Raising capital.(NHL)

Last September, coach Bruce Cassidy and his Capitals traveled to Dallas for a preseason game against the Stars. Before the game, Cassidy took his players on a trust-building exercise--walking on a course of ropes suspended high above the ground--in order to build teamwork and spark something on the ice Cassidy sensed was missing.

Whether the rope trick worked is open to interpretation. The Caps did better last season, making the playoffs and playing more as a team. But they were dispatched by the Lightning in the first round of the postseason, losing four straight after taking a 2-0 series lead.

Owner Ted Leonsis is demanding improvement this season. And this year's training camp will be different, says Cassidy, who now is armed with the lessons learned from a season of NHL training.

The time for bonding is over. It's time for Cassidy to teach a system that can use the team's offensive gifts without me players having to sacrifice their defensive zone entirely--and Cassidy must make star right winger Jaromir Jagr a believer. Those are his challenges. The success of the Caps in 2003-04 depends upon him finding solutions.

A year ago, Cassidy was 37 and looking many years younger when he opened training camp in his first coaching job of any kind at the NHL level. He tried letting his players use their strengths and be creative. That approach didn't work at first.

"I thought there'd be an orientation time for him to grasp what was needed at this level," Capitals general manager George McPhee says. "He tried to do too much early on last year. But somewhere between the 20- and 30-game mark, it kicked in for him, and we played well after that.

"He had tried to do too many different things. In this league, it's about having and sticking with a system."