On Frozen Blog

Pepper and I received an interloper’s interrogation when we presented ourselves for admission to the Capitals’ room in the postgame bowels of Air Canada Centre Saturday night. We were perfectly credentialed for the moment, but we were new faces, and the names of our respective blogs draw furrowed brows, deep suspicion, and even mild dismay from the gatekeepers in navy blue jackets.

“The Red Skate  . . . what is that?” one of them wondered aloud disapprovingly.

On the one hand, their confusion was somewhat understandable — Leafs’ security, particularly on a hockey Saturday night, is used to ushering about the likes of Hockey Night in Canada, CBC, the Hockey News, the Globe and Mail. And it may well be the case that over the years a handful of the Ontario Obsessed have with cunning crafted clever-looking, bogus credentials to try and gain access to Gretz or Mario or especially Wendel.    

But the one-game creds Pepper and I were issued were larded with difficult-to-reproduce, small-print legalese detailing the full spectrum of conditions and responsibilities to be honoured by the holder. And the Air Canada Centre security/usher staff surely knew this on their first inspection. We were detained for second and even third inspections, I think, out of affinity for an Old Media World — our interrogators, to put it charitably, were not of a Laptop Age, you might say.

This media profiling grew to be a bit more than mildly irritating. Certainly we don’t feel any sense of entitlement to access, as I’ve made plain in my philosophical ruminations about blogging about this sport and this league. But when due diligence has been executed, when the vetting by the media pros has been performed . . . at one point I wanted to get snarky and say to the interrogation team, “Look, we’re actually here for your daughters, we’re going to be very American with them on a cold Saturday night, so where are they hanging out?”  

Remember that time is precious and short in gaining access to visiting hockey teams in a postgame, the moreso when said teams have 5:00 games the next day nearly a thousand miles away. The Caps Saturday night were to be showered, dressed, and departed on a bus for the airport by 10:15. Of course, the blogging world wouldn’t have ended had we missed chatting up the boys, but the Caps had labored to help us out, and we wanted to make something out of that effort.    

Be sure to check out Pepper’s terrific photos of our experience inside the ACC Saturday. He also has some detail-rich pics of the NHL’s prime hardware displayed in the Great Hall at the Hockey Hall of Fame.

I surprised Paul Rovnak with a request to speak with Capitals’ assistant coach Jay Leach. The team isn’t accustomed to fielding press inquiries for access to assistant coaches. Well, that’s the point of alternative coverage, isn’t it? If I’m at any game, home or away, and all I’m doing is regurgitating the storylines and scripts of old media, what’s the point?

Leach works with the Caps’ defensemen, and I was curious to know what he’d said and done in recent weeks with his patchwork quilt of AHLers and rookies and journeymen to piece together an outfit that on most nights was doing a good deal more than merely bailing out water on a leaky vessel.

Referencing the team’s recent shutout of Montreal, and now a 1one-goal-against performance on the road in Mecca, I asked him, “How does the chemistry get established . . . what’s going on?”

“It’s pretty simple,” the coach told me. “It’s the organization. This is how we do it. They play the same basic way down in Hershey, so when a kid comes up he doesn’t have a huge adjustment.

“The adjustment is maybe getting used to the pace. You saw Sean Collins out there — he might have been nervous the first couple of shifts, but one of the great things about Bruce [Boudreau] is that he lets the kids play and have a chance, and it’s a great philosophy.

“This is the only way you can find out if a kid can play or not,” he added.

Leach also pointed out that the Caps’ minor league prospects, however wet behind the ears, have some serious bona fides to their games.

“They’re all pretty good players. You got Karl Alzner, who was defenseman of the year [last year]. Bryan’s [Helmer] been around, played a lot of hockey, was schooled under Larry Robinson.

“I’m sure they say, ‘Hey let’s prove [to our doubters] that we can play in this league, too. I’m sure Bryan Helmer for four-and-a-half years has been dying for a shot to play in the National Hockey League. And God love him, I’m so happy he’s here and doing what he’s doing.”