On Frozen Blog

It’s cold to the bone here: three thick layers aren’t enough to ward off the wintry weather. Around 3:30 this afternoon it began snowing fairly seriously, quickly whitening the downtown sidewalks and streets. We’re forecast to get 8 centimeters tonight; I am most metric challenged, but I believe that’s either a foot and a half or a pint of snow. A pint of snow I think is what we’re getting. Anyway, it’s wonderfully cold and wonderfully snowy just a couple of hours before the Caps meet the Leafs, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Pepper and I will have a chance to visit with the Caps in their post-game visitor’s room, thanks to some principled and diligent outreach from the team’s media staff with their Toronto counterparts. Pepper received this email communication from the Caps’ Paul Rovnak this morning:

“The Leafs have agreed to give you postgame access to our dressing room, and this is how it will work. I will put you and John on our postgame pass list, which will enable you to come down to the arena level of the ACC. I will meet you there after the game and give you credentials to enter our dressing room. This is how the Leafs want to do it, and we have to play by their rules since we are in their house. We open our room five minutes after the game and I have to be in there the entire time, so please be downstairs right after the game during that five minute window and I will give you the passes.”

For a game attracting as much media interest as an Ovechkin visit to Toronto on a Saturday does, Paul’s busy enough as it is, as you might imagine, and for his Caps’ media colleagues and him to work us into the fun tonight is fresh evidence of the organization’s commitment to championing new media. Pepper and I are freshly indebted to them, and if the team didn’t have to hightail it out of Toronto tonight for tomorrow’s 5:00 faceoff in Carolina, we’d try and buy Paul a Keith’s or three at the Loose Moose tavern. That outpost came to us highly recommended by NHL media vets earlier this week.

Speaking of NHL media, Pepper and I shared a bar with Christine Simpson of Versus last night. My Friday night had a wonderful ending after so trying a journey through blizzardy Buffalo. Pepper and I dined at the Canyon Creek Chophouse not far from our hotels. We didn’t arrive until nearly 9:30, and as I’d subsisted on coffee and soda pretty all the way up here from D.C. to try and make good time, I told Pepper that I could have eaten a whole moose by 9:30. I ended up settling for a 22-ounce roasted cut of prime rib, washed down with some Keiths and some decent red vino. We ate the bar, which is classy and cozy, and that’s where we saw the broadcast media hanging out. Simpson at one time was the marketing manager for the Hockey Hall of Fame here. We chatted with them at the end of the evening (Jim Hughson was also in the party), and they were Canadian nice.  

Pepper had a glass of 16-year-old Lagavulin as his dessert. That made me insanely jealous, but I don’t sip elite scotch after wetting my tongue generously with other spirits. It’s on my agenda for tonight’s post-game, and in these conditions, I’m imagining it going down rather well.

Pepper and I toured the Hockey Hall of Fame this afternoon. It was an interesting day to visit. A Hall employee named Duncan was manning a digital camera situated in front of the Stanley Cup in the Great Hall room, and he explained that today was the very first day that visitors could not take their own photos of the Cup with their own cameras. I smell a fresh revenue stream scheme by the Hall.

Duncan also told me that the Great Hall, which is where the Cup and the NHL’s other extraordinary trophies are showcased, can be rented out after hours, and is particularly popular for puckhead wedding receptions. It’s not all that expensive, either — a $2,500 rental fee (before catering, obviously). I plan on sharing this news with Comcast’s Lisa Hillary upon my return.