On Frozen Blog

Pardon the Interruption from your regularly scheduled March madness, and Skins’ weight room Cam, for local broadcast media’s maiden voyage on a Love Boat cruise with a lover named hockey. Comcast SportsNet is done giving hockey the back of its hand; it isn’t having any more of its past puck indifference. Today, it’s smitten with our 60-goal sniper and his team’s Rudy-like rise. This spring, the region’s television sports outlet is experiencing a Man-crush on Ovie, is infatuated with the Caps, and is stalking the sport of hockey.

Wednesday night, Comcast, in due consideration of the Eastern conference playoff implications, aired the Chicago-Columbus game live. There were no games in the East, so it went West.

Next, we shall conquer 15th St.!

(Made by bloggers movie title: Invasion of the Hockey-Hating-Body Snatchers) (starring Lisa Hillary)

Approximately 15 minutes before Tuesday night’s puck-drop in Carolina, near the end of a 30-minute ‘Sportsnight’ that easily could have been mistaken for the NHL Network’s ‘On the Fly’ (were its content Caps-exclusive), the studio tandem of Jill Sorenson and Chick Hernandez stood out away from their normal anchor’s desk perch, looked straight into the cameras, and exhorted Washington’s sports fans to get out to Verizon Center during this hockey renaissance spring and check out “our region’s Tiger Woods.”

I’d never heard Ovie compared to Tiger before in the press in these parts. The more I thought about it Tuesday night and since, the more I became of the opinion that the Comcast broadcasters were spot on. Adding credence to their claim was the in-kind sentiment articulated by team owner Leonsis in one of the six or seven or eleven Caps’ segments produced by Lisa Hillary and aired during the half-hour lead-in to the ‘Canes’ game.

There were features with unhurried interview snippets of George McPhee, Bruce Boudreau, Ted, Ovie of course, and even Jarome Iginla from the Flames’ visit to town earlier this season. Later, Owen Nolan was asked for his thoughts on the Gr8. Raise your hand if back in September you thought you’d come here to learn of Owen Nolan being interviewed on ‘Sportsnight’ in March.

Even if the Caps fail to make it to the postseason at least early in April we’ll be able to tune in to Comcast footage of Hillary strolling the cherry blossoming Tidal Basin in the company of Gordie Howe.

Ovie, you may have seen here earlier this week, joked with Russian media recently that he was even well known by our current President. I’m not sure we’ll have that as a hypothetical much longer, for I’m convinced that Hillary will attend the next White House presser with the Prez and solicit his thoughts on 60 goals in a single season.

My favorite moment from Tuesday night — moreso even than Viktor Kozlov’s game-deciding shootout tally — was when Hillary in the pre-game alerted viewers to her needing to race off the Comcast set and get home pronto to catch the game. This was no baseless aside of a bone to Caps’ fans — seconds later you could actually hear her scampering off the set and a somewhat stunned Chick Hernandez confirm the departure.

Canadians are so cultured. Think about it — who’s the Canadian equivalent of Britney Spears?

My second-favorite moment from Tuesday was a post-game telephone call I received from one of my post-game puck “regulars.” From this chum, known to stress over preseason forward line combinations, I expected a few hosannahs of relief before receiving a breakdown of the formidable task awaiting the team in Tampa. Instead, my friend opened with, “Did you see Comcast before the game?” My friend was euphoric, and only partly due to the game’s outcome.

Then she said of the pre-game coverage, in perfect seriousness, “I was very close to tears.”

The main reason I monitor media in this sport in these parts is because of reactions like that. It has less to do with fans’ sense of coverage entitlement and far more with their looking at a television screen and seeing their souls serenaded.

Wednesday morning I tuned in to Comcast’s ‘Sportsrise’ right at 7:00. There’s a sparkling new baseball stadium debuting here this week, the playoff-bound Wizards played Tuesday night, and the Lady Terps advanced to the women’s Sweet Sixteen a few hours earlier. “But first up,” the morning anchor announced, “The Caps were in Carolina to take on the Hurricanes.”

This offseason I have plans to explore here my notion of how preposterous it is to view sports journalism in the same prism we do with “hard” or “serious” news coverage. Hockey beat reporters comporting themselves with unyielding “detachment” from the athletes they cover and the fans who fervently follow? To what end? What is the virtue — now especially, in an age of advocacy journalism, but even years back — of Edward R. Murrowing the Sacramento Kings’ or Florida Panthers’ beat?

Anyway, here and now, we who make up HockeyWashington are being feted in town at a lavish media feast, whereas mere months ago we dined outside on stripped bones with the dogs. We have still a few empty chairs at our banquet table.

Where are the Washington Post sports columnists?