Welcome back. Chuckies coming to you live on 106-7, The Fan, and the Team 9-8, and of course,

you can watch some monumental sports where you can watch the Washington Capitals. And our guy,

Joe Beninati, is the voice of the Capitals, play-by-playman, covering the caps. What's up, Joe B?

J.P., how's it going? All's well here. How was your Christmas?

Quick, as usual, but a good one, a very good one.

So before we'd kind of dive into the particulars last week, just kind of a global perspective

on where we're out with the Washington Capitals, I think, obviously, better than anybody

expected, but people thought they're going to be better, but not this good, right, Joe B?

I think that's fair to say, sure. I think, to me, Washington and Carolina have both

exceeded expectations. You could put Jersey in there, too, out of the metro, and I know

Jersey's leading the east and didn't, wasn't a

playoff participant a season ago.

So, yeah, you could lump them into that same category, but I love Jersey on paper coming

out of training camp, and they've lived up to their expectation.

So the three teams on top of the Metro right now, I think most people would have been sliding them much further down in the conference standings.

But as far as the local teams concerned, this is not fluky anymore.

This is two plus months into a new season.

They've played 34 games of a new season, and their winning percentage is right there at the top of the

heap. So people believe in them, scouts who might approach us in the broadcast booth or

fellow announcers or newspaper reporters and such media members, wow, this team's really good.

It's big. It's fast.

And it's younger than it was a year ago.

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