Capitals
Record: 10-4
Last Two Weeks:
Place: 5-1 First in the Southeast, 20 points

A four-game winning streak. A trio of capable young goalies. Undefeated in Overtime. That’s not a bad first month of the season for the Capitals. Perfect? No, they’ve made some mistakes, but they’ve had a pretty good start, and that’s all that Coach Bruce Boudreau needs right now to keep things moving.

The Caps are still trying to find their offensive groove, and some of the lines are working better than others. They’ll be testing things out against the NY Rangers on Tuesday night at the Garden, then back to DC for Thursday night’s match with Tampa Bay. They bounce around a bit for the next two weeks, with games here and away against Buffalo and Atlanta.

Redskins
Record: 4-4
Last Two Weeks: 0-1

The Redskins were off this week, sparking some concern about the local economy in the wake of the bye week. While the most valuable sports franchise in North America was resting, the pundits have been hard at work dissecting the franchise’s problems.

With Leather has a must-read on McNabb inside two minutes, and TBD has another defense of Sexy Rexy and Mike Shanahan. No matter how you look at it, the Skins are still 4 and 4, still in the hunt for the Playoffs, even if they’re maddeningly inconsistent.

Wizards
Record: 1-4
Last Two Weeks: 1-4
Place: Fourth in the Southeast

Wizards fans finally have something to be excited about in first overall pick John Wall.

However you have to remember how they acquired the first overall pick to begin with: a declining franchise in need of repair.

Luckily the rebuilding is underway with a new young talent in Wall and a new owner in Ted Leonsis to lead the building. The team is completely blown up compared to last year’s opening day roster with Caron Butler, and Antawn Jamison, Brendan Haywood leaving town.

So far in the first two weeks the Wizards have only won their home opener but are showing signs of life. Wall is living up to his draft hype and JaVale McGee is shaping up to be a top shot blocker. Nick Young has shown what he can do off the bench with a 20 point performance in the home opener and Al Thornton has been a solid addition to the starting line-up. The big question still out there is how effective Flip Saunders’ three-guard line-up of Hinrich, Arenas, and Wall will be. Saunders got some flack for sitting Thornton to go with the guard heavy line-up in the final minutes of a late loss against Cleveland this past weekend.

Next up: The Wizards will play a pair of games at home this week hosting Houston on Wednesday and Charlotte on Friday. Saturday they will head out to Chicago.