On Frozen Blog

One aspect of the change in training camp venue from Piney Orchard to Kettler Capitals I’m coming to enjoy a great deal is the lengthy elevator rides from Ballston’s 8th floor down to the shopping and eatery levels. It’s not the most efficient set of elevators I’ve ever encountered, but the company I often get to keep within them tends to alleviate a lot of impatient aggravation.

You never know who is going to hop in Kettler’s elevators with you; but about 30 minutes after the conclusion of practices and scrimmages each day, many players and organization personnel make dashes downstairs for hot eats and such. Often on these rides either I eavesdrop on interesting puck chatter or initiate a friendly chat with a prospect or vet or coach.

Back in July, during prospect development camp, I was sharing an elevator one afternoon with three players. One was an American, the other two players from the Western Hockey League. They were discussing the vagaries of travel, and at one point the American player asked his Canadian counterparts how often they flew.

“Never,” they replied. “Our shortest bus ride is about 7 hours — 12 in bad weather,” they added. The American was dumbstruck.

This is not stop-the-presses stuff, but to me it’s darned interesting, and with something like a prospect camp as a backdrop, it reminded me of the sacrifices and commitments these remarkable athletes make in their long-odds pursuit of careers in professional hockey.

This afternoon, a good hour after the 11:30 scrimmage had ended, I moved into elevator waiting position next to Eric Fehr. Eric is really easy-going and pleasant to talk to. But these days, he has to be a bit tight-lipped — he’s under a gag order from management about discussing his injury.

“Can’t talk about the injury, I know,” I said to him, smiling. He was holding what looked to be a book report for a high school English class.

“It’s all in here,” he replied, holding it up for me to inspect. The cover had his name and I think the word ‘Medical’ on it.

Just as the elevator doors opened, behind us arrived a freshly showered Nicklas Backstrom and what was clearly a Swedish media contingent (everybody was blond) encircling him. We all boarded.

I was standing next to Fehr. To my immediate right a Swedish reporter began a fresh dialogue with Backstrom, in their native tongue. My Swedish being rusty, I turned to talk to Eric again.

“Were you back in Manitoba this summer?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I was curious to know a bit about summers in Manitoba, having never been there and hating Julys and Augusts in D.C. and their oppressive heat and humidity. I like to hear about places that offer comparatively cool temperatures — I guess I air condition vicariously in that regard.

“We actually get the greatest extremes [in temperatures] in all of North America,” Eric told me. “We get minus 40 and 40 celsius.”

My metrics fluency is like my Swedish, so I asked Eric for a bit of a conversion.

“We go over a hundred [degrees] in the summer,” he told me.

“Did it ever get so cold in winter that you couldn’t skate outside on the ponds there?” I asked as followup.

“Oh yeah . . . it’d get cold enough they had to close school.”

We parted company a few moments later. Downstairs I dined on tasty Mexican food during a late lunch. An hour later I headed toward the elevators again to get up to G6, where my car was parked. Just as the doors were set to close Caps’ goaltending coach Dave Prior joined me. Behind him was Assistant Coach Jay Leach, and some others I didn’t recognize. Prior stood next to me, meaning his ride wasn’t going to be silent.

“How do you think your netminders are looking, coach?” I asked.

He smiled. “How do you think they’re looking?” he replied.

I asked him if he’d ever known of a training camp when the Caps had so much an abundance of talent in net. He made an important clarification in my observation. One of the organization’s prized prospects, Russian Simeon Varlamov, isn’t at camp. Back in July, he told me, when both Michal Neuvirth and Varlamov were at Kettler for the development camp, he realized how fortunate he and the Capitals were.

“Those two goalies,” Prior told me around G4 of our ride, “they’re top-rated in their respective countries.”

Next I asked the coach about Olie Kolzig’s relationship with all the younger goalies. I wanted to know if they sought him out for advice, guidance, technical assistance, or if perhaps they were intimidated by him.

“Olie . . . what he does is pick up [their spirits] after I get through with them,” he replied, smiling.

I guess it’s pretty universal to fear getting stuck in an elevator — everything so confined, the victims so uncertain of when rescue is going to arrive. I wouldn’t wish it upon myself, but if it had to happen, I’d like it to out at Kettler, during training camp, on a day perhaps when Don Cherry or Barry Melrose was taping an interview with Alex Ovechkin.