A rare photo of Calle not in the terrible blue and copper uniforms. We looked hard.

Head coach Adam Oates started to fill out his staff today with the hire of former Capital Calle Johansson as an assistant coach. It is appropriate to shriek after reading that sentence, even if you are a grown adult.

Johansson holds the franchise record for most games played in a Caps uniform, playing for the team from 1988-2003. He scored 474 points as a Cap: 113 goals and 361 assists. Known as an underrated defenseman with good vision on the ice, Johansson generally made those around him better.

He has experience as an assistant coach and analyst in Sweden, but this will be his first position on an NHL coaching staff. Johansson was known for his good tactical understanding of the game and should be able to show the Caps’ young defense core a couple of new tricks, particularly the newly re-signed Mike Green. Check out this interview he gave to Mike Vogel a few weeks ago before the hire.

As presently constituted, the Caps bench consists entirely of former Capitals players. George McPhee seems to be going through a “High Fidelity” phase, revisiting all of his exes. This is not a strategy that we could recommend for your personal life, but we’re eager to see how it plays out here.

The real question is: now that they already used “Back Where You Belong” for Dale Hunter’s welcome-back montage, where do they go from there?

Photo of Calle doing a fitness test in 1999, starring Calle’s shorts. (Photo credit Susan Biddle, via @lindsapple)