RW -- Peter Bondra (1990-present): Bondra has twice led the league in goals scored and constantly electrifies the home folks with his speed and dazzling moves.
C -- Dale Hunter (1987-99): A player's player. The recently retired Hunter was well loved by Caps fans and players alike. No Capital will ever don the #32 sweater again.
LW -- Dmitri Khristich (1991-95): He averaged 32 goals over three seasons (1992-94) before being traded to Los Angeles.
D -- Kevin Hatcher (1984-94): Hatcher didn't play up to his size (6-3, 225) in his own end, but he was a steady backline scoring machine throughout his days in DC.
D -- Calle Johansson (1989-present): One of the league's most underrated players, Johansson gets the job done at both ends of the ice without flash and dash.
G -- Olie Kolzig (1989-present): Sure, Jim Carey copped the Vezina in 1996. But Kolzig took the team all the way to the Cup Finals in 1998. And had the Caps not been swept, he might well have walked away with the Conn Smythe Trophy.
Coach -- Ron Wilson (1997-present): Wilson broke the shackles that remained from the Jim Schoenfeld era and allowed the team to loosen up. The result was a first-ever trip to the Finals.
Best team: The 1991-92 bunch scored a team-record 330 goals and racked up 98 points. It also took a first-round powder in the playoffs, coughing up a 3-1 series lead to Pittsburgh. We'll go with the 1997-98 team that got healthy and hot at the right time. That club rode timely scoring and Kolzig's stellar netminding to the Finals where it was swept by Detroit.
Worst team: Amid high expectations, the 1998-99 Capitals racked up a staggering 511 man-games lost to injury and sputtered to a total of 68 points, the team's lowest total since 1981-82. As its core group of players got old and achy, the team went from the eighth-best record in the league and a Cup Finals appearance to 23rd-best and a lottery position in the draft.
MVP: Bondra. For many years, he has been the team's lone gun. Despite relentless pressure from opposing defenses, he still manages to dent the twine with regularity.
Most memorable moment: The late night and early morning hours of June 4-5, 1998. When Joé Juneau bagged the overtime game winner in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals, the Caps headed to their first-ever Finals. After chartering home from Buffalo, stunned Capitals players emerged from the team bus at the club's suburban Maryland practice facility. In the wee hours of the morning, thousands of wildly cheering Caps supporters assembled for an impromptu love-in for their heroes. For a brief time, Caps players and fans share an all-too-fleeting glimpse of what true hockey fanaticism is all about.