There is pleasant, engaging office water cooler chat -- (none of us really gather around water coolers anymore, do we? It's just that we haven't found the appropriately updated workplace referent) -- and then there's what I have gained in breaktime communications by virtue of changing careers this autumn. Two doors down from my brand new office in Northwest D.C. is that of Eric McErlain, he of Off Wing Opinion, he the trailblazer of hockey bloggers, he the author of the blogger credentialing guidelines requested by Ted Leonsis and the Washington Capitals, he the Maestro of New Media, he who puts the "multi" in e-multi-tasking, and, as of this week, he the best of all hockey bloggers. Sports Business Media this week named Eric's Off Wing Opinion the best hockey blog out of the universe of all hockey blogs.

Ten such hockey blogs were acknowledged for distinction by Sports Business Media, and Jon Press' Japers' Rink made the list as well. So D.C. bloggers comprised 20 percent of the e-dignitaries. Not bad for non-hockey town. The list of the 10 best:

1. Off Wing Opinion
2. James Mirtle
3. The Pensblog
4. The Battle of California
5. Barry Melrose Rocks
6. BfloBlog.com
7. Waiting For Stanley
8. The Battle of Alberta
9. Japers' Rink
10. Behind the Jersey

I first met Eric early last hockey season. I was (and remain) a very novice blogger, while he was in year six or so of breaking down traditional media coverage barriers. I was keeping my head low and my mouth shut in the hour of so before Caps' home games down in the press mess. Eric was the first person to sit down next to me and make me feel welcome in the strange environs. It's a favor I aim to return this Saturday night at Verizon Center if I see a fresh face among the Opening Night press pack.

Anyway, by about our third pre-game meal together Eric felt like a real good friend to me. Perhaps you can imagine my feelings for him when, in the middle of this summer, he took my CV and shepherded it into a spectacular new communications gig for me -- and as his colleague. We have plans for a lavish steak dinner out together on my dime to acknowledge his life-altering intervention on my behalf, but his myriad e-moonlighting missions keep robbing him of free time.

Our office is a lot like many other professional settings in a big city. Colleagues of distinction hunker down and labor hard and well, and when they seek a break and some personal engagement, they confide in their office neighbors and or project team members about family, recreation, travel plans, and the child custody drama of Ms. Spears. There are so many gifted and warm professionals on our staff, and these dialogues they have no doubt carry uncommon rewards. Yet I can't help feeling a wee part of pity for them, for when Eric and I dialogue, we ruminate on the exotic, like junior hockey travel in Saskatoon or Moose Jaw or Rimouski, the best ways to get hockey hear dry between games of a weekend beer league tournament, and John Buccigross pithiness. In our prattlings we do break away from our immersion in big-league rosters and transactions; we discuss international monetary policy, too. Now that the Canadian dollar has achieved parity with the American, we wonder (at length) how much beer money we'd need on a roadtrip north of the 49th to take in a long weekend's worth of Q League games.

It's a foreign tongue to our colleagues that Eric and I traffic in over the day's first cup of joe, during portions of the lunch hour, and in quick-hit comings and goings in hallways. A veteran of our trade association, Eric knows full well that when say Ben Clymer is dispatched to Hershey and I'm tied up in some technical meeting on another floor, he can relay the breaking news to me via our Blackberries. It's at times like that that I'm of the opinion that 'Brian's Song' has nothing on the nascent friendship between Eric and me.

Eric in his formidable online technical faculties of course is as clued in to our sport's developments as anyone in North America, and so he genuinely doesn't need me to pop my head in his office and blurt out the latest injured reserve designations. But I do that anyway, for he and I are kindred spirits about all things frozen, fast-paced, and fisticuffs, and needed levity and even some level of nourishing, sporting spirituality is secured in our office engagements. We have our own blogs, and both of us have material that ends up on the proverbial cutting room floor; these tidbits and trinkets too we share with one another. We speculate, debate, reminisce, and simply luxuriate in an immersion into an inner sanctum of our beloved sport.

Late Wednesday, just hours before the start of the new hockey season, Eric popped his head into my office, knowing that my new home had recently been wired for NHL CenterIce for the first time. He simply wanted to see the look of anticipation on my face, I think.

It was there alright.

Thursday morning I'll begin my workday as usual, with coffee and quick check to see if Eric's desk light is on yet. I'm eager to congratulate my friend on being named the best hockey blogger in all the bloggersphere.