The Caps can clinch the Southeast Division title in a few hours – on March 11th, as absurd as that sounds. If Atlanta loses tonight at Columbus it will be the last Southeast team eliminated. The players are happy about that. But it’s been a foregone conclusion for so long it’s hard to get that worked up about it. Forward David Steckel’s initial reaction?
“Wooohooo! We can clinch it without even playing?”
Then he got serious.
“It means something. Anytime you win something it’s going to have value to you. Certainly it means something to this organization. One of our goals this year was to win the division. From that aspect it’s great. But if you had asked me that question three years ago I would have said it was second on our list [going into a season]. Obviously, the way we’ve played lately and what we’ve accomplished the last two years it’s moved to a base goal this year – something to build on. It’s an honor certainly to win it. But it’s not the last goal that we want to have.”
Forward Eric Fehr’s take:
“You never really want to look down on a division title. They’re still important and there’s a lot of teams that would love to have a division title. But for us right now we’re trying to look a little bit ahead and start looking at the conference and start looking at the league. We have to keep pushing forward and try not to get too comfortable.”
And coach Bruce Boudreau:
“The division if this was three years ago is a big thing. We hadn’t done it in a while. And this is not bragging or anything. But when we started this season our goal was not to win the division. We wanted to win the division. But our goals were loftier. And they’re still loftier. It’s a great accomplishment because only six teams can do it. But our goals are higher. So everybody’s not going to have a bottle of champagne. It’s not baseball when you win your division. They have more champagne in baseball. Division, division series. You win the Grapefruit League you have champagne. It’s all over the place. We want champagne if we win the whole thing. So it’s not the biggest deal for us.”
It was a light practice at Kettler Iceplex on Thursday morning. The big guns all took their option. Alex Ovechkin, Alex Semin, Brooks Laich, Mike Knuble, Nicklas Backstrom. Jose Theodore and defenseman Jeff Schultz also took the day off. Sixteen players were on the ice along with web producer/goalie Brett Leonhardt.
Talking with Boudreau after practice it looks like Eric Belanger and John Carlson could be among the healthy scratches for tomorrow’s game against Tampa Bay. Boudreau has said he’s getting weary of making these decisions game after game so time may be running short for someone to make a good impression.
