On Frozen Blog

In many American office settings the comings and goings and feats and follies of the contemporary sports world serve as common cafeteria and water cooler banter. So I was curious, while in the Capitals’ offices at Ballston Wednesday with my colleague OrderedChaos during normal business hours, would there be some manner of inverse office discourse among staff? Which is to say, would Caps’ staffers perhaps idly chit-chat about, say, legendary real estate agents or stock brokers? Turns out, these staffers are united by a passion for their product, and on this the first day of the NHL postseason, in a corner of the corporate suite filled by communications staffers, the chat was all about round one matchups. Hockey talk by hockey pros interrupted by hockey chores. How Heavenly.

It just now dawns on me that I left Ballston yesterday without inquiring about summer internships for non-intern-aged hockey bloggers.

OrderedChaos and I were guests for a late afternoon tour of the new digs. Mike Vogel and Sean Parker had hoped to get us over early in the afternoon in time for us to make a guest appearance on the CapsReport, a fantastically flattering offer. But in our breathless excitement seconds after their e-vite none of the four of us could carry off the required shifting of our regular work tasks to make it happen. Another time, hopefully. I think at some point this summer our quartet is going to have to host a backyard barbeque for our bosses and respectfully guide them to a reorienting of their priorities for us. Security clearance labor within our nation’s defense infrastructure is undeniably important, but on the 8th floor of Ballston, Change Is Coming this summer, and it needs to be faithfully chronicled.

Is it guilty pleasure to pass Capitals’ staffer work cubicles and management offices and delight in seeing desks adorned with photos of staffer children playing hockey? I say guilty because I have a somewhat unorthodox view about what is appropriate recreating for children. I should first acknowledge that I take seriously the volume of data increasingly confirming increasing obesity rates and computer game addictions among the nation’s youth. And if they so happen to choose soccer or basketball in pursuit of good health, instead of our sport, really we ought to suppress the urge to raise discussions of orphanages and foster care. Initially. Usually I find the onset of unrecoverable withering in my committed relationships attendant to talk of children, and specifically my insistence that at 12 they be dispatched to billet families in Manitoba, and that loving aunts and uncles take up charge of raising the soccer-preferring of my progeny. Can I be blamed if my progressive thinking is a moderately difficult match? Some men dream at night of hot tubbing with triplets; I fantasize about the children of Washington Post editors clamoring for expensive hockey gear from their parents every autumn, and signing up for travel hockey. I call it Leonsis’ Revenge.

But to get back to this landmark work complex. It’s two levels, with ice level housing the team’s plush and posh penthouse-feeling locker room; a cavernous therapy area, adjacent to which are sets of state-of-the art aquatic and steam immersion chambers; a Redskins’-sized weight and training room; coaches’ and training staff offices; and a mini-theater seating perhaps 30, within which the players will obviously view opponent film. I joked with Sean and Mike that one Friday night we might be able to sneak in for a digitized screening of ‘Slapshot’ with popcorn.

My favorite part of this level is a glass partition separating an entrance hall from the team lounge, and within this wall the team has managed to arrange facsimiles of Caps’ playing cards from seemingly every season, replicas so true to the originals in appearance that even the closest scrutiny will fool veteran collectors, I wager. The original cards were donated to the team by a long-time season ticket holder. In one room I was staggered to encounter a brand new, never before used skate sharpening machine, which featured a marble table. A really top-of-the-line sharpening unit can fetch over $15 k, but I’d never seen one with a marble top. Near the tour’s end I asked Vogel if there was any rival to this architecture anywhere in the league. “Just LA,” he told me.

Immediately above this athletic oasis resides the organization’s sales, communications, and management staff offices. These folks are distinctly young and bright-eyed and busy. Many of them can be found working very late. I’m sure that’s because of their commitment and their passion, and of course the significant challenges the team today faces. But I also think that for more than a few their labor environs invite an association not unlike that of the visiting outsider’s: a home, of the heart, away from home.