Game Night With Ted Leonsis

While part of me was surprised to get an invitation to join Caps owner Ted Leonsis in his box last night, another part of me really wasn't. After all, Leonsis is known around the league as an especially active and involved owner, especially when it comes to customer service and putting fannies in the seats. He answers his own e-mail, and interacts with fans on a regular basis. Over the years, I've gotten four or five responses myself.

This is a man who loves being owner of the Caps and it shows.

But Leonsis, who has lost more than $100 million since he purchased the team, has taken his knocks too. The final season before the lockout was an absolute nightmare on and off the ice, culminating with the departure of most of the team's most recognizable faces: Steve Konowalchuk, Peter Bondra, Robert Lang, and of course, Jaromir Jagr.

While some have termed that a fire sale, I've always thought that the team was merely crawling from the wreckage, and getting an early start on what might be a long recovery process.

But the low point had to come in January 2004, when Leonsis got into an altercation with a fan, and was suspended briefly by NHL Comissioner Gary Bettman.

As it turns out, his favorite hockey moment has nothing to do with the Caps. Early in the evening he proudly recounted how his son Zack banged home a rebound to give his team a 4-3 victory as time expired in a playoff game.

As fan-friendly as Leonsis has been since he purchased the team before the 1999-2000 season, he's a little perplexed with a certain segment of the fan base. "I've lost $110 million on this team," he says, "yet the other day I'm looking at a message board where somebody calls me cheap. Do I have to lose $120 million," to convince him otherwise?

Leonsis said that his plan for the Caps got off track after the 2000-01 season, when at an offsite meeting following another first round exit from the playoffs the front office decided that the team was aging and that it was time to rebuild.

"But then Jagr fell into our laps," he says, and everything changed.

Then came the dark times; the disappointment of missing the playoffs in Jagr's first season with the team; the firing of Ron Wilson, the head coach that took the Caps to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1998; another first round exit from the playoffs on an Easter Sunday coupled with a public spat with Wizards owner Abe Pollin; and finally, the disastrous tenure of head coach Bruce Cassidy -- a man who seemed overmatched from the start.

When I asked him if he would do anything differently if he had to do it all over again, Leonsis didn't hesitate to say he would, and that he would start off by trying to build the sort of team the Caps are putting together now: young, fast and affordable.

At the center of all those plans, of course, is rookie winger Alexander Ovechkin. "It's like he's straight out of central casting," Leonsis explains, adding how much Ovechkin's teammates like him, how he's so coachable and never stops working.

In this case, you ought to believe the hype. If you've followed the NHL very closely, you probably heard about Ovechkin more than a few times, even before the Caps drafted him with the first pick overall in the 2004 Entry Draft.

I got my first look at Ovechkin during last year's World Junior Championships, and the plain fact of the matter is you can't take your eyes off him because he's liable to do something special every time he touches the puck. He's speedy, he hits and he scores. He handles the puck in traffic as well as anyone I've ever seen on the ice, and unlike many players his age, pays attention to his responsibilities in the defensive zone too.

If anything, Ovechkin is the anti-Jagr, and as much damage as the tempermental Czech caused during his brief stay in Washington, I can't help but think Ovechkin will ultimately overshadow it all.

"He understands what we're trying to do here, and how we're not trying to build around him," says Leonsis. We're building on him."

As to the rest of the team's future, Leonsis thinks that prospects Eric Fehr, Chris Bourque and Jeff Schultz will eventually stick with the parent club. He's also crossing his fingers that wayward winger Alexander Semin -- who has been claiming for better than a year now that "military obligations" are keeping him in Russia while he collects a paycheck in the Russian Super League -- returns to North America.

The Caps recently took Semin and his agent to court, and won an injunction enjoining him from playing for any other club in the NHL. For the latest on Semin, click here for the translation of an interview from Sport-Express.

After a quick shout to GM George McPhee, I find out that Bourque, who suffered a concussion earlier this season, may return to action with Hershey in time for the weekend. Bourque, who was a mild surprise to me when McPhee picked him at the 2004 entry draft (not that he got picked, just when), started this year's campaign with two goals and seven assists in just nine games.

A note about McPhee: Whenever I've seen him on television, I always got the impression that he was huge, and somebody you wouldn't want to mess with. But when I met him in person, I was surprised to find that he wasn't much taller than me at 5'9", though you can tell he still shouldn't be messed with. Must have been that fight with Lorne Molleken a few years back.

Like Leonsis, he hangs on every moment on the ice, but can be more voluble at times -- never more so than when he let out a string of invective (no worries folks, it was rated PG) in the middle of the second period when the Caps had trouble breaking out of their own zone.

When I ask about the club's financial condition, Leonsis mentions that there's money in the bank, and that the team is right on plan when it comes to revenue this year. As for next season, he thinks that there will be enough flexibility with the cap in order to make some acquisitions -- probably on defense and at center.

Which is when he expresses some puzzlement: Why is it that fans are so interested in salaries now? Back when teams like the Rangers and the Red Wings could outspend everyone before the new collective bargaining agreement, none of the fans seemed to care. But now that there's a cap, everyone is asking about it.

He takes the question as an opportunity to make another point -- that there are plenty of teams in the league who are up against the cap but aren't getting any results. He goes through a number of teams who are clearly underachieving this season and says that it isn't about salary anymore. The team he mentions as an example of how things should work in the league's new economic climate is the Nashville Predators. Ironically, the GM of the Predators is David Poile, Caps General Manager George McPhee's immediate predecessor.

What he says he could really use would be 1,000 new season ticket accounts purchasing an average of 3.5 tickets each.

Which brought to mind this column by George Solomon that appeared in the Washington Post a few weeks ago:

I believe Leonsis made a major mistake by getting rid of so many big names and fan favorites at once, slashing salaries and rebuilding the team with high draft picks obtained by trading his stars. From a high of about 12,000 season ticket holders the summer Jagr was obtained in 2001, the Caps' season ticket base is now about 7,500...

If Leonsis is committed to his hockey team -- with hopes of one day adding the Wizards and MCI to his portfolio -- a more aggressive posture for the Caps is in order now. The team needs to add experienced defensemen right away, and solidify the club's player development and scouting.

Leonsis shrugs, then adds that what Solomon doesn't mention is that the season ticket base was less than 3,000 when he bought the team, and that if the Caps imported veteran players at higher salaries, they would never find out whether or not the prospects they acquired were any good. It's players like that, Jacub Klepis, Shoane Morrisson and Thomas Fleischman, who wouldn't be getting any playing time had the team taken that direction.

As it would turn out, after a slow start, last night's result would provide a preview of sorts of what Leonsis and McPhee are trying to accomplish.

After Tampa Bay's first goal, Leonsis, a little deflated, turns to me and says, "that was a cheapy." When they fall behind 2-0, he doesn't say anything at all, but a few minutes later he says the team needs a goal before the end of the period to get a psychological lift. Lo and behold, the team gets it when Ben Clymer scores with less than two minutes left in the second period.

The third period was an object lesson in how the team has to play if it's going to be successful. Before Tuesday night's game the Caps have been outscored by the opposition by 40 goals over the course of the young season, with an anemic offense (outside of Ovechkin) and shoddy defense that often leaves the goalie more than exposed.

But one thing is clear: the new squad is fast, knows how to pressure the puck, and if they can keep things close into the third period, they'll be able to win some games.

Early in the first period Leonsis glumly mentioned that forward Dainius Zubrus and fan favorite goalie Olie Kolzig were sidelined with injuries. As it turned out, on this night at least, the Caps would overcome their absence.

After giving up a goal early in the third, the team rallies, and begins creating scoring chances against the reeling defending champs -- Tampa Bay had only recently pulled themselves out of a six game losing streak with a victory the night before against Philadelphia*, and had recently lost the reigning NHL MVP, Martin St. Louis, to injury. Less than three minutes later the Caps cut the deficit to one after a goal by defenseman Bryan Muir.

And as the Caps kept putting the puck on the net, the crowd was clearly getting revved. "This is what we want. We don't want to lose, but we can be competitive," says Leonsis to another guest in the box.

Which is when Ovechkin, who is responsible for one-third of the team's scoring this season, gets a step on a defender on the left wing and roofs a backhand over Tampa Bay goalie Sean Burke's shoulder to tie the game at 3.

Leonsis bolted out of his seat and immediately started high-fiving everyone in the suite. Once he was done, he reached out of the box to do the same with some paying customers. Later, when Ovechkin will score the only goal the Caps need in a shooutout after a scoreless overtime for a 4-3 victory (goalie Brent Johnson stopped all three Tampa Bay shooters), Leonsis is out of his seat again and eventually turns to me to get me to give him another high five. As I look around the arena and see the empty seats, I can't help but say, "People have to get out and see this kid."

'They will, they will," Leonsis replied.

I'm not betting against him.

UPDATE: Fantastic story about Ovechkin from John Buccigross:

Two weeks ago, our son played a Pee Wee hockey game at Piney Orchard (training facility for the Washington Capitals) in Odenton, Md. Prior to departing for the game, we received an e-mail stating that the Caps would be practicing prior to the youth game. We loaded up, arriving in time to watch 45 minutes of heaven (as our son put it).

As practice was winding down and the players were gathering up pucks, our son began to prepare for his game. As he and his teammates were walking to the dressing room, a player was still on the ice and our son motioned for a puck. As the player attempted to "flip" the puck over the netting, he was being called off the ice. He abandoned the puck, and instead handed our son his stick prior to skating off. Our son's enthusiasm (as well as mine) was packed after he signed the stick. Thank you Alexander Ovechkin for your generosity, sportsmanship and stewardship.

Wow.

*CORRECTION: Originally, I had mentioned the Lightning's six game losing streak. However, I have since discovered that they had broken it the night before against the Flyers. The text has been updated to reflect the change.

Eric 12:13 PM

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