On Frozen Blog

I awoke at 4:30 this morning, two hours earlier than my alarm. I’m awake at the same time as Elliot Segal, and like Elliot today, my head is crammed full of thoughts about a new hockey season in Washington.

I’m thinking about the visitors’ locker at Philips Arena just now, how in darkness just like my bedroom’s those snazzy looking new Caps’ threads — admittedly poorly engineered, and likely to be the death of about 70 NHLers this season — were already hanging in place, set out by the dutiful Capitals’ equipment staff. I thought about how different the Washington players might feel as they first entered the room early this evening and seized upon the new uniform systems. I do think it likely they’ll feel more attachment to them tonight than they did while wearing them during the exhibition season (if for no other reason than a fair number of players had the fight ’til Sunday night to win them). In no small way they’re emblematic of a changed hockey culture in Washington this season.

I’m thinking about those 22 points the boys more or less need to make up to vie for the eighth spot in the East this season. It’s a tall peak to surmount, but I think it likely. For one thing, I don’t see those points in terms of 11 additional regulation-time victories. Last season the Caps authored what will stand the passage of time as the worst set of shootout performances in hockey. In hockey history. If they’d altered nothing about their shootout lineup this summer they couldn’t have gone one-for-eleven again. (Could they?) But GMGM brought in two of the league’s best shootout marksmen (Nylander and Kozlov). It isn’t irrational to imagine the team meeting something like .500 in shootouts this season, and if they do, that 22-point challenge has been reduced to about 17. I’m almost looking forward to shootouts this season. Almost.

It’s very quiet in suburban Maryland at 4:50 in the morning, but it won’t be inside Verizon Center during hockey games this season, thanks to a $25 million investment hanging high at center ice and encircling the lower rings of the seating tier. We’ll be exposed to an atmosphere, I wager, the likes of which we in D.C. never have before, and how fitting that it debuts alongside a buzz-generating hockey team. You’ll agree with me, I think, that Ivan Majesky in enlarged hi-def is still Ivan the Terrible. This morning in my dark quiet I’m thinking about a winter Friday or Saturday night with a marquee visitor in town, the Caps on a three- or four-game win-streak, the house full or close to it, the Alexes scoring on binges, and all that noise.

Still before 7:00 and still dark, I learn I’m not alone in my puck thoughts: I receive an instant message from the Caps’ Spike Parker. He’s working already and I’m blogging: it’s just like we’re back in Moscow together again, except the women in my neighborhood don’t look quite as fit and alluring. We wish each other a Happy Opening Day.

I’m thinking about the novelty all of the media on the Caps I’ve consumed this week. We may look back on this week as perhaps the most significant for media for this team in its history, when a perfect storm of blogging, new and renewed print and broadcast zeal, and some re-engineering by old media combined to deliver a feast for hockey fans in this region. Somebody tell Tony and Mike.

I’m thinking about the bloggers’ season kickoff soirée scheduled for this evening downtown at the Grand Hyatt, and how eager I am to reconnect with so many friends I made last season and didn’t get to see over the summer. (Vogs, I’ll have one for you.)

Hockey’s here again, in my hometown. Even in the dark, I can look out and see the correct alignment of the planets.