Thom Loverro: These days, Capitals are the city’s fun bunch

It was Alex Ovechkin bobblehead night at Verizon Center on Thursday night.

When will it be Simeon Varlamov bobblehead night?

Washington Capitals fans will have to wait - the rookie goaltender, who stopped 29 of 31 shots in a 4-2 win over the St. Louis Blues on Thursday, was sent back down to American Hockey League affiliate Hershey on Friday.

But there’s no shortage of players on the roster who deserve a bobblehead night of their own - Viktor Kozlov, for instance, who scored two goals against the Blues.

Will there be a bobblehead night for every player when all is said and done?

“That’s a good goal,” said team owner Ted Leonsis, laughing. “It’s fun, isn’t it?

Yes, it is fun when the Capitals take the ice at Verizon Center these days - the kind of fun you have when your team loses just one of 15 home games. The kind of fun you have when your team wins five games in a row and seven of its past eight.

The kind of fun you have when the league MVP sets the standard for effort and excellence that everyone else in the locker room follows.

The kind of fun you have when that same player is willing to fight for another teammate.

The kind of fun you can’t find anywhere else in this town these days.

The kind of fun you have when it looks as if things will be this good for a long time, when you call up a 20-year-old kid like Varlamov and he wins twice in two starts.

The Capitals have been the hottest item in Washington and beyond on the NHL landscape, thanks to Ovechkin and fellow young guns Alexander Semin, Nicklas Backstrom and Mike Green. That has been fun, but it may be just the first act.

Leonsis and general manager George McPhee have been saying all along there is more to come, that there is talent in the pipeline. Thursday night at Verizon Center was proof.

A first wave of talent turned the Capitals into a winner. More waves will give the Capitals what Leonsis called a “culture of winning,” though he acknowledges the club hasn’t really won anything yet.

“There’s a lot more,” Leonsis said. “I think what is going to happen is the first generation, the freshmen, are becoming sophomores and then will become juniors and seniors. We have built a culture of winning. Hershey has been perennially really, really good. The kids come up here and fit into the system, and their expectation is that they are going to win. It is a culture that we win at every level, we play the same kind of style and we want to win all the time now.

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