On Frozen Blog

Not yet 100 hours into the Redskin offseason, the region’s television sports personalities could reasonably be expected back at Ashburn yesterday, camera crews in tow, chronicling the football equipment staff’s changing of player cleats — March mini-camp is less than three months away, after all. But one figure of courageous defiance, emboldened perhaps by a flurry of recent endorsements for her candidacy to ascend to the Big Seat (vacated late in 2006 by NascarNed), blazed a broadcast trail at 11:26 last night: the centerpiece of Lindsay Czarniak’s WRC sportscast was her Washington hotel room interview with #99, the day after his charges’ New Years’ Day dismantling of the Caps.

The Great One and The Great Looking One.

The two-and-a-half-minute segment afforded little to command a stopping of the CBC presses, but it was fresh, enterprising, and well executed. The Great Looking One delivered a break-from-the-media-horde angle with the segment: not content to glean merely from Gretzky’s Verizon Center musings on “The Goal” one year later on Tuesday, she sought an in-depth assessment of the general standing of Alexander Ovechkin from one of the most gifted and most respected figures in the game’s history. (Incidentally, not a word about NASCAR in the sportscast.) She then took her interview footage and shared it with AO, who was rendered ashen and dumbfounded by the Great One’s testimony. Ovechkin’s muted humility fostered a poignancy to the overall piece.

Speaking of head-turning blondes, Caps’ 06 draftee Oskar Osala is making the 2007 World Junior Championships his hot hockey prospect coming out party. In my preview of the WJC last week, I suggested that his Caps’ draft classmate, Russian netminder Semen Varlamov, could emerge as a breakthrough performer. He sorta has, in the sense that he’s made scouts forget Ken Dryden or Patrick Roy with his brilliance [4 GP, 4-0, 240 minutes, 92 shots faced, 89 saves, .967 save pct., 0.75 goals-against] (Russia faces host Sweden in one WJC semi-final today while the U.S. faces off against Canada.) But the Osala story is stunning.

A fourth-round pick by the Caps last summer, Osala — a towering presence at 6 ‘4, 225 — seemed mired in mediocrity this fall for the Mississagua Ice Dogs of the OHL. He put up just 9 goals and 7 assists in 26 games there, but he was skating a +6 — a big improvement over last season’s -19 rating as an OHL freshman. Still, he entered the 2007 WJC well below everybody’s radar. No more. Finland was eliminated by the U.S. yesterday in quarterfinal play, 6-3, but for no fault from Osala. His two goals in the game were the subject of lavish hockeysfuture message board hosannas, and throughout the tournament his game-dictating play has been singled out, even among more high-profile Finnish prospects. He exits the tournament fourth in scoring, with 3 goals and 5 assists in 5 games. It’s just one tournament, but it’s one of the best in all of hockey, and the Ice Dogs can be assured of seeing an ultra-confident Osala bolster their second half. And Caps’ fans can add another name to watch for the future.