The Post Sports Live crew debates how far the Capitals can make it in the Stanley Cup playoffs. (Post Sports Live/The Washington Post)

The Post Sports Live crew debates how far the Capitals can make it in the Stanley Cup playoffs. (Post Sports Live/The Washington Post)

The background photograph on Barry Trotz’s laptop matches one on a shelf over his desk, next to a folded American flag. The picture was taken in early October, near the end of his first training camp coaching the Washington Capitals, long before they won 45 games, notched 101 points and clinched a playoff berth with six days to spare. That sunny autumn afternoon, only one preseason game remained and his final roster was taking shape. So he planned a field trip.

Everyone gathered at the Capitals’ practice facility in Arlington, loaded onto a bus and rode east for what the schedule called “Team Building.” In his final season in Nashville, Trotz had taken the Predators to visit the U.S. Naval Academy, and because consistency helped land him this new gig, he would do the same with the Capitals. Four miles into the route, though, the bus pulled over for an impromptu lecture. As the players looked out the window, they saw the six bronze soldiers of the Marine Corps War Memorial. Like those men at Iwo Jima, Trotz told them, the Capitals needed to “raise their flag.”

The core of that group had skated together for almost a decade, brightened by the stardom of forward Alex Ovechkin, growing into Presidents’ Trophy winners and reaching six straight postseasons, until everything crumbled last spring. On April 26, 2014, the Capitals fired second-year coach Adam Oates and declined to renew the contract of longtime general manager George McPhee. The changes seemed inevitable after the franchise’s first playoff absence since 2007.

In stepped Brian MacLellan, tabbed from within to serve as interim general manager. When word reached him that Trotz had become available after 15 seasons in Nashville, MacLellan told team president Dick Patrick, “We need to get after this guy right now before he’s gone.” Not since Ron Wilson, six coaches ago, had the Capitals hired a coach with NHL experience. Soon, they hired the longest-tenured one in the league.

“A guy that had a résumé that could hold some weight with players, could hold them accountable, have the ability to influence how they play,” MacLellan said. “We needed an older, experienced guy to get things straight within our room, within our culture, within our team.”

Players agreed with MacLellan. Two pricey offseason signings fortified a thin blue line and injected, in the Capitals’ estimation, a “heavier” style more suited for the playoffs. They enjoyed another 50-goal season from Ovechkin, another 60-assist season from center Nicklas Backstrom and one of the most remarkably durable goaltending performances the franchise had ever witnessed. They finished with home-ice advantage for the first round, which begins Wednesday against the New York Islanders. They find themselves describing the contrast in similar ways, blunt about the past and pleased with the present.

“It really is night and day, I’ll use it again,” defenseman Mike Green said. “Enough was enough after last year.”

The Capitals’ story is about transformed styles and rediscovered selves. It’s about the greatest goal scorer of this generation and the swagger of the coach hired to shepherd him. And in the end, it’s about what Trotz wanted when he asked the bus driver to pull over.

“When you know what the Washington Capitals are all the time, when it’s undeniable,” he said. “You’ve got to know what you’re going to get from us all the time. And if we have success, we’ll raise our flag.”

‘You knew it was a fresh start’

Jay Beagle never brought his cellphone to workouts, but on this day he made an exception. It was last summer in Calgary, and his wife had just given birth to their first child. Midway through his session, Beagle heard it ring and rushed over. He saw a Northern Virginia area code, followed by seven unfamiliar digits. He answered, panting.

“You caught me,” Beagle said. “I’m just in the gym.”

“Yeah, right,” Trotz replied. “That’s what everyone’s saying.”

He asked how Beagle felt, how his training had progressed, what he expected from the new regime. He spoke of valuing Beagle’s skills, more suited for the third or fourth lines, and asked how Beagle planned to improve his faceoffs. Months later, Beagle would say that’s when he knew things were different. No coach had ever called him like that before. He later learned that Trotz called everyone.

Other Capitals had similar eureka moments. Forward Troy Brouwer’s came on July 1, when MacLellan shelled out $67.75 million and inked veteran free agent defensemen Brooks Orpik and Matt Niskanen, adding depth and easing the burden on the incumbents. Defenseman Karl Alzner had his moment when he walked into the locker room and found the previous stall assignments had been scrambled. Trotz had meticulously planned the arrangement, putting veterans next to rookies .

“You knew it was a fresh start,” Alzner said. “It definitely felt that way.”

Goaltender Braden Holtby was certainly ready for that. Last season, erratic ice time shattered whatever little confidence remained after Holtby was ordered to adopt an unfamiliar style. At one point, the Capitals carried three healthy goalies, testing minor leaguer Philipp Grubauer while Holtby sat. In 48 games, Holtby finished with a 2.85 goals against average and a .915 save percentage, the worst numbers of his young career.

When Trotz arrived, he publicly anointed Holtby the starter and coaxed goaltending coach Mitch Korn, his longtime friend and colleague in Nashville, to come to the District. After a choppy start, Holtby spent most of this season on the fringes of the Vezina Trophy finalist discussion. He tied franchise records for games played (73), wins (41) and shutouts (nine), and twice broke the mark for consecutive appearances. He became, in Niskanen’s words, “the backbone” and “our workhorse.” To others on the team, he was perhaps the greatest triumph of the new regime.

“I think everyone in this dressing room was fed up with the other way and were ready to change,” Holtby said. “It was a combination of a lot of guys, ownership, management, players, coaches, trainers, everything. Everyone wanted a change and everyone wanted to make ourselves a harder team, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do.”

Trotz also sensed a culture of “entitlement,” as he later called it, and no one skater publicly personified that image more than his captain. In 2013-14, criticism of Ovechkin climbed to new heights, spurred by his minus-35 rating, .gif-able defensive disinterest and team-wide letdowns. Ovechkin was labeled stubborn and a coach-killer, but Trotz needed to see for himself. When Ovechkin returned stateside from Russia last offseason to accept his fourth Maurice “Rocket” Richard Trophy as the league’s leading goal scorer, Trotz asked to have dinner in Las Vegas.

They met at a steakhouse inside the Encore Hotel. At some point, Trotz pulled out several sheets of paper and passed them to Ovechkin. He had typed up questions on topics ranging from family history to personal dreams to the Washington Capitals and asked Ovechkin to answer them, whenever he could. By the end of the three-hour meal, Ovechkin had moved across the table to sit beside Trotz. He needed some help reading English. He wanted to answer them all.

Trotz left that dinner believing his superstar to be undeserving of his reputation. Ovechkin walked away optimistic, but cautious. Trotz was his fifth coach in 10 seasons. Like everyone, he needed to wait and see.

‘It’s what we needed’

During a day off on their western Canada trip in October, the Capitals enjoyed an afternoon at a Calgary curling club, competing for cash and a trophy. Players and staff members participated. Trotz handed out goofy hats and judged. Two nights later, the Capitals beat the Flames. It became their last happy moment together for almost two weeks.

A five-game winless streak, their longest this season, tripped the Capitals into November as tension simmered. During that stretch, not 15 games into his maiden voyage, Trotz began sending warning signals to his lineup. In Vancouver, he demoted forward Joel Ward to the fourth line. At home, he promoted rookie Andre Burakovsky to Backstrom’s usual center spot beside Ovechkin. Three games later, he scratched forward Eric Fehr. They were, several players said later, the type of moves that, under different circumstances, might have lost a locker room.

“It’s a difficult thing to make sure you gain everybody’s trust and it’s an easy thing to lose,” Brouwer said. “I think he sent a very valuable message that got received, that even the veterans aren’t safe from being sat out for accountability.”

The Capitals peeled off a three-game winning streak and soon caught fire. They nabbed points in 18 of 19 games between Dec. 4 and Jan. 14, including the Winter Classic victory over Chicago at Nationals Park, and stormed back into the Metropolitan Division race. Trotz never stopped testing the Capitals, at one point calling optional morning skates to see how the team would react before revoking the option to skip them after “the games became optional too.”

He expanded video availability, allowing players to access footage anywhere online, and installed a 1-5 rating system for coaches to evaluate players after games. The Capitals never practiced after back-to-back games and stopped skating the morning of the second game. Practices cycled through the same drills taught in training camp, and morning skates never differed in structure. After warmups and again after each victory, Trotz waited inside the tunnel, fist-bumping everyone who walked past.

He created a leadership group to include not only the captain and alternates but also other voices, as he did in Nashville. He pasted favorite quotes around the hallways and inside the locker room at Verizon Center and Kettler Capitals Iceplex. His favorite quote frames the door between the stick room and the locker room at the practice facility, borrowed from Luke 12:48: “To whom much is given, much is expected.”

“It’s insane how different it is, and it’s been great,” Beagle said. “I think it was . . . no, I know it’s what we needed, that big of a change and a big overhaul of the atmosphere and the mindset.”

‘We’re all in this together’

Part of the process, though, couldn’t be scripted by Trotz. Twice this season, once in November after a fourth straight loss and again in mid-March after consecutive regulation defeats at home, Trotz ordered the Capitals in the locker room to “fix it.” Then he left and shut the doors while they held players-only meetings. He had to wait outside. He couldn’t force chemistry to develop.

“They all thought they were a better team, but they weren’t a better group,” he said. “They needed to pull things together.”

The result? Alzner cited the ability to make fun of anyone as proof that he’s never played for a tighter-knit team. In Ottawa earlier this month, Orpik bought dinner for everyone, including the support staff. When forward Curtis Glencross and defenseman Tim Gleason arrived as trade acquisitions just before the March 1 deadline, the only two roster tweaks MacLellan made outside of free agency, the Capitals’ wives reached out to theirs, and Glencross moved into Ovechkin’s former home.

Brouwer, who admitted that cliques formed “in certain situations” during past seasons, likened road trips to what he experienced with the Chicago Blackhawks five years ago, when they won the Stanley Cup: Everyone met in the lobby at the same time, then chose going-out groups based on what they wanted to eat.

And Ovechkin responded by becoming a two-way wrecking ball, winning another Richard Trophy with 53 goals, attending a fifth all-star game and improving his plus-minus by 45.

“Zero,” Trotz said, when asked how much credit he reserved for himself. “It comes from the player, and the player — hopefully some of my words or whatever translate into his thoughts, into what he wants to do. But it’s the player. I have not blocked a shot, I have not made a save, I have not scored a goal in this league. The players do.”

Trotz certainly nudged things along, though. He helped plan the annual mentors’ trip in February and, for the first time the Capitals could remember, asked support staff members to invite their relatives. That’s how, by the sunny shores of California, the fathers of NHL stars spent two days with the fathers of trainers, public relations officials, in-house media and equipment managers.

“It says, everybody who rides this plane, we’re all in this together,” one traveling member said.

And because this is also a story about both the joy of hockey and the gathering of family, it all began with a toast. On the trip back from Annapolis, Trotz stood and asked for everyone’s attention.

“I told you guys I had a surprise,” Trotz said. He held up two buckets, filled with ice and four kinds of beer, brewed in the four nations represented inside that bus, on the roster of his new team: Canada, Russia, Sweden and the United States.