25 May, 2012

A Night at the Nats Game

On Saturday, I was extremely fortunate to score a ticket to the President’s Club with my friend L. and the gentlemen of Two In The Box. I wasn’t sure what to expect, except that I knew it was going to be awesome. And I wasn’t disappointed. From the prime rib to the lobster mac ‘n cheese, the food was completely amazing. The views of the indoor batting cages and the press conference room were exciting. The in-seat delivery of food and beverages was helpful. But best of all was seeing Brooks Laich, John Carlson, and Karl Alzner (and his girlfriend) at the game.

A few fans approached them (I saw Laich graciously talking to one young fan), but from what I could tell, most folks generally left them alone. Of course, that didn’t stop anyone from taking photos, including the guys! Alzner tweeted a photo of his view to the Nats’ Drew Storen, whose jersey Alzner was wearing. There’s something awesome and kind of funny about seeing professional athletes wearing other professional athletes’ jerseys. It’s too bad that the guys didn’t get to see a Nats win, but it was a great evening nonetheless.



An Agent of Change Leaving All Too Soon

 



Pride, Regret, and Questions

If we are of mixed emotions about the end of this hockey season — proud and uplifted by a Capitals team of unlikely cohesion and stunning sacrifice, but also exasperated by the frustration of banishment earlier than forecast, again — that’s as it should be. This Capitals team engineered a vibrant unity of our region in short order, gelling dramatically under their coach and playing precisely the brand of hockey the NHL postseason prescribes. On a near nightly basis they managed to create riveting drama, and a region none too accustomed to that, with the stakes high, fell in love with it.

This wasn’t just about a hockey team getting it together at the right time, playing for one another bravely and selflessly. This seemed fresh and authentic, a stirring streak of success in short order, taking down the defending champs and pushing the East’s no. 1 seed to the brink. Along the way a long elusive identity was forged, cultivated in work ethic, commitment, and fearlessness. It seemed something to build upon, durably.

And then there was Braden Holtby. He seemed part Cam Ward (’06), part Ken Dryden ( ’71), part his very own self. He thrilled us by staring down contemporary netminding giants. He thrilled us with his precocious resiliency. He thrilled us with his swagger. He staked a serious claim to being the franchise netminder the Capitals have searched for since Olie Kolzig departed.

And then there was Dale Hunter, the Legend returned in-season merely to play the role of Savior. Harshly, rashly judged in his early going here, this morning he appears indispensable to a Capitals organization going forward.

But the Capitals this spring also reminded us of . . . the Capitals — uniquely qualified to steal defeat from the jaws of victory.

Little things, very, very little things, often decide a playoff series between evenly matched teams. And so a Capitals team with series-stealing visions immediately before it with mere seconds remaining in game 5 saw beautiful bliss swiftly replaced by irrevocable brutality as Joel Ward’s hockey stick reversed the course of prosperity. My verdict on the infraction, aided by almost 40 years of suffering with this franchise, was that it was unforgivable. At 11:00 Saturday evening I was of little better charity of spirit. An organization congenitally, and ever, on the outside looking in on prosperity cannot so shoot itself in the skate boot, not against an elite team.

If a month ago you had been told that the Caps could navigate the Bruins and the Rangers and be left standing in hockey’s final four with merely the Devils (6 seed), Coyotes (nominal 3 seed), and Kings (8 seed), how would you have reacted?

Again, be proud of the special sacrifice and extraordinary effort exhibited by this edition of the Capitals, but acknowledge, too, what ultimately was lost in those final infuriating 60 seconds within Madison Square Garden during last Monday night’s game 5. There never should have been a game 7.

We could follow this team another 15 or 20 years and not see such a Red Sea of Prosperity — the round 1 falling of the Wings, the Pens, the defending champions, among other high-powered others — rival this spring’s. As a lifer following this club, I look at this spring’s vanquishing and know it will stick with me with savage sourness, until — if — redemption at last arrives.

And so this morning we are left with scores of questions casting our gaze forward.

  • With the existing CBA set to expire, will there even be hockey next season?
  • Can we at last secure a second-line center? And what do you do with Alexander Semin?
  • Is it really to be the case that the world’s best hockey player not yet in the NHL, Evgeny Kuznetsov, won’t see a Capitals sweater for at least two more hockey seasons?
  • Whither Ovi? Brilliant in game 6, when his team needed him terribly, Captain Alexander Ovechkin was the inverse of efficiency and impact in game 7. Never before had I seen him compete in a big game with less interest in having the puck on his stick. Blind drop pass after blind drop pass, instant and casual puck distribution long before drawing Rangers defenders to him, Ovi genuinely didn’t seem to want the puck on his stick Saturday night. I find that gravely troubling.
  • Hunter, here or back there? If he goes, who in the hell replaces him?
  • Missing in Action: Marcus Johansson. MJ90 was useless in the Rangers series, and only marginally better against the Bs. I ask anew: Just why didn’t the Capitals develop him as they have all of their other non-lottery selected talents? I genuinely worry that in rushing him into the NHL as they did the Caps have stunted his development.
  • Leadership — it’s coming from everywhere but where it’s formally expected to. Is this an area to be addressed by management in the offseason, or will we again sacrifice this sport’s time-honored heritage with its captaincy in a promulgation of an ill-advised marketing campaign?
  • The Capitals aren’t playing 82 games next regular season as they did this April and May. There aren’t enough trainer’s tables and hospital wards in the region to accommodate it. So assuming Hunter’s back, what system will the coach deploy to build on the great evolution he engineered for this organization?
  • And most interestingly: Just how much more like Dale Hunter will the 2012-13 Capitals roster look?


Showers of Playoff Victories Bring a Flowering of Faithful Fans

The Big Guy’s blog, from earlier today — a must read. Jives with what we’ve seen about town, ever since the Caps bettered the Bs. And should Fate smile our way Saturday night, we can only imagine what this town might be transformed into.

Also from today, NHL.com offered some fun and clever coverage of the Caps-Rags series, staking out a Manhattan sports bar named Standings this spring, which apparently for the past couple of years has been overtaken by Caps’ fans, many of them transplants with authentic D.C. roots who Rock the Red  still in the land of blue. Among them: longtime OFB reader and friend Jessica, who’s a featured fan in the piece.

We chatted with Jessica this afternoon via Facebook, asking her the obvious question: How do we buy you a victory beer in Standings tomorrow night around 10:30?



An Evolution, and Event, To Savor

Of the NHL’s 30 member clubs merely five remain alive in the quest for Stanley, and one of them is ours. That’s a remarkable and wonderful thing, relative to the Capitals’ standing of just two months ago, but better still is the manner in which they’ve arrived at this competitive precipice: all the red-sweatered-wearers are buying into the system and creed and demeanor of their new coach, one of supreme sacrifice, supreme focus, and cohesion. One that works quite well in spring.

Remember not so long ago when we evaluated Alexander Semin’s worthiness on a night by whether or not he appeared on the productive side of the scoresheet? Most nights this spring he hasn’t, and yet he’s carried off one of the more valuable roles for the prospering Caps this spring. He doesn’t loaf, he doesn’t attempt to beat the opposition all by himself, he plays with discipline and determination, he reads with radar precision openings in offensive zone gaps then seizes them, he competes ferociously along the boards. Just like his teammates.

Cynics are suggesting that the Capitals’ cumulative ledger of 7-6 this postseason,  and incredibly, 28 goals scored and 28 goals surrendered, undermines any claim to special distinction. I see it quite differently. I see a roster assembled for another age, lacking depth down the middle and shutdown presence on the back end, backstopped by an untested rookie in net, gelling under a bench leader with serious street cred, taking down the defending champs in round one and out-selfless-ing, out-sacrificing hockey’s most selfless and sacrificing club in round two.

I also see this: a hungry and determined hockey club. Bearing lethal composure. And it feels novel.

There seems to be a peaking quality to these Capitals in mid-May, as they ready for another series-determining game on the road. Isn’t this the Alexander Ovechkin we dreamed about seeing at this point in the calendar when he arrived here some seven years ago? He scores big goals, he creates plays, he engenders inordinate deference among backpedaling blueliners, he brutalizes every body in an opposing sweater. Wednesday night, when his team needed him most, he emerged as a beast.

Mike Green perhaps rightly earned derision in round one. He looked timid and unsure, overly cautious; he rarely rushed the puck. Not so now. The national television cameras during game 6 seemed to hover over Green swagger-sauntering about the ice during stoppages, while the announcers lavished praise upon him for his difference-making  playmaking and poise. Green is absorbing really big hits from this Rangers team, just as he did from the Bruins before, but he merely readjusts his helmet and resumes his role as Calgary Energizer Bunny on the back end. Nicklas Backstrom has been the most consistent of the Caps’ elite performers this postseason, and the deeper we move into spring the more his endurance seems to improve. Green and Backstrom, difference-makers both, missed wide swaths of regular season play but now each night look like kids with keys to a rink who want to skate all night until the morning manager arrives.

You must have some semblance of decent health to endure and prosper in this Quest, it’s long been said. These Capitals may actually have more than that.

* * * * *

Count me as one who relishes this break between games 6 and 7. I am witnessing an organizational metamorphosis, and so long as this postseason lasts, inclusive of its off days, the more I am removed from the ignominy of autumn and winter play. I adore where Saturday delivers us: inside the world’s most famous arena, at night, for our sport’s highest drama. Multiple overtimes in 40 hours’ time? Bring it, with my beers; I can sleep in; Mom on her day will understand.

Saturday, though, will be about Dad, and this son taking in the game 7 spectacle on the couch right next to him. He hails from a Big Apple suburb, attended high school in the big city, and made his way to the Garden as a youth for $5 admissions in the Original Six days. I wanted the Caps to win Wednesday partially because I wanted the Hunter Transformation Train to churn on, but I kept silent (so as not to jinx) my primary wish: sharing a really big night, a Saturday night deep into spring, with my Pops, watching the puck being elimination-game chased by the team he introduced me to in 1974. Next month he turns 70, and I have to keep silent what he most wants for his birthday.

I am quite aware of my fortune this weekend, no matter the game’s outcome. I’ve a bloggermate who’d surrender all his worldy possessions to share just one more such an evening with his old man, a father who like mine introduced him to the game, but cancer last year robbed them, permanently, of that partnership. I will be thinking a lot about my friend tomorrow night.

* * * * *

One of my favorite friends in Washington hockey media will be flying home Saturday from an island vacation with his wife, she this spring a defeater of cancer. They will arrive home in time to see the game. He emailed me Thursday from the island, predicting a Capitals’ win. I want a win for them, too.

* * * * *

And I will be thinking about my bloggermate Elisabeth, journeying to the Big Apple for the big game, miraculously credentialed for it. Thank you again, Washington Capitals, for your advocacy on our behalf. Back last August I met Elisabeth at Bugsy’s in Old Town, and instead of story-boarding a new season together I explained to her how, because of cancer, I couldn’t attend a single game in 2011-12, and how I needed her to pilot our press box seat. She’s had a wonderful season, exhibited wonderful story instincts, and continues to grow into a force of penetrating puck thought.  I hope tomorrow night she witnesses a wonderful game and covers a winning locker room.



Taking a Punch or Two for the Team

The New York Rangers looked like they came ready to hit Wednesday night—not necessarily ready to win.

For the Capitals, who got an early lead on an Alex Ovechkin power play goal, that meant they needed to be cautious about not getting drawn into any extracurricular activities–especially since they made plenty of trips to the penalty box without them (over the 60-minute time frame, they played 10 minutes total of penalty kill time, so basically half a period).

“The start of the Bruins’ series, things got a little bit chippy, and we talked a lot about it, and that was one of the things that we knew had to be successful as a team—we wanted to either be on the power play or 5-on-5. We stayed out of it again tonight,” said Matt Hendricks.

In particular, the Caps’ Jason Chimera, known for not hiding his feelings on the ice, had to turn the other cheek Wednesday and exert extra effort as the Rangers worked to get under his skin. He answered with five shots and a goal. He also drew at least two Ranger penalties—the first led to Ovechkin’s power play goal, and the second came when Brandon Prust tried to provoke him.

“Chimmer did a good job of not getting too hot-headed, did a great job skating away, and Prust takes another penalty on him,” Hendricks said. “Those are things that aren’t always fun to do—take punches—but when you’re doing it for the rest of the guys in this room, it means a lot.”

“In Boston, I took a couple dumb penalties and kind of cost a bit of momentum,” Chimera said. “I didn’t want to cause any momentum. … They’re trying to draw a penalty, and you don’t want to be that goat in the penalty box, that’s for sure.”

Overall, it was a fairly strong showing for the Capitals, who were less than a minute away from a shutout of the Rangers.

“It was a lot like that Game 7 up in Boston,” Hendricks said of Hunter’s communication before the game. “He just came in and said, ‘You guys, you know, you’ve worked hard, you’ve battled hard, go out and win the hockey game. Play the way you can and win the hockey game.”



Keys to the Caps’ Game 6 Success

Keys to the Capitals’ Game 6 win discussed below…



Hitting the Ice a Man Down

Some say that one must embrace hockey from birth to fully appreciate it. Oh, one can become a fan of this great sport no matter your upbringing — it’s a pretty compelling spectacle — but if you didn’t grow up with it, then it’s something you learn to like, not something you breathe.

That's me in the mask, with my brother Steve in the footie PJs.

That's me in the mask, with my brother in the footie PJs, in our New Jersey childhood home's basement. Note that this is a *real* old-school photo, not Instagrammed...

I breathe hockey. And I owe that to my dad.

We’d play hockey in the basement, later with my brothers when they were old enough to stand. We’d play hockey in the street. We’d hit South Mountain Arena to watch the Devils practice. The neighborhood would flood the basketball courts (which for some reason had curbs around the sides) and skate over rock-strewn ice. We’d go to NHL games every chance we got — not often, as we didn’t have the money — most likely snagging a seat from the our friends who had Devils season tickets when we could; every game was AN EVENT in my mind.

My dad really liked hockey, but he wasn’t a fanatic for a particular team. As a kid I was so excited when New Jersey got its own team (thank you, Colorado) and my home state would finally have a franchise that called itself New Jersey—I root against the NFL’s Giants and Jets to this day for playing in New Jersey yet calling themselves The New York Whatevers. (Yes, I know we had the Nets, but I was a short kid and didn’t care a whit about basketball.)

Anyway, not long after the Devils sprung to life (thank you, Colorado), my dad brought little me to Madison Square Garden for a Rangers-Devils game. We were up in the blue seats (those who know, know), and I wanted to wear my new Devils t-shirt. My dad tried to explain to me what a bad idea that would be, but I insisted — and of course, the blue-seaters took no mercy on a kid in enemy uniform. That drove home to me the fervent loyalty one can embrace, for better and worse, in the hockey world. And I loved it.

Fourteen years ago I became a Washington Capitals season ticketholder. I’ve lived in Jersey, Philly, and lots of other places, but I identified with the Capitals in a way like no other team. It didn’t hurt that, at the time, tickets were cheap and plentiful; attending games is the best way to really get to know a team. Just watching on TV doesn’t have the same impact: “Hey, did you see (minor leaguer x) got called up? How about that hit in the second period?” Sitting in those seats, particularly during the Caps’ lean years, got me deeply into all things Caps.

But more than anything, I was drawn the Capitals’ workmanlike identity– a group who, despite or perhaps because of their talent, never quit.

When I started On Frozen Blog with my friends John, Gary, and Todd, we’d been the four most strident voices on a listserv (yes, we are old). We decided to start a website to spout off in a public forum. We sure haven’t been doing this for the money, as there’s been none — it’s for, with apologies to Kevin Costner, the love of the game, and of the Capitals.

A few years ago, I brought my dad to his first Capitals game. He and my mom had come down to DC for a visit, and the hockey-scheduling gods were in our favor. Sitting there watching hockey with my father again, after far too many years, was a great moment. Together we cursed the refs’ ineptitude (as is our wont), drank beer, and high-fived for each Capitals goal.

Recently my dad succumbed to cancer at age 64. It was blessedly quick at the end—but undoubtedly awful, and far too soon. One of my last memories of him was him sitting in the hospital after a night of extensive treatment, reading the paper and complaining about the Devils’ playoff performance, and asking me how the Capitals were doing (not well, at the time).

The next day he was gone.

My dad’s passing has distanced me from the game of hockey — because that’s what it is: a game, played by well-compensated athletes to entertain fans. After my father’s death, I could no longer rally with those who wailed and gnashed teeth over the Capitals’ performance as if it were a matter of life and death.

Here’s the thing: his death shook me in many ways, but it gave me a perspective I was lacking. It’s all well and good to love hockey, and in particular to love the heartbreaker Washington Capitals. I certainly do. And the day this franchise finally wins The Cup, I’ll be screaming for joy as loudly as Goat does. And I’ll probably get a ridiculous tattoo (don’t tell my wife).

But passion without perspective is a fool’s game. Anyone who spouts hatred at another human being because of this game, or who puts hockey ahead of the people in your life — well that person needs to extract their head from their ass. Passion for one’s hobbies and entertainment is all well and good… the highs are higher, and the lows are muuuuch lower, if you’re invested in a team than if you’re a casual fan. But passion and perspective are not mutually exclusive — in fact, they’re important companions.

That said, my moods still rise and fall with the Capitals’ fortunes, particularly in the post-season. Ted Leonsis has talked about his fond memories of attending football games with his father. He says that now he’s in the business, as the owner of sports franchises, of “making grown men cry.” And I can see that: sometimes we are not well-equipped to share, emotionally, with our parents, and sports can be the common element that helps us connect with family and friends.

I’m regaining my passion for hockey, gradually, because I see in it echoes of moments with my father that I’ll never forget. It’s still fun to curse the refs, jump for joy after victories, and even slump after defeats… and yes, to pen passionate, opinionated, and sometimes overzealous prose about the game. And when I get the urge to call him, the fond memories are starting to outweigh the feeling of loss.

Basically it’s a great escape to lose oneself in the game for a few hours. But I’ll never be quite the fanatic I was in earlier years. And that’s good, because professional sports is entertainment. Damned good entertainment, mind you, but nothing more.

Sports can be a touchpoint with family, friends, and fellow fans — a way to connect with others via a shared passion. Of course there are other, deeper ways to connect with those who are important in your life… but any opportunity to do so is one worth considering, and if sports can be that conduit, well hell, embrace it.

Case in point: My six-year-old nephew (the son of my footie-pajama-wearing brother above) loves to call his Uncle Mike and talk hockey. It’s so great chatting with him and bonding over our love of hockey… he reads the sports section every morning, and is sure to tell me his hometown Hartford Whale “are the best!” My birthday cards are now festooned with stick-figure crayoned hockey players. How cool is that, right?

And thus my dad’s hockey love moves on to the next generation.

So yeah, hockey’s a blast, and screaming for the Caps is rollicking fun. Just don’t let real hatred bubble up in you about the game; okay, sports hate, perhaps, the kind of thing you yell about over (many) beers, but nothing that festers, nothing that eclipses reality, nothing that lasts.

If you’re able to use your passion for hockey to craft great, lasting moments with even one other person… well then you’ve achieved a success greater than anything that can be accomplished on the ice.



Striving Still for Serial Killer Status

This morning I am thinking a great deal about the New Jersey Devils, a great deal about the Detroit Red Wings, and a great deal about Matt Bradley.

Winners win, and losers lose, and they do so in our sport for very specific, very traceable reasons. And every once in a while a lone figure from our sport steps forwards to discuss, courageously, and with candor, organization’s reasons for winning and for losing.

Somewhat dispassionately, with unwavering discipline, not unlike a serial killer, the underdog Devils just extinguished all life out of the Philadelphia Flyers. To watch last night’s third period in Philly was to watch finely trained assassins carry out their mission. At no time in that final frame did Philly resemble a team that could reverse its fate.

A team holding a 3-1 series lead can be thought of as a killer with his hands applying a strangle grasp about his victim’s throat.  To New Jersey, Claude Giroux’s suspension meant merely an added vulnerability for the targeted victim, an opportunity to squeeze the throat harder. The Flyers last night scored the game’s first goal, but soon thereafter were in the Devil’s clutch, from which there was no escape.

Serial killers, of course, are unrelenting, of singular, lethal focus; they never afford their victims escape. A hockey team leading a foe 2-1 on the road in a pivotal playoff game, with just seconds remaining, can be thought of as a trapper that has his foot pressed down firmly about the back of the head of a poisonous snake. Lift that foot and you run the risk of being bitten.

About the middle of the Devils-Flyers series, during a stoppage in play in game 4 I think it was, just as the Devils were exerting brute, irreversible force on Philly, the NBC television cameras panned in on Lou Lamoriello, and the game announcers launched into a fabulously intriguing discussion of how the manager had, with a surgeon’s precision, applied the very best management practices of the very best sports organizations to his Devils club. The announcers sought to establish that what we were witnessing in this 2012 playoff series, immediately after the Flyers had so impressively vanquished the Cup favorite Pens, was anything but a fluke, and rather yet another milestone the byproduct of a marvelous blueprint. I found myself grudgingly nodding in assent. Yes it helped Lou immeasurably securing Martin Brodeur with that 20th pick in the 1990 draft, but this Devils organization under Lamoriello’s leadership was destined to succeed.

Next I found myself thinking: Wouldn’t it be nice if television cameras one game day panned in on George McPhee, seated in his Verizon Center manager’s perch, and announcers articulated a similar sentiment. George McPhee has been the Capitals manager for 15 years. Exactly what manner of infrastructure excellence is he commonly associated with?

I think of the exceptionally well managed Devils and Red Wings as regal serial killers in our sport. They are seldom associated as undisciplined trappers. As such, they serially win Stanley Cups.

The Devils, we thought about six months ago, were in some manner of rebuild. Turns out, that rebuild lasted about a year. Soon the Red Wings will have to endure Nick Lidstrom’s retirement, and not long after, the departures of other key contributors to their numerous championship caliber teams. And yet I haven’t the slightest doubt that they’ll reload in short order.

That record 23-game home winning streak the Wings carried off this season, it struck me as a bit of an odd pursuit while it was happening. Don’t the seriously aging Wings realize it does them little good to go gangbusters in the regular season, I remember wondering? Then I recalled a reflection from Ken Dryden in his classic book The Game, of his iconic ’76-’77 Montreal Canadiens club, Cup winners that year who played 80 regular season games and lost a grand total of 8 of them. Dryden said that beginning with that season’s very first exhibition game in September that Canadiens team simply desperately wanted to win every game they played. Desperately. That’s the Red Wings of the past 15 or so years to me. You watch them play in Columbus on a Tuesday night in February and they skate like their lives are at stake.

It’s a cultural thing. And it breeds a serial killer mentality, I think.

I am aware that neither the Devils nor the Wings have won a Cup especially recently, but that doesn’t really matter to me. Annually they are assembled such that no one wants to play them in spring. With these two clubs especially, one gets the sense that in competing against them in the postseason you’re competing against a good deal more than the 20 guys wearing their sweater. It’s more than an aura — that comes and goes (ask Montreal). It’s a sense of encountering a hallmark architecture of durable competitive excellence. Moreover, when these clubs advantage themselves in playoff series such that their adversary is wounded, most often they finish off the kill.

Monday night I wanted to see a serial killer’s finishing mentality from the Caps in game 5′s final minute. Instead, I saw the same old Caps. The Capitals are a nice and impressive team, and perhaps becoming more impressive in spring under Dale Hunter. In some respects, I actually believe Hunter is exacting blood from a bit of a stone of a roster — a handful of AHL+ talents this spring in D.C. are looking like quasi NHL All Stars. But until they press that boot down firmly on the heads of snakes and snuff out mortal threats they aren’t appreciably different from about two dozen league member clubs who merely aspire to be cold-blooded killers.

Which brings me to Matt Bradley. I freshly thought of Brads last night, while encountering an eyes-widening  Brooks Laich reflection in the National Post.  Rather than excerpt it, I feel compelled to render it here visually:

As a fairly solitary figure in these parts who’s durably criticized the Capitals’ culture of recent years, I reacted instantly and vociferously to the cultural condemnation that Matt Bradley courageously brought to Canadian radio last August. Recall the team’s immediate wagon circling (i.e. messenger shooting). But what Laich is addressing here speaks directly to the practice culture Bradley detailed and condemned. (With basically nodding assent from Dave Steckel days later.)

Recall also how Bruce Boudreau lasted a mere three months longer.

Imagine how far back in the microfiche of the Detroit Free Press you’d have to rummage to find a Wings’ player, under the tutelage of Bowman, Lewis, or  Babcock, quoted testifying to practice sessions of . . . screwing around, saucing pucks around?

I do believe that much-needed, long overdue cultural change is taking place at Kettler Capitals these days, thanks to guess who, but we’re not where we need to be just yet. The balance of the Rangers series will afford us more vital data on that.

For I’d wager about 50,000 D.C. hockey fans Brooks Laich represents, at the very least, this Capitals team’s de facto captain. A good many among that number I’d further wager believe he should be the actual captain. It’s hardly heresy to suggest that the actual captaincy was arrived at less by merit and more from marketing campaign. Suffice to say: the serial killer clubs in our game don’t dick around with their captaincies.



A Stick Foul into Immortal Infamy

Humans’ impulse for empathy is a great and powerful instinct, but there are times when it is banally misapplied. Sports are, in the biggest picture context, virtually meaningless pursuits, but we do invest billions in their architecture, to say nothing of our emotional investment, and as such accountability in high stakes showdowns is inevitable and appropriate.

A few sweet souls took to Twitter in the aftermath of what has to be regarded as one of the most shocking (which is saying something), infuriating, and malicious of playoff defeats in team history last night and sought to deflect attention from where it rightly was — Joel Ward’s singular act of ruinous malfeasance.

Among these tweets were all manner of deflecting what-ifs, principally focused on the Capitals’ numerous missed opportunities to ice away a game while clinging to a 2-1, third period lead. But missed 2-on-1s and struck goal posts are altogether normal hockey outcomes in a game, any game. What Joel Ward did was anything but.

It really is as simple as this: Every hockey player must maintain control of his stick, at all times, for it is a weapon. Last night, Joel Ward’s hockey stick was a weapon of mass self-destruction.

With a mere 22 seconds to go before his team realized a remarkable 3-2 series lead against the East’s no. 1 seed, Ward fouled Carl Hagelin’s face, and in the process likely fouled as well his team’s postseason fate. Ward’s senseless and undisciplined stick foul resulted in a double minor infraction that precipitated two New York Ranger dagger goals. It is likely that Ward, and Ward alone, fouled as well one of the more remarkable postseason opportunities this franchise has ever seen deep into spring.

“Joel Ward did the UNTHINKABLE,” Ed Frankovic wrote of the infamous act. But it actually is and was thinkable because it was and ever is our Washington Capitals, in the postseason. With some routine they do infamously achieve what is for all other NHL franchises the unthinkable.

It was altogether right and appropriate for Ward’s teammates to console him in the postgame morgue that was the Capitals’ Madison Square Garden locker room, and for his head coach to focus his observations on fluky bounces of the puck late in game 5. But it is also right for the rest of us to be filled with ire and outrage,  and exasperation, and to ask of the winger, What the fuck?

“Everyone’s taken a penalty and something’s bad happened,” Karl Alzner tried to deflect. “There’s nothing he needs to say.” Alzner is a great teammate, but in this instance, he’s flat wrong. Twenty two seconds til series-swinging nirvana. The ice clogged by frenzied humanity. Life then supremely tough enough with the Blueshirts accorded an extra skater, pressing so cause they know the stakes, so the only thing you truly cannot do is unclog the sheet by a little and accord the hosts yet another skater.

This wasn’t a fluky bounce, it wasn’t the breaks just beating the boys. This was altogether preventable, and as such, sickeningly tragic.

Among big media only the Washington Times gets it right this morning, with Stephen Whyno’s game file laser beamed right in on Ward in that locker room. “I definitely let the squad down,” Ward commendably admitted. “I cost us the game with a terrible play.”

Some of those same sweet souls on Twitter last night will spend today attempting to pretend that last night’s outcome was singularly sour and but a lone defeat still mathematically possible to overcome. Dale Hunter, however, isn’t — his team isn’t even skating today. Absence from the rink after game 3 was merited by virtue of his guys’ almost inhuman exertion and sacrifice from triple overtime. Today his guys need to stay away from the rink to try and forget the dawning of that dark fate that ever seems to envelop this franchise most particularly when it’s on the cusp of postseason prosperity.

I am convinced that later today Capitals’ players will say all the right things about their remaining prospects in this series. But most of us know this morning, don’t we?

Some thoughts, too, this morning have to be directed at the Legend Coach who prior to a little before 10:00 last night seemed on the cusp of realizing something very close to a whole new legacy for the beleaguered franchise he captained to relevancy. For answering the call he did last autumn, surely he deserves better than this, no?

No, actually. Because Dale Hunter, perhaps better than anyone, knows the high hurdle this organization has to jump each and every spring. And it just got higher.

It’s savage and brutal imagining Joel Ward’s career here going forward. How in the world does he skate past this? All those regular season games to skate over the next three seasons of that gaudy (and unjustifiable) contract, and the odds of his seeing again a prosperity setup for his team the likes of this postseason . . . virtually unfathomable. That’s what makes his senseless act last night so sickening.

And unforgivable.



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