"This Was Fun . . . What a Great Day To Be a Caps' Fan!"
That was the sentiment expressed by one of our readers early last evening, and it seems to us to capture Thursday's wild ride and community-consuming euphoria rather perfectly and wonderfully.
Another way of characterizing the most common reaction shared with us: unbridled, unmitigated glee. Thursday's news for Caps' fans was, it seems to us, so much more than mere word of the hockey All Star re-upping.
We in HockeyWashington have spent a fair bit of time this hockey season enduring slurs and slights from commentators in larger, more established, and more prestigious markets, who fed on Alexander Ovechkin's looming restricted free agency as an occasion to belittle our town anew. Well of course he'd want to bolt D.C. at first chance, they implied. He deserves to be in a serious hockey market! Did big-name commentators say this of Joe Thornton when he was shipped to San Jose? Anyway, the Capitals' owner yesterday replied to the slurs, with nine-figure emphasis: "Oh yeah? Go ahead and negotiate with our star . . . in 2021."
Thursday's wild ride actually began for us some months ago, when SovetskySports' Dmitry Chesnokov first came to us with particulars pertaining to negotiations between Ovechkin and the Caps. Chesnokov, a lawyer by day, has for some time known the Ovechkin family. Intermittently he would confide in me about the negotiations, but at no point did OFB ever consider publishing any of it. We just weren't interested in chronicling the give and take in contract negotiations. What's substantive and productive about that? I did tell Dmitry that I'd be interested in his insider's account if things heated up and he had, say, an imminent deal to discuss.
Which brings us to this past Wednesday night at Verizon Center. I was there, in my usual seat, my laptop powered up. OFB readers awoke Thursday morning to my file on Peter Bondra, but no substance pertaining to a terrific game between the Caps and Colorado. That's because, thanks to Dmitry, I saw precious little of it. Late in period one he arrived in press row, behind me, and initiated what I then regarded as weird -- and loud -- pestering.
His eyes were wide, his arms were waving wildly every time I turned to acknowledge his calls, and he wouldn't relent. With Russian subtlety he implored me to leave my seat to come up and chat with him. Twice, while bearing an expression of exasperation in catching his stare, I pointed at my laptop screen to try and convey to him that I was immersed in following a fairly important hockey game. At last he left his seat and came up behind mine.
"You need to follow me outside," he ordered. "Now."
Near the press elevator and away from all media others, he dropped the bomb on me.
"How does six years and fifty four million sound to you?" he asked, smiling.
"Ovechkin and his family are going to Kettler tomorrow afternoon, at 1:30. They are taking a lawyer with them. They are going to sign the contract."
As I digested this intrigue I thought back to Dmitry's animated press row antics. They were, in hindsight, restrained. Were I the holder of this news, and were I seeking to share it with him, I'd have rushed into press row naked and with my hair on fire.
"This," I told Dmitry, "I can use."
I know Dmitry as a close friend and I respect his work as a journalist so much that I never question his sources. Except this time.
"Source?" I asked.
His answer was satisfactory, in a dandy sense. So what next, I asked?
"We publish jointly at 4:00 tomorrow," he told me.
Four was when Dmitry had been told to expect the signing party to break up, and to expect a cell phone call from a very wealthy Russian immigrant family. There was also this: Thursday was the Caps' annual meet-and-greet for season ticket holders and players. If I'd had any reservations about the veracity of Dmitry's claims, the notion of the team owner standing before thousands of customers and announcing the best news the organization has ever known then, seemed to me an exclamation point in persuasion.
This development occasioned a fun new task for me back at my laptop: compose a brief but newsworthy email to my bloggermates.
"Remember that story I suggested would be good fun for us to break?" I began. "How does tomorrow at 4:00 sound?"
With play going on Verizon Center ice below me but me now wholly oblivious to it, I also sent email to Tim Leone of the Patriot News: "We might have something to perk up your Thursday afternoon."
Now seated next to one another for the remainder of the game, Dmitry and I initiated what would come to consume virtually every second of our lives over the next 18 hours: communications verbal, electronic, cell phone-driven, excruciatingly detailed, all of it pulsating and pulse-racing. This was no Morning Cup-a-Joe I was poised to publish.
"Nobody else knows," Dmitry kept reminding me.
Leave a comment