On Frozen Blog

For me, there is something hockey-soul-redemptive about visiting the American League on a winter weekend for a slate of games. It’s like going on a retreat for puck. Back a bit to the basics. A couple of years back I followed the Hershey Bears on a long weekend swing through New England, and while this weekend’s agenda is far more modest on the odometer, it holds a similar appeal.

Not that I’m complaining in the least about redded-out Chinatown these days; it’s just that in the communities that have hosted minor pro hockey for more than a decade there is no need to discuss the merits of hockey’s place there. Move about Hershey, Pa., on a February Saturday night and you will not see basketball jerseys on youths. Instead, plenty of hockey sweaters.

l am in Hershey this weekend for a pair of games at the Giant Center: Saturday night for the first-ever visit to Hershey by the San Antonio Rampage and Sunday for a 5:00 faceoff with the Portland Pirates (Dale Hunter’s son Dylan skates for the Pirates). I never tire nor take for granted the embrace that Hershey gives to hockey, and early into this weekend I am noticing that that embrace extends to the District’s team: a year or two ago the fashion in the stands and moving about the concourse was overwhelmingly maroon; Saturday night I saw a fair bit of red throughout the house.    

I get excited by visits here precisely because of the success the Caps and Bears have enjoyed since re-affiliating in 2005. And the success that’s obvious on the ice for both clubs these days is fairly matched off it: I look down in the Giant Center stands and I see hockey fans in Caps’ sweaters, and back home at Verizon Center, I see an increasing number of fans in Bears’ sweaters. Of the latter there appears to be a fun fad of wearing the gear of current Caps’ studs who apprenticed here, like Mike Green and Thomas Fleischmann. With just a cursory glance at two sections below me tonight I saw red Caps’ sweaters personalized for Ovechkin, Green, Steckel, Chris Bourque, Sami Lepsito, and even Mathieu Perreault. Soon I think we’ll see Bears’ sweaters in Chinatown bearing the nameplates of Alzner and Varlamov and Osala — and their Capitals’ editions up here. I really like that.      

I’ve good friends here, too. I get to blog just a few feet away from Tim Leone of the Patriot News, whom I regard merely as one of the best hockey writers in the business. Tim of course is publishing the first-ever biography of Bruce Boudreau this autumn. We’re gonna grab a beer after he files for tonight’s game, and I’m eager to learn from him what the advanced-by-a-year publication date of his book means in terms of incorporating the 2008-09 hockey season into it.

And from the very first bit of new media I initiated in this special hockey community Bears’ Communications guru John Walton has whole-heartedly embraced my message mission. He came up to me about 5 minutes after I plugged in my laptop tonight and asked if I’d appear on his radio broadcast during the first intermission. JW has a fantastic blog; he uses it to take readers on the very inside of minor pro hockey, as with his recent, vivid description of Hershey’s desperate, late-night Bear prowl for sustenance after a game in Norfolk.

I hadn’t visited Hershey since the Bears’ home opener. On the radio at intermission I told JW that I didn’t like such a separation, but this one afforded me an appreciation for how much progress the Bears’ all-rookie “4th” line had made since early fall. Against the Rampage Oskar Osala, Mathieu Perreault and Francois Bouchard were consistently the team’s best and most effective line. They were kept off the scoresheet in Hershey’s shootout victory, but in his post-game reflections Bears’ head coach Bob Woods said the unit easily could have scored two or three goals, “or more.”       

That line is young, hungry, driven and very much in synch. A joy to watch. I found myself thinking that the line in its entirety could be imported by the parent club, and kept intact, in about a year’s time — to terrific effect. They’ve endured some struggle of late; the coach pointed to the length of the AHL schedule and the rigors of competing against men instead of boys as explanation. So he sat them for a spell recently, giving them the larger perspective of the fast pro game from the stands. On Saturday night, their play suggested that they’d learned new lessons well. 

This past Thursday Walton made a visit to Verizon Center, and while he didn’t see the Caps’ best effort that night against Los Angeles he was awe-struck by the arena environment. During our on-air chat he alluded to Wes Johnson’s high-pitch banshee shriek that unleashed HockeyWashington’s red fury. Knowing me to be a native Washingtonian, he asked me if I’d seen anything like hockey’s new high-decibel level before in all my years following the Caps. I told him I hadn’t.   

I’m staying at the Hershey Lodge, where the visiting hockey teams put heads to pillows when they roll in, often in the middle of the night. Its distinctive entrance is spacious but warm and cozy, a tinge of rustic melded with modern, tasteful elegance, a most distinctive home away from home, with chocolate and Bears’ hockey prominently themed. Saturday morning I sipped a third cup of coffee in plush recline hard by a giant center-foyer fireplace. The environs made me think that most visiting hockey players had to think that their stop in Hershey was as special as I do.