Our own Empty Maybe gave us a real jolt last week -- informing us of his need to part ways with OFB for the foreseeable future -- and he shared this news with readers over the weekend. Truthfully, the remaining three of us were shellshocked. We've never known anything but the four of us in this venture.

Over the weekend I gave some thought to EM's lasting contributions and to how we'll carry forward without him. There can be renewal and healthy evolution in change, but I wish it weren't happening in this instance. I've said it to print reporters, on radio, and in casual conversations about rinks: the most striking and rewarding feature about being involved in a hockey blog in this town is developing the friendships we have. I'm biased, but I believe that has something (everything) to do with the nature of the game we cover and the people who make livelihoods in it and are drawn toward it.

I greatly enjoyed reading readers' appreciation for Empty that amassed in the comments to his final Knee-Jerk file. He made as large an impression on many of you as he did us. We just had the added good fortune of being able to empty a few cold ones with him in and out of season. And of calling him friend -- which his departing of course doesn't change.

As for that legacy . . . one of the things I told Empty last week was that in storyboarding for our trip to Moscow to cover the Worlds last spring the Caps' communications team very quickly adopted his knee-jerk focus and format for its coverage plan. It was also a format increasingly imitated in other blogs. What I enjoyed most about his files was their maturation. Like the rest of us, last autumn he just started bloviating a bit about puck, but it was impossible not to detect Empty's gaining a unique and endearing voice in them as the season progressed. You could approach his Knee-Jerks merely for the purpose of obtaining a well-delineated recap of a Caps' game, but I found fondness in many of them for their containing his inimitable drollness. Few in hockey were spared from it.

This morning I'm not prepared to discuss the future of OFB without Empty. Suffice to say we'll move forward in some iteration, and perhaps manage somehow to carry off a collective set of Knee-Jerks in the months ahead. But we'd necessarily do so in a rough voice.