Player Coach For The Caps:

No real surprise at all that the Caps are looking for a new player coach to take over the team next season. The PR released a few days a go did a decent job at letting the fans actually know that things are well underway in the process of building next seasons squad. It's good to keep the fans in the know and it also makes it easier for me to write about stuff....

So this is part of the P.R that was posted on the official Capitals forum, maybe the most interesting part of it all.

" We recently attempted to sign a player-coach. It was a long shot but the man in question - and I don't want to even hint to who it was - decided to stay where he was with a British club, and I respect that. "However, the ideal scenario is to sign a player-coach who can work on bringing his own players in. Hopefully, we can have a player-coach pencilled in and signed quickly to allow us to do that "

My #1 guess was that it could well have been Rich Strachan from Hull but then it was pointed out to me that he was no longer a player having hung up his skates awhile ago. I knew that, just didn't think it through at the time and I'm sticking to that story. My 2nd guess was for Todd Dutiaume from the Flyers. A reasonable guess at the very least. So I'm going to have a look at what would have been the Pros and Cons of having Dutes as our head coach:

PROS

1. He was great for Fife at BNL level, he always got the job done and at that time could easily have played in a stronger league.
2. He has coached a winning team for the last two years, sure it was at SNL level but he will have a winning mentality. Maybe got the taste for it too.
3. Dutes lives close enough to Edinburgh, we wouldn't have to put him up.
4. He knows some of our players already having played against a lot of them over the years.
5. Could get his bro to come play for the Caps too.
6. He can't do as bad a job as Tony Hand did and probably doesn't rate Jim Vickers either
7. The biggest pro of them all. It would annoy the Flyers fans!!!

CONS

1. He has scored loads of goals against us, set up a ton of them too and led his squad to more than a few wins over the Capitals. Oh it would he hard to forget all that...
2. He would probably sign the EVILEST of Flyers John Haig to the team.
3. Dutes hasn't played at a decent level for awhile, it could take awhile for him to adapt.
4. Chances are Dutes would demand the Capitals adopted Fife's tea towel styled jersey approach to the game.
5. He'd maybe bring back the Sieve-boy Steve Briere. (From now on Steve Briere will always be referred to as Sieve-boy). I'd rather have a Crossland brother in nets.
6. He has played for Fife for way to long. 7 years a Flyer. His allegiance is to Sam the Bear. He bleeds their blue and yellow and might have taken on their thieving ways.
7. He would ask the Caps for a lot of money to pay his wages, most of it being wasted on paying the toll to cross the Forth Bridge on his return home to the safari park that is Kirkcaldy.
8. It would be uber weird seeing him play in a Caps jersey. They two just don't go together. Square peg, round hole.
9. Our rink might mysteriously burn down.... ;op
10. And Last of all his name doesn't go well in song form.

As you can clearly see there are more cons than pros to Todd Dutiaume becoming the Capitals future player-coach. I know the PR stated we failed in our effort to sign the guy. We might have just dodged a bullet there with that one or maybe not. We might still get him. Anyway who-ever does come in and takes the job on they are going to have a lot of work to do to get the Caps off the bottom of the EIHL table.