On Frozen Blog

Yesterday I offered up five storylines for hockey in D.C. in 2008 that jumped up at me as particularly memorable. Today, my top 5:

(5) A local goalie may well be Miss America in a few weeks’ time. In a year of conspicuous concern over goaltending in Washington, one netminder in town gave us a story we could perpetually celebrate. Oh, and she’s rather easy on the eyes. Tara Wheeler shared her endearing story of falling in love with hockey and making it all the way to tryouts for the U.S. Women’s Olympic hockey team with me this fall. I greatly enjoyed the chat and writing up her story. I’ve enjoyed more following media new and old falling in love with her story (and receiving a Christmas card from her; a win at the Miss America pageant later this month and that baby’s going straight to eBay). Maybe I like this best about the story: Tara wore a red gown en route to her victory in the Miss Virginia pageant, and she’ll be rockin’ it again at Miss America on January 24.

(4) ‘Pond Hockey’ the documentary comes to Washington. Late in 2007  Minnesota documentarians Tommy Haines and Andrew Sherburne expressed interest in OFB. We’re a Caps’ blog but also one that celebrates the essential spirit of hockey, and that spirit emanates nowhere else quite like on frozen ponds, rivers, and lakes, with children and adults immersed in carefree play while warding off winter’s bite. Earlier this year, when the filmmakers let us know that they were bringing their award-winning documentary ‘Pond Hockey’ for a single-night screening in the nation’s capital, I thought HockeyWashington had hit the jackpot. Sure we could have purchased the DVD and enjoyed their work, but I wanted a party downtown in a terrific venue, and that’s precisely what we got. We had dozens of kids and their parents outfitted in touques for the screening, and afterward Andrew Sherburne generously fielded question after question from the audience, most of which came from the under-12 set, wondering where their pond hockey tournament was slated to take place.     

(3) Our Michael Jordan makes a career-long commitment to Washington. In the days leading up to January 13, 2008, about 10 people in D.C. — most of them Ovechkin family members — knew what Alexander Ovechkin and Ted Leonsis were up to. The owner put all his cards on the table — and a good deal of his personal fortune — in order to secure the services of the planet’s greatest hockey player pretty much for the duration of his NHL career: 13 years at more than $120 million, making Ovi the highest paid athlete in Washington sports history. In an instant the demeaning of Washington as a second-rate hockey outpost silenced.    

(2) Alexander Semin says of Sidney Crosby, in effect, come skate the Caps’ third line. The full bloom of Alexander Semin’s abundant offensive gifts were vividly on display this fall, as he rocketed to the very top of the NHL’s scoring leaders before being injured, but it was an October 31 published chat with bloggers Dmitry Chesnokov and Greg Wyshynski that made headlines around the world. Semin wasn’t asked to compare directly the merits of the respective games of Ovechkin or himself with Crosby; he volunteered this commendably frank assessment of the NHL’s marketing poster boy:

“What’s so special about [Crosby]? I don’t see anything special there. Yes, he does skate well, has a good head, good pass. But there’s nothing else. Even if you compare him to Patrick Kane from Chicago . . .  [Kane] is a much more interesting player. The way he moves, his deking abilities, his thinking on the ice and his anticipation of the play is so superb. 

“I think that if you take any player, even if he is “dead wood,” and start promoting him, you’ll get a star. Especially if he scores 100 points. No one is going to care about anyone else. No one is going to care whether he possesses great skill. Let’s say you put someone in front of the net and let him deflect pucks in, and he scored 50 goals; everyone will say “Wow!” and then hand him a $10 million per year contract. That’s what they like here. 

“And in Russia people like beautiful hockey, and not dump and chase. I just don’t get it, why when a player is skating up the ice and no one is attacking him, he dumps the puck into the offensive zone and then chases it? Why would you do this if there is no one forechecking you?  I understand that if there is someone coming at you and you don’t know whether you can get past that player, then you can dump the puck, pass it or shoot. But if not, then hold on to the puck, skate forward, create a chance.

“Why would you want to dump the puck and then chase after it and crash into the boards?  I don’t know. But that’s just my opinion.”

May there be many more such, Mr. Semin. It’s important to note that while Semin was denounced by the usual suspects, including executive members of his own organization, to date no one has had the courage to refute the substance of Semin’s view. For the NHL brass, Gary Bettman most particularly I’m sure, this was a Halloween massacre on the order of Michael Myers. For hockey fans — including no small number of Canadians who in great volume articulated support for Semin’s views on associated message boards  – it was refreshing straight talk, and it obliterated the old media perpetuated myth of Semin being an iconoclast of thoughtless isolation. Good on these bloggers for eviscerating a vicious misconception.

(1) Verizon Center, April 11, 2008 – A Sea of Red washes out all orange and black. By the time the playoffs arrived last spring, no one in Washington was surprised that for Game 1 against the Flyers, there was a sea of red enveloping Verizon Center. That 7th man sellout support in early spring had become a top story around the league. But still, this was a high-stakes game against long-time rival Philadelphia, a foe with a tortuously short commute to town, and for 20-plus years their supporters had descended upon Washington’s home rinks and larded them with their loutishness.

And with that as prelude, it was stunning and breathtaking to see approximately 98 percent of the Phone Booth in red and full-throated in their support of the surging Caps. When Alexander Ovechkin undressed a Flyers’ defender and beat Martin Biron for the game 1 game winner with just a couple of minutes to go, exhilarating-leaping once again into the red-against-the-Plexiglas, Verizon Center became an eruption of Red Lava Love.

Some still doubted Washington’s ability to become a hockey town. If you were inside Verizon Center that night, there’s no way any doubt could remain.