On Frozen Blog

There was something significantly worse than Ilya Kovalchuk’s game-ending wrist shot at Verizon Center Saturday night: the thousands upon thousands of empty seats. I know it’s only October, and I know well the Caps’ long-standing drawing woes in early autumn, but there’s something undergirding this downtown arena emptiness that had no like precedent in Capital Centre, and it’s seldom discussed: the spectacularly soporific Southeast Division.
Can you imagine the outcry if the Redskins were dislodged out of the NFC East with the Giants, Eagles and Cowboys and into some Sunbelt arrangement with say Jacksonville and Carolina? That’s really what happened with the Caps when they lost their week-in, week-out showdowns with the Rangers, Flyers, Penguins, Islanders, and Devils and replaced them with Miami’s Cats on ice, the Bolts from Tampa, the ‘Canes from Carolina, and most recently Atlanta’s Thrashers.

From a purely aesthetic perspective, think for a moment upon the sweater emblems of the Southeast versus the durable classics found diagonal on the Rangers’ chests, smack center in since-their-inception in Philthy, and ditto in Jersey and on Long Island (excepting of course that brief fashion insanity known as the Gorton’s Fisherman Moment). Powerfully symbolic for this discussion, methinks.
We in the long-suffering set have seared in our hearts a hatred for all things Orange and Black; Billy Smith and Kelly Hrudey were a springtime tandem of tragedy; the coaches behind our bench changed but the playoff results against Pittsburgh seldom did. These epic season-ending sets sewed healthy harvests of hate that bloom still (proudly) in my breast. (Philthy is 1-3-1 out of the gate, and I can quote chapter and verse the minus skaters on their roster.) Every postseason in the Patrick’s Glory Days the top four teams first had to fight through one another, and this bred a postseason bleeding that beautifully carried over into the following fall.
Since the Caps took up residence in the Southeast in 1998-99, they’ve encountered a division “rival” in the postseason a grand total of one time. The Patrick Division morphed into the Atlantic and included early on Tampa and Carolina, but even in their best-ever postseason, the ‘98 Cup Finals run, the Caps faced Boston, Ottawa, and Buffalo in the East. In addition to the ill-conceived Southeast, the league horrifically decided to abandon divisional playoffs, but even if you could go back in time and magically add a playoff series or three to the Southeast tally I’m not sure it’d have had much beneficial bearing on the preponderance of unfilled purple seats.
[Healthy digression: We have purple seats in our rink for four tenants without it in their uniforms because it's Mrs. Abe Pollin's favorite color. True story. When Bastille Day arrives and Ted takes over the building as well it will be too costly for him to replace them, which is why I'll lead a long-term bake sale on 7th St. to help out.]
This highlights the most basic shortcoming of the new alignment: geography. We diehards used to lament the busloads of unbathed from Philthy when like clockwork they invaded the Cap Centre for each and every game, but truthfully this sparked an often fantastic atmosphere