Did Mike Milbury’s barbs drive Alexander Ovechkin to the barber for a more down-to-business hairdo and mindset? (Patrick McDermott/NHLI via Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

Don Cherry’s critics are going to have a field day with this one.

Asked about the remarkable turnaround of Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals, the bombastic TV star offered up a unique take.

“Mike Milbury, I think, deserves a lot of credit here,” Cherry said on Toronto’s Fan 590 radio station. “He’s not getting it. He’d come on and he ripped Ovechkin – he should be ashamed of himself, boom boom boom, and called him every name – and that’s when Ovechkin changed.

“And if you people have noticed – and I haven’t said it on Hockey Night in Canada, I might yet – have you noticed after a game, he just gives it a [fist] pump?” Cherry asked. “Have you noticed that? Have you noticed he’s got nice short hair, he doesn’t look like a wild man anymore? Adam Oates has got to him and said look, get off this celebrity thing. And what happened was, he was more of a celebrity than he was a hockey player. He forgot.

“And you know, when I went to the Bruins, that’s the same thing happened to me — I got there, they had gold chains on and all that stuff, and they were celebrities there, they forgot to play hockey. They loved the life, they loved the travel, the only thing that got to them, they didn’t like the hockey. And you know, that’s what made Bobby Orr great, and I’ll tell you why: he had no businesses, he did nothing, all he wanted was to play hockey. And that’s the name of the game and Ovechkin’s right there now. He’s playing hockey instead of being a big-time celebrity.”

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Given up for dead a month into the season, Adam Oates’ Capitals are plenty alive. (Chuck Myers/MCT via Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

An annotated guide to this morning’s must-read hockey stories:

• Congrats to the Capitals, who won a thriller over the Jets to clinch the Southeast title for the fifth time in six seasons.

• While the rest of the league was content to write Washington off early on, coach Adam Oates never stopped believing in the team. He still looks like a dark horse for the Adams, but he fully deserves to be in the mix.

• The Jets aren’t quite good enough yet, but the future looks bright in Winnipeg.

• So they backed in. Big deal. The Islanders are in the playoffs for the first time since 2007!

• Two players who shouldn’t expect a postseason call-up to Long Island: Rick DiPietro and Nino Niederreiter.

• This season hasn’t provided Buffalo with much to brag about, but at least the Sabres can say they snapped a pair of lengthy Penguins winning streaks in Pittsburgh.

• The Pens could have Paul Martin and James Neal back in the lineup before the regular season ends. But Sidney Crosby…?

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Adam Oates had to sell Alex Ovechkin on a position switch and a new approach, but the results have been dazzling. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

Adam Oates was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2012 on the basis of his 1,079 career assists, the sixth-most ever posted in NHL history. Not a bad case. But his latest helper may be his greatest.

What Oates has accomplished this season with the Washington Capitals is nothing short of miraculous. Sure, Ottawa’s Paul MacLean is getting most of the Jack Adams buzz, but if it wasn’t for plucky, undermanned teams rising up against the odds, we wouldn’t have half the sports movies we do.

We’ve seen that bit before, just like we’ve seen a coach cajole a star player into sacrificing offense for the good of the team. But what Oates has done with Alex Ovechkin, and by extension, the Capitals, is different. This is a rookie coach convincing a veteran superstar that everything he knew was wrong…and that Oates could make it all right.

It wasn’t that long ago that almost everyone (yours truly, included) had downgraded Ovechkin to the mundane status of just another guy. (HACKEL: What’s wrong with Alex Ovechkin?) He was stuck in a creative rut, disinclined to change, and content to simply take what the game gave him. That was a problem for Oates, because no team more accurately reflects its leader than Washington. While Ovi took the easy way, the rest of the Caps took it right along with him.

That led to a slow start. Really slow. By the time Feb. 21 rolled around, this team that was favored to win the Southeast Division had earned just 11 points and was dead last in the NHL. The calls started coming in from the cheap seats for the coach’s head.

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After a disastrously slow start, things are looking up for Alex Ovechkin and company. (Rob Carr/Getty Images)

By Allan Muir

It’s too early…way too early…to suggest that the Washington Capitals are clawing their way out of the deep hole they dug with their disastrous 2-8-1 start.

Even after a calmly efficient 3-0 win over the Hurricanes on Tuesday night, the Caps remain in 14th place in the East, spared residence in the basement only by virtue of two games in hand over the equally slow-out-of-the-gates Sabres.

DATER: Buffalo hits bottom in NHL Power Rankings

But there were signs in that victory, and the one that directly preceded it, that suggest we might want to hold off just a little longer on engraving the tombstone for Washington’s troubled season.

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Alex Ovechkin (left) wasn’t exactly enthused by coach Adam Oates’ experiment. (Greg Fiume/Getty Images)

You have to hand it to Adam Oates. He’s clearly a man of his convictions.

It’ll be interesting to see how much longer Washington’s freshman coach will be allowed to hold onto them.

During his preseason preparation for his new gig, Oates came to a conclusion about the sagging fortunes of superstar Alex Ovechkin: the two-time MVP had become too predictable on the attack. If he had the puck, Ovechkin would carry it into the zone, curl in from the left wing and try to snap a shot off his forehand from the circle. If he didn’t have it, he would mill around until he could dart into the circle to await a pass that would set up a vicious one-timer.

Of course, Oates wasn’t the first to recognize this. Bruce Boudreau tried to address it and the ensuing power struggle cost him his job. So did Dale Hunter, whose weariness at dealing with Ovechkin was thought to be the prime reason for his return to junior hockey at the end of the playoffs.

So Oates took up the cause, bringing with him a reputation as an astute offensive mind. If anyone could get OV back on track, it would be the guy who spent his Hall of Fame career setting up Brett Hull and Cam Neely to succeed.

So what does Oates do? He takes the natural left winger and moves him to the right side.

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