(Kathy Willens - AP) NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman says the league fully intends to lock out if it can’t come to terms with the players’ association on a new collective bargaining agreement by the Sept. 15 expiration date.

"We reiterated to the union that the owners will not play another year under the current agreement,” Bettman told reporters in New York after labor talks ended Thursday.

According to ESPN’s Katie Strang, Bettman confirmed that one of the biggest gaps between the two sides is revenue sharing.

League revenues reached an all-time high of $3.3 billion last season — believed to be an increase of more than $1 billion annually since the lockout. The owners’ initial July 13 proposal asks for a decrease from the 57 percent of hockey-related revenue the players currently receive to 46 percent.

The 2012-13 NHL season is slated to open Oct. 11.

Related: Key issues for NHL CBA negotiations

(Jonathan Newton - WASHINGTON POST)

Joel Ward today revealed in an interview with Toronto’s 102.1 The Edge that he recently had surgery for a sports hernia.

The Capitals winger — who played both the hero and the goat during Washington’s playoff run this past spring — didn’t say when he suffered the injury or whether it was a lingering issue during the season, though he did have an awkward story to tell about his recovery.

Ward also talked about the follow-up to some of the racist sentiments directed at him after his Game 7 winning goal in the first round of the playoffs. Read more over at the D.C. Sports Bog.

Caps fans may remember Brett “Stretch” Leonhardt, who made headlines on Dec. 12, 2008, when the 6-foot-7 web producer and ex-college netminder made his NHL debut (from the bench) as an emergency backup.

Leonhardt left the Capitals in February 2011 to work for the NHL as a video editor, but the team announced today that he’ll return this season as video coach. Add that to the list of other roles Leonhardt has had with the Capitals (pregame DJ, podcast host, practice goalie...) and essentially all that’s left is GM.

From the Capitals’ Mike Vogel:

“I missed being part of a team,” says Leonhardt. “Since I was five, I’ve always been in the rink for nine months a year and had always been associated with a team. I missed being around a team and working towards a common goal. I had always wanted to be a video coach and I felt a strong pull to be part of a team again. When the Caps came to me, it was an easy decision.”

Leonhardt will work closely with assistant coach Blaine Forsythe, who heads the team’s video coaching operations.

Ovechkin poses with Novak Djokovic Tuesday at Wimbledon. (Photo via @ovi8 )WIMBLEDON, England – For most of his regular life, Alex Ovechkin is an internationally recognized hockey player, the star of the Washington Capitals. For this week, he is a run-of-the-mill tennis fan, one who has to fritter away the hours waiting through rain delays and long matches to root for his girlfriend, Maria Kirilenko, in the Olympic tennis tournament at Wimbledon.

“It used to be, I play hockey and my family watch me and they explain to me how they’re nervous,” Ovechkin said Tuesday after he watched Kirilenko take a 6-3, 6-2 victory over Heather Watson of Great Britain. “I say, ‘Why are you nervous? It’s simple.’ Right now, I [am] just watching her play, and I get nervous, because you think, ‘Jesus Christ. Come on. Do something better.’”

Ovechkin is still at the center of the Capitals’ universe, and when he returns to Washington next month – he said he expected to take part in some of the NHL’s labor negotiations – he will be dealing with an altered landscape. First, his longtime running mate, winger Alexander Semin, signed a free agent contract with Carolina that means Ovechkin will play without his countryman for the first time in his career.

“It was a fun time to play with him,” Ovechkin said. “But how I said before: It’s a business. It’s hockey. … Right now, it’s time to move on. We’re not going to cry. We’re not going to be sad. Of course I’m sad I lost my boy and a great teammate for me, and a great player. But who knows what in the future, what’s going to happen?”

The consensus since Adam Oates was named Capitals’ coach on June 26 has been that he will create balance in the team’s style of play. He is expected to find a way to mix the best of Washington’s offensive talent with defensive responsibility, without sacrificing one for the other.

Oates himself described a team that would be aggressive and push the pace all while maintaining defense as a priority. Whether the systems and nature of a team under Oates’s direction will follow that template remains to be determined in the 2012-13 season — whenever it starts.

So far, players like what they’re hearing from the new bench boss, who has reached out to them individually. Alex Ovechkin, Mike Ribeiro, Wojtek Wolski and Jay Beagle are among those who have previously expressed their excitement to work with Oates, and here is what two other players had to say recently about their new coach and the promise of a new season.