On Frozen Blog

Comcast Sportsnight last night became a veritable rainbow of All-Star Game coverage. I thought their cameras would follow AO to his first-ever All Star appearance, of course, but this was fully two days before the show, and Comcast’s crew was on site in Dallas chit-chatting with players and coaches and sharing it all with viewers back in Washington. The Washington Post has even sent Tarik, and he, too, is already on site. This represents a welcome and fresh reconsideration by local sports media of its longstanding disdain of all things puck. Recall that just last June Tarik was barred by his editors from traveling to Vancouver to cover the NHL Draft, in which the rebuilding Caps owned two first-round picks and three more in the second . . . and which with each passing week begins to adopt the appearance of the team’s most successful and important draft in team history. Of course, the irony of local media abuzz this week about a meaningless hockey game isn’t lost on me.

And something about breaking fashion news reminiscent of New Coke’s success has something to do with the buzz emanating from Texas, certainly.

(Comcast, incidentally, and shockingly, dispatched Al Koken to the Vancouver Draft to guide the formation of a 30-minute, behind-the-scenes look at GMGM and the work of his scouting team throughout draft weekend. It’s a terrific piece that aired late last summer — parts of it are positively riveting, even for the non-DraftGeek. Anyway, that kind of coverage is the exception to the Washington mainstream sports media rule; and furthermore, it smashes any myth that the draft carries all the news value of a basement fantasy hockey league player selection party.)

Being the world’s loudest yawner at all things All Star, I find myself generally lamenting the 5-day shutdown of hockey that means something. Having said that, I can well imagine, I think, the present state of about 85 percent of the players’ bodies in late January; they surely deserve some R&R at this stage. The league’s selection of a southern climate site for the game, joined with our local media’s early arrival for it, makes me wonder if this annual event ought not follow the NFL’s far less defensible scheme of going warm for a big game and thereby more likely attracting national and international media.

Don’t get me started on the wussification and culture schlock of the Super Bowl. I get a lot of reading done in those nine hours. But for hockey reporters, even Sunbelt ones, by late January they’ve navigated enough slush and sleet to shut down D.C.-area schools for a month. So why not throw the media a bone and convene this event annually in warmer climates? (Being Mr. Freeze, I adopt Matt Bradley’s embrace of Mother Nature’s short-sun-season’s gifts: while many of his teammates head south for fun in the sun this week he’s heading up to his home near Ottawa for some snowmobiling in minus-20 temps. And so I’d only leave my full-time job to cover the game were it scheduled in Winnipeg.)

But here’s the rub: be imaginative about site selection — take this glitz and glamour to new and untapped warmer markets. (Did I just request the league’s brass to be creative . . . in a positive sense?) Notice that the league has no problem dispatching its teams to remote outposts during September’s exhibition slate. The Ducks even opened their 1997 season with two games against Vancouver in Japan! The good folks in Austin, Texas, this month have regularly flirted with pond hockey temps. My sense is they aren’t so thrilled. But what if Wednesday’s game were being held there? They might discover a never-before-imagined appreciation of the recreation that can take place on ice.

You don’t grow the game by shuttling your farm team and a few big-league regulars to 5,000-seat arenas in smaller markets right as the NFL and college pigskin are getting out of the gate, before the leaves have even changed color.