Washington has announced the signing of five players to qualifying offers for the upcoming 2009-10 season, including Steve Pinizzotto, Chris Bourque and Kyle Wilson. The link from WashCaps...

The NHL schedule came out yesterday, and it will be in fact the Flyers that play the Boston Bruins at the Winter Classic at Fenway Park. We talked about this on "The Old Barn" a bit on Monday, and I'm sure we will again. This story took a lot of twists and turns, because for the longest time, it was reported that it would be Washington in this game. Then it was the Flyers. Then as recently as this past weekend, it was reported even by NHL.com itself it would be either Washington or Philly. Wouldn't you like to know how all those back room chats about this went? I know I would. I don't have a huge beef with Philly being in the game, good for them. But at some point the NHL needs to showcase its best player when non-traditional hockey fans are watching. Not a knock on the Fly guys, but thumbs down to the league office here for not getting Alex Ovechkin and the Caps to Boston for New Year's...

I'm looking forward to taking in Saturday's scrimmage at Kettler as the Caps wrap up development camp. I'll have more from there (including Twitter!) this weekend.