singing “Weeeeee are the (Southeast Division) Champions, my friends…” Never mind those who would mock, you’ll know they’re just jealous.

2. Prank call Bryan Murray pretending to be Sharks GM Doug Wilson and offer him Thornton, Nabokov, Boyle and $4 million in cash in exchange for Heatley. Make sure the speaker phone is on to share his girlish squeals of joy with those around you…and then to revel in his tears of frustration when he realizes it’s a joke.

3. Dress up like Gary Bettman and stand behind a podium, practicing your best “scary face”. Optional: throw in a verse of “we represent the Lollipop Guild, the Lollipop Guild, the Lollipop Guild.”

Sing it, Gary...

4. Brainstorm new names for Jobing.com Arena – because that’s the source of all of the Coyotes’ problems right there. It just has to be.

5. Start a trade rumor for a transaction that would never, ever happen and see how quickly it takes off. For example: Crosby to Philadelphia for Ray Emery, Daniel Carcillo and a bag of pucks.

6. Come up with endorsement deal ideas for the rest of the Caps – after all, why should Ovie have all the fun? Possibilities include Erskine working for a chain of cosmetic dentists, Semin as the pitchman for a cardio-boxing class, etc.

7. Send Crosby real estate listings for the Pittsburgh area. Yes, again – he didn’t seem to take the hint last time.

8. Start preparing for Vancouver by constantly humming the Olympic fanfare as loudly as possible. If you’re feeling ambitious, change it up with the occasional insertion of the American, Canadian and Russian national anthems.

9. Get your costume ready for CapsCon 2009 – and don’t forget to be realistic, especially when dressing as your favorite toothless Cap. Pliers work best, I find, although there’s something to be said for the old ’string around the doorknob’ bit.

10. Teach yourself to say “I want to feel your bum” in each of the languages spoken by those on the Caps roster.

Bonus points (and a potential restraining order) if you find a way to actually say it to the player or players who speak that language.

11. Email Ted to see how much it would cost to have Ovechkin and Semin DJ for your kid’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah. Because there’s nothing more a 13 year old could want than a Lovable Crazy Drunken Russian Duo themed-party.

12. Visit Redskins training camp. Come equipped with a battery-powered fan, an umbrella and plenty of ice water, but be sure to complain loudly and often to the nearest sweat-soaked 350lb hopeful about the heat. Don’t worry about getting away…he’ll only be able to chase you about 10 feet before passing out.

13. Put together a packet of info detailing how lovely Omsk is in the winter and send it to the Nylander family.

14. Build a time machine so CapsChick can go back in time and undo this ecstatic “Nylander’s a Cap!!” post. Oh, hindsight.

15. Go to a jazz club and request “Bongo Bliss in the Key of Staal” by Alexander Semin. Bonus points if they actually try to play it.

16. Adopt a Russian accent and visit the Spy Museum, making sure to stand next to other visitors, point at various displays and mutter bitterly to yourself about having had that same object in red.

17. Drown your boredom in a Caps-themed cocktail. A few favorites:

Caps Kids Club
3 oz. lemon-lime soda
Dash of grenadine
3 oz. ginger ale
Maraschino cherry for garnish

Swedish Roulette
2 parts Absolut Raspberri
2 parts Absolut Vanilla
2 parts cranberry juice
1 part lime juice
lemon-lime soda

The Ovechkin
2 oz Jewel of Russia vodka
6 oz Red Bull
Splash of grenadine

18. Hover near public trash cans (particularly those surrounded by tourists) while humming the Captain Planet theme song. Wait for someone to toss out a plastic bottle or aluminum can, then shout “recycle that or Matt Bradley will kick…your…ASS!”

19. Create Free Agent Monopoly, where the properties are UFAs and the game pieces are different team logos. Limit the pieces to the Flyers, Habs, Leafs and Rangers for a more realistic game.

20. Hunt for signs containing the word ‘Red’ on them and spray paint ‘Rock the’ in front of each one.

21. Go to a karaoke bar and pay to sing the following songs on a constant loop until you lose your voice (or someone calls security, whichever comes first): Don’t Stop Believin’ by Journey; Hit Somebody by Warren Zevon; Hell Yeah by Rev Theory; and I Wanna Drive a Zamboni by Gear Daddies.

22. Visit Wawota, Saskatchewan and have your picture taken with the “Home of Brooks Laich” sign.

23. Pretend to be a Flyers fan and post anti-Penguin comments on various Penguins blogs; repeat as a faux Pens fan on Flyers blogs. Watch the fun unfold (and learn some new swear words, too).

24. Cast each player on the Caps roster as a different Harry Potter character, then come up with spells they would use in their pursuit of the Cup. Ten points to Gryffindor if you can come up with one that would stop a certain someone from whining, too…

25. Start a pool with your friends in which you each predict how long it will take Sean Avery to get suspended next season.

26. Steal a cart and go joyriding through the bowels of Verizon Center with a friend and almost get beheaded by a door that…nah, never mind. No one would be dumb enough to do that.

27. Get a group of friends together and put in a bid on the Phoenix Coyotes.

28. Send an email to every NHL GM stating the following: “Please be advised that in order to avoid any confusion over the next couple of weeks, as GM of the Tampa Bay Lightning Organization I am the only person authorized to speak on behalf of the team with regard to player transactions. No other person is authorized to negotiate player transactions. Any questions, feel free to call.”

Then promptly trade Lecavalier to the Canadiens.

29. Get a jump start on the jinxing and plan out Stanley Cup parade routes for the 29 other teams in the league.

30. Anyone can make the usual predictions – trophy winners, division winners, Cup winner, etc. (although it’s not always as easy as it looks). Go for a real challenge and try to predict the stats and facts from the 2009-10 season. How many shots will Ovechkin take, and how many will hit his teammates? What team will lose the most games this year? Who will finish with a worse +/-, Brind’Amour or anyone on the Islanders? Which player will have the most secondary assists?

31. Write a new Caps theme song using one of the following tunes, just because they’re there:
Shoop
Three Little Maids from School
London Bridge is Falling Down
Stairway to Heaven
A Whole New World

And there you have it! That should keep us all busy for awhile…

When I found out Washington was interested, right away I told my agent, ‘Let’s work as hard as we can to get something done there. That’s where I want to be. Their style of play, I think I can complement it.’

- Brendan Morrison

Bobby Clarke’s kind of a tool.

From The Hockey News:

“We were allowed to spend the money, we always tried to win,” Clarke said. “We didn’t do what Pittsburgh did; lose seven years in a row so they could get good. They did it twice, in fact. They went through six or seven different owners. We’ve had one owner.”

Clarke finds the strategies of some current teams appalling when considering the way other organizations have built competitive teams.

“It’s somewhat embarrassing that three of the last teams (in the 2009 playoffs) missed the playoffs six or seven years in a row; Washington, Chicago, and Pittsburgh,” he said. “Now they’re good and the teams that try to win all the time get penalized. Our philosophy has never changed since 1967.”

Sure…because that whole rebuilding, growing your own talent, developing chemistry thing is overrated. All the Penguins and Wings have to show for it is a handful of Cup rings over the last two decades. All Washington and Chicago have done is suffer for a few years so they could become teams that are considered contenders.

This isn’t baseball, you can’t buy championships in the NHL; and if you could, it seems that being able to draft high when you’re bad would serve as some sort of balance for those teams who, unlike the Flyers, maybe don’t have owners with pockets that run as deep.

(Of course, lest we forget that one of the worst seasons in Flyers’ history was just a few years ago and resulted in Philly snagging a very promising #2 pick, James Van Riemsdyk.)

But no, Clarke’s right. That “spend until you can’t spend anymore” philosophy’s working really, really well for the Flyers. 1975, was it?

Yeah. Keep talking, Bobby.

Update: And of course just as this is posted the Flyers do what they’ve been hinting at doing for the last few days and sign UFA defenseman Ole-Kristian Tollefson. Salary cap? What salary cap?

Now admittedly my first thought when this question popped into my email inbox was that it would be that proverbial piece of cake to answer. Oh, how wrong I was…observe:

Hey, CapsChick!

A lot of Caps fans, me included, can pick out easily the players that we don’t like very much around the league. Believe me I enjoy every dig at Crosby as much as the next guy. But here’s the bigger challenge and thus my challenge to you: what players do you like? We’re talking one from each team, no skipping.

Keep up the great work!
Paul C.

So challenge extended, I sat down with pen and paper attempting to construct what I assumed would be a fairly easy list. You know that saying about what happens when you assume, right?

My first difficulty was, of course, that I have an inordinate amount of bile directed all over the league. Everyone knows that. The second hurdle was that there are some teams that I am just not all that familiar with (quick, name your favorite King.) And the third issue, which obviously wasn’t really an issue for about 95% of the league, was that there are those rare cases where I liked an entire team – so narrowing it down to only one player was a little tricky.

Heck, at any given time I have a rotation of about 10 different favorite Caps with another 10 serving as substitutes, so my indecisiveness knows no bounds. But I’m nothing if not persistent, so I settled in to work (for a period of time which is too embarrassing and thus will not be divulged) and here are the results: (more…)

Ah, Friday. To many, it marks the end of a long, hard week; to us, it’s just another day to cross off on that big calendar I know we’re all keeping as we count down the weeks to another season.

It also means another slew of random thoughts coming at you, in no particular order…I do love summer, don’t you?

- Four days remain until Milan Jurcina’s arbitration hearing – and with the Caps scraping the salary cap ceiling as it is, it looks like retaining Juice will mean losing someone else. Four days, eh? Just enough time to build that shrine to whatever god it is that will send Nylander and his contract far, far away.

- Yesterday we talked about where teams ranked in spending by position – they didn’t crack the top or bottom 5 but if you were curious, the Caps rank 6th for forwards ($34.396 million), 18th for defensemen ($15.557 million) and 16th for goalies ($5.322 million). In other words, almost exactly aligned with the percentage of the roster held by each position. Impressive.

- Still want that flashy UFA defensemen? There’s always 40 year old Mathieu Schneider, who made $5.75 million last year. Or the one-hipped wonder Sergei Zubov, 38, who made $5.35 million. Or Derek Morris – you remember him, of course. He was the guy getting undressed by Ovechkin in the playoffs last year.

- We don’t focus too much attention on SensNation around here, but it’s hard to ignore the ongoing Dany Heatley saga. It’s become a crazy mess of lunacy, which of course means the Oilers are involved in some way, and it just seems like all parties concerned have yet to pass the maturity level of a fourth grader.

Of course, leave it to the media to make it worse by creating such a stir that Heatley can’t go to Spezza’s wedding this weekend. That’s just mean – and now he has to go return that toaster he got them.

- Mike Knuble has always been something of a secret Cheap Seats favorite, and it just gets better and better now that he’s a Cap. His recent interview with Puck Daddy is a must read, as is pretty much every interview on PD. How else would we know that Knuble prefers Bud Select?

- Strange, strange deal coming out of the East today, as Boston sent defenseman Aaron Ward back to Carolina for a 2010 draft pick and Patrick Eaves, who was then promptly waived by the Bruins. Not that the Bruins needed another RW, and Ward’s $2.5 million price tag and 36 year old body make him easier to lose but…strange nonetheless. Sounds like a salary-shedding move, with Eaves thrown in as the free gift with purchase.

- Don’t forget to hit up Kettler tomorrow for the third annual PCOI Dave Fay Memorial hockey game. Game starts at 4, with scheduled appearances by Brian Pothier and (ugh) Slapshot and a silent auction. Come out and support a great cause! And did we mention there will be hockey? In July? It never gets old, folks, pack those stands.

- It’s a light hockey news day, as befits late July. Still, it’s nice to click over to NHL.com for a look at their Top 10 Swedes and see a page littered with four Caps-related headlines:

Happy Friday, everyone!

In the salary cap era of the NHL every season is an adventure, as teams learn to look beyond just the upcoming year and balance their payrolls accordingly. It’s no longer just a question of finding the right mix of star power and work horses, stud goalie and hot young prospects – now you have to fit all of them, with their increasing salary demands and their long-term hopes, under the salary cap by the time the puck drops October 1.

Every team has a different way of doing this, and it’s interesting to see where the money is going. What players are pulling down the biggest paychecks? What chunk of a team’s payroll is dedicated to defense vs. how much they spend on offense or goaltending? How much does that tell you about a team’s system or whether they’re anchored by a franchise player and the salary that goes with him?

The salary cap is currently $56.8 million for the 2009-10 season; most teams carry a 22-player roster, usually 13 forwards, 7 defensemen and 2 goalies. So if every team meted out the cash at each position based on the percentage of the roster, the forwards would make up 59% of the payroll, or about $33.5 million. The defense, at about 32%, would be at $18.2 million, leaving $5.1 million, or 9% for the goalies.

…anyone’s eyes crossed yet? Lots of numbers coming at you, stay with me.

Let’s take a look at the forwards first – the top ten spenders at the forward position are as follows:

1. Ottawa – $38.545 mil
2. Carolina – $37.217
3. Los Angeles – $35.951
4. Pittsburgh – $35.425
5. Chicago – $34.450

For many of these teams the connection is pretty clear – a system that favors offense equals big bucks for the forwards, and high-flying teams like the Penguins and Hawks aren’t surprising.

And for the rest there’s always one or two that make up a huge chunk of the payroll. There’s Malkin and Crosby in Pittsburgh, Staal in Carolina, Hossa in Chicago, and Kopitar and Smyth in LA. Ottawa actually has four contracts over $5 million, with Heatley, Spezza, Alfredsson and Kovalev making up the bulk of their payroll up front.

On the other end of the spectrum it’s not surprising to see teams that are either more defensively focused or are going through a rebuilding process or both. Colorado, Nashville, Toronto, Atlanta, Phoenix and the Islanders are all at or below $25 million for their forwards. The Islanders haven’t even cracked the $20 million mark with their young group…something that will probably change in a few years when Tavares needs a new deal.

So what about defense? Here’s the top 5:

1. Toronto – $25.232
2. Philadelphia – $24.426
3. Detroit – $23.483
4. Calgary – $22.392
5. San Jose – $22.133

Not surprisingly, the Maple Leafs lead the way after their summer shopping spree along the blue line; considering the fact that their goaltending hopes now lie in the hands of Toskala and an as-yet unproven “Monster”, that was probably wise. Philly’s saddled with a couple more big contracts in Timmonen and Pronger.

And like Toronto, the other three teams really tend toward a more defensive style – helped by names like Lidstrom, Blake and Bouwmeester, of course.

Which leaves us with goaltending – the top 5:

1. NY Islanders – $8.4 mil
2. Boston – $8.2 mil
3. NY Rangers – $7.6 mil
4. Anaheim – $7.3 mil
T-5. Buffalo – $7.25 mil
T-5. Vancouver – $7.25 mil

Quite possibly the most cut and dry, this is simply a list of the teams with the best goaltenders over the past few years – Thomas, Lundqvist, Giguere, Miller, Luongo. Oh, and the team with the most goaltenders (including one very expensive one made of glass) in the Islanders.

These teams are paying well over the average for goaltending, with the bulk of it obviously going toward their superstar starter. For teams like the Rangers, Vancouver and Buffalo that have in recent years relied on their goaltending more than others, it’s money well spent.

Of course it should also be noted that of those teams, only Anaheim has won the Cup in the last decade – and none of the other teams have gotten past the second round in at least that long.

The bottom 5 tell a different tale:

26. Los Angeles – $2.553
27. Nashville – $2.475
28. Philadelphia – $2.425
29. Detroit – $2.133
30. Columbus – $2.105

Say what you will about Osgood, but the Wings have won a couple of Cups with him and because of his bargain price tag have been able to retain guys like Zetterberg, Lidstrom and Datsyuk. LA, Nashville and Columbus are all nurturing young goalie prospects who could bump them into that top 5 soon enough.

As for the Flyers…they keep popping up on the wrong side of all of these lists, and their bargain basement tandem of Emery and Boucher just cements the hat trick.

Naturally at the end of the day every team is going to approach the cap differently. Some teams definitely do it better than others but where the money is spent often depends on the style of team and the players who fill the team’s roster. You won’t have talents like Ovechkin and Backstrom and all of their contemporaries without pushing the cap, and with it expected to go down significantly next year it’ll be harder and harder to balance.

It is worth noting, however, that in their Cup-winning years the last two champions were right around or well below the league average in all three areas. They spent money but focused on spending wisely and at all positions rather than blowing a ton of cash on players who felt short of being the face of their franchise.

Something to ponder, anyway.