On Frozen Blog

Since we all have day jobs, we blog by early morning, lunch hour, after hours, and sometimes while we send the wives and kids to the malls on weekends. But on Tuesday, when we received an invite from the Caps to join the MSM for the opening of the new practice facilty in Ballston, collectively we moved the necessary mountains to liberate oursleves from our respective office obligations to attend. After all, a few floors below the sparkling, state-of-the-art new Kettler Capitals Iceplex is Bailey’s, where to our delight at 3:30 Wednesday we found Sam Adams Winter Seasonal already on tap.

Kettler — formerly KSI Services, Inc. — is a Northern Virginia-based developer of residential and commercial properties across the D.C. region. It was somewhat startling to learn Wednesday that Kettler-Capitals is the region’s first indoor ice rink accessible by Metro.

Briefly there was a wonderfully awkward moment after the presser when Ted Leonsis, meeting us for the first time, took the opportunity to introduce us to some MSM — the recent (and ongoing) target of our media critiques. This subject offered us a hasty handshake, the acknowledgement that he reads our stuff, and then immediately a swift pivot from the circle and a rush out the facility front door. Said the owner, with discernable amusement: “He was pissed!”

Externally, Kettler-Capitals is angular and heavy on glass and peculiarly perched atop the Ballston shopping mall garage: looking up at it from Glebe Rd. it appears a bit like a top row of a contorted Rubick’s cube, its front edges dangling out over the outer perimeter of the garage’s top level. Caps’ radio voice Steve Kolbe presided over the program, and at the outset he pointed out that the Caps’ new training home was the only rink “this high above street level anywhere in the country.”

The 137,000-square foot facility was built on a new eighth level atop an existing seven-story public parking garage. It will not only afford the Caps with an unrivaled showcase home but broadly serve the northern Virginia skating community. Both the Georgetown and George Washington University hockey programs will have their respective home dates there, and fully six area high school teams will compete there as well.

Inside it was strange for us to view two entire NHL-sized sheets conspicuously free of a single streak of puck smearing on dasher boards. We spoke with a Zamboni driver who assured us that just this previous Saturday all the surrounding aisles and walkways were crammed full of construction debris. While there remains still considerable construction left to complete the Capitals’ offices, public skating sessions will commence this weekend, and the Caps, General Manager George McPhee told us, expect to skate their first practice at Ballston on November 7.

“Who would have thought the finest practice facility [in the NHL] would be in Ballston?” he added.

Three enormous honor banners of Dale Hunter, Rod Langway, and Yvon Labre in action adorn one end wall of the Caps’ side of the facility, and OFB eyes quickly detected that Captain Hunter, like the other two retired sweater owners, was outfitted in the team’s original uniform design, inviting our latent rumor whispering about a much-debated uniform switch occuring sooner rather than later.

Leonsis pledged that all Caps’ practices at Ballston would remain free and open to the public. In light of the highlight-reel talent the organization is rapidly accumulating, this is no small perk for sports-loving Northern Virginians. Kettler-Capitals is densely surrounded by high-rise business and residential property, and with the backdrop of the Caps’ feel-good western roadtrip in the air, it wasn’t hard to imagine an awful lot of businessmen’s hookie taking place between the hours of 10:00-1:00 the next five years.