Every Monday morning The Ice Sheet will take a close look at everything that's happened in the NHL since Friday night at 5:00 p.m. To read them all, click here.

On Saturday morning when I passed along the news that Petr Prucha was actually going to get into the lineup for Saturday's Rangers-Lightning tilt in Prague, I also made a point of linking to a rather angry Larry Brooks column where the Slap Shot columnist let loose with every little complaint he had about the way the Rangers were handling their pre-season. After giving it a read, you could be forgiven for thinking the team was in a bit of disarray:

It's all about Renney coaching a team without Jagr and Shanahan to lean on, and it's all about this group filling the huge voids created with the decision to dispose of the team's post-lockout identity as if it were toxic.

It's all about one of the most vanilla Rangers teams in memory bonding in order to form a unit greater than the sum of its underwhelming parts.

Well, here we are a little less than 48 hours later, and all is forgotten in the wake of a pair of 2-1 victories over the revamped Lightning. Rangers newcomers Markus Naslund and Wade Redden combined for two goals and two assists over the weekend, as the New Yorkers pretty easily dominated the run of play as the Lightning played against type. While new owners Oren Koules and Len Barrie spent most of the Summer stacking the team with loads of new offensive weapons, it was their goalies, Mike Smith and Olie Kolzig, who kept things close, stopping 76 of 80 shots over the course of two games.

The Washington Capitals held a team outing to Six Flags of America yesterday, and their press team has been passing around this priceless photo of most of the team enjoying the first big drop on Superman: Ride of Steel. Click here to get a better idea of what the ride is like.

To see an enlarged version of the photo, click here. It is not to be missed. Your mission: Write your own caption for the photo -- either for the whole team or just an individual.

One last note: For those of you wondering who the young lady sitting next to Jose Theodore might be, that's the 15-year old daughter of Capitals owner Ted Leonsis. The owner sent me a note confirming her identity.

Hat tip: J.P. and Alex Ovetjkin.

Welcome to the NHL FanHouse 2008-09 season preview. While other sites are previewing "30 teams in 30 days," we decided to take advantage of the extra time off before the start of the season to bring you all 30 previews over the next three weeks. We're counting down in reverse order of finish from last season in each conference every weekday from now until October 3. Look for an Eastern Conference preview every morning and a Western Conference preview every afternoon. Click here to read them all.

Who's In: Karl Alzner, D (Draft-2007); Jose Theodore, G (FA-COL)

Who's Out: Matt Cooke, F (FA-PIT); Steve Eminger, D (Trade-PHI); Cristobal Huet, G (FA-CHI); Olaf Kolzig, G (FA-TB)

What's Changed: Last year at this time, the big change in D.C. was in the atmosphere surrounding the team. As we wrote then, "it's once again fun to be a Washington Capital and a Washington Capitals fan. After a handful of decidedly lean years, players and management alike can barely contain smiles (if they even bother trying to) as they prepare for the season that lies ahead."

One year later the big change is the addition of Ice Girls in what will be expected from the current Caps squad.

Every Thursday, Earl Sleek will conspire with his pen and scanner to bring you another installment of PuckToons. Hopefully you will find these amusing, relevant, well-drawn, or you're a person who is tolerant towards mediocrity.

With NHL training camps opening up in little more than a week, a few teams are still looking to shed salary to get under the $56.7 million cap. A week ago, Dan Wood of the OC Register Duck's Blog posted a list of overcommitted teams, which includes the Anaheim Ducks, the Calgary Flames, Chicago Blackhawks, Philadelphia Flyers, San Jose Sharks and Washington Capitals. "The amounts in question range from a few hundred thousand dollars to as much as $4.5 million."

Now I'm not really an expert on the CBA and the salary cap, which is entering its fourth season in the league (don't turn to your cartoonist for technicalities), but I do know there is a Long-Term Injury allowance that lets teams temporarily outspend the salary cap while a player is unable to dress.

While I fully expect that the teams in question this summer will fix their salary issues through traditional means (trades and expensive demotions), I do wonder what the future has in store for spend-happy general managers. Will they ever get to the point where a budget-dictated surgery becomes a cap-cheating strategy? It's unlikely, I suppose, but if it ever does happen, I hope they'll now cut me in on the cap savings.

A week ago I thought that challenging the accuracy of a statement made by a member of the Tampa Bay Lightning front office would make for an interesting blog post. Now I'm thinking that the increasing opportunity for such challenges would make for an interesting blog. Or an interesting 24-hour cable news channel.

One week after Bolts' veep of hockey ops Brian Lawton put Andrej Meszaros among the game's elite blueliners (on a sidenote, you've gotta at least appreciate a number two who's actually willing to talk to the press), Lightning owner Oren Koules announced to the world that his team has the best top two lines in hockey:

"We take a lot of pride in knowing our top six forwards, who we believe are the best top six forwards in the league, all have three years or more on their contracts."

Assuming that the players to whom Koules is referring are Vincent Lecavalier, Martin St. Louis, Steve Stamkos, Vaclav Prospal, Ryan Malone and Radim Vrbata, is Koules accurate in his assessment, or is he just blowing smoke? Does he even have the top six forwards in the Southeast Division? Let's look at it position-by-position.

This morning over at Puck Daddy, my friend Greg Wyshynski wondered out loud whether or not Hall of Fame winger Mike Gartner deserved to have his number retired by the Washington Capitals, the team he broke into the NHL with in 1979. In Greg's book, the sixth-leading goal scorer in NHL history -- sandwiched between Mark Messier and Phil Esposito -- doesn't even belong in the Hockey Hall of Fame, though he's happy to cede the decision as to whether or not to send his jersey to the rafters at Verizon Center to the locals:

Look, every fan base has its own personal connection to its own players. There are no doubt fans from other NHL cities that don't believe Ken Daneyko deserves immortality in the rafters of Newark; ask a Devils fan, and they'll tell you he meant as much to the franchise as Martin Brodeur, and perhaps even more.

So as a non-Capitals fan, I'm in no position to say this is the wrong decision. I can say, in my 13 years in the D.C. area, the topic of Mike Gartner's number retirement has never come up in conversation; outside of, perhaps, some brief discussion when he entered the stat-happy (unless you're Dino Ciccarelli) Hall of Fame. The undeniable fact is that he doesn't stir emotions like the names Peter Bondra or Olaf Kolzig or even Jeff Halpern, the guy who more modern Caps fans likely associate with No. 11 to begin with.

Thanks once again to Tuvanhillbilly for unearthing another inexplicable video starring Alex Ovechkin. Last week it was an Ovechkin appearance plugging his search for a wife, and now we have evidence of his participation in some bizarre Russian game show:



Thanks to Puck Daddy for the pointer.

Like my friend, J.P., I was more than a little dumbstruck after watching the following clip from Russian television promoting a contest where women can call Caps winger Alex Ovechkin in hopes of getting married:

I really want to write some more, but I'm not sure where to start. I'll just keep my comments to noting that we shouldn't be surprised if average Russians have a distorted view of life in the USA.

One rumor we keep hearing in and around the Washington Capitals this offseason concerns the disposition of veteran centerman Michael Nylander. With the team almost $2.7 million over the cap after re-signing a passel of players and a logjam up the middle, it's hard for the folks who watch the team not to speculate as to what General Manager George McPhee might have up his sleeve to get under the cap by opening night.

Toss in the fact that Nylander's former agent, Mike Gillis, is now General Manager in Vancouver, and you have a pretty typical recipe for intrigue.

And here's something new for the mix: Our FanHouse colleague Jon "J.P." Press, with an assist from some of his readers, discovered that Nylander put his Potomac, Md. house on the market back on July 17. The discovery is just more fuel for the fire, as former goalie Olie Kolzig's departure from Washington was also presaged by a real estate listing for his home.

When you take a look at the numbers, it's clear that moving Nylander, who was imported from the New York Rangers as a free agent before the start of last season, would solve the team's cap problem in one fell swoop. Coming in at a cap hit of $4.875 million, trading the veteran center would take care of the overage and provide about $2 million in cushion going into the season -- just the sort of cushion that most GMs would like to have come the trade deadline.

But will the Caps need to move Nylander at all? The answer: It depends.

An interesting post over at Five Hole Fanatics (via Puck Daddy) wonders aloud whether certain players from hockey's "Dead Puck Era" are going to reach the somewhat magical 500-goal milestone and join an exclusive club that currently boasts just 41 members. In an effort to continue our recent push to bring you all things Fedorov, we'll take a look at the man who is closest to becoming the club's next member. Per FHF:

Sergei Fedorov is at 472 career goals, 28 goals short. Can he get 28 this year in Washington? Its been 3 seasons since Fedorov has scored as many as 28/yr. Even playing with Ovechkin, he'll be 39 in December and this is the last year of his contract.

Twenty-eight goals may not sound like an enormous amount, but it's just one less than Fedorov has scored in his past two full seasons (in 141 games) and a total reached by just 41 NHLers in 2007-08. And before you dismiss the Russian's last two seasons as merely the result of playing in Ken Hitchcock's defensive system, note that he barely scored at a nine-goal/82-games pace for the Caps, and that was with potential 2008-09 minutes roadblocks Michael Nylander and Chris Clark on the shelf the entire time.