On Frozen Blog

The NHL playoffs are here all right. Fifteen minutes after last night’s 4-3 loss to the Rangers, D.C. Metro police — conspicuously present on the Gallery Place Metro station platform — were via radios relaying to one another the formations of Ranger fans amid the station’s Sea of Red. No outbreaks of violence had occurred, mind you, the cops were just attentive to the presence of the enemy within. It was quite audible and visible.

Such is hockey’s postseason passion. During the regular season, when the Flyers visit and prevail and their partisans join us in public transportation commutes out of town, their presence is a profound annoyance. But no more than that. But get a game 1 to go awry, and the men in blue mobilize.

I consider anybody under 30 to be young (quite), and on my train last night two young red sweater wearers were dissecting defeat within earshot. One of them observed that he “didn’t hate the Rangers,” and my immediate reaction was, Give it a week. We needed but 10 days with Philadelphia last April to reignite a hatred that will last at least through the next decade. Maybe the remainder of the century. Such are the stakes and sensibilities of this season. 

Why do we hate as we do? Or perhaps more accurately put, why do we hockey veterans most particularly hate as we do? A minority of readers who left comments for my largely tongue-in-cheek diatribe against pro puck in Pennsylvania the other day expressed the view that I had taken a position of rhetorical extreme. A healthy majority countered that I had understated the matter. Of course the more delicate of mind are entitled to their view. But I couldn’t help but think that they are what I consider scar-tissue-free.

This is the byproduct, largely, of a now prolonged residence in the Southeast division.

For no small number of Caps’ fans in Verizon Center, Wednesday night’s outcome likely represented a new and unprecedented puck pain. We have these days many local newcomers to our great sport, and they are helping transform Chinatown. It is a wonderful thing. But back when Natural Order ruled the NHL, and our heroes lodged with the likes of the Rangers, Penguins, Flyers, and Devils, annually in spring the Caps had to navigate 10-25 days of red hot Cold War during the Cold War. Of springtime showdowns with the Rangers specifically, we’ve John Druce-d them (1990) while they’ve brutally blown up a Cup contender (’86′s 107-pt. Caps club). It’s been a while, but hatred broth is heating up again on the range with these guys. 

This is our fifth postseason series against the Blueshirts. We haven’t faced Carolina in even a single postseason game. Carolina is more on James Tayor’s mind than hockey fans’ in these parts.   

When it comes to playoff matchups with cities in the Midatlantic corridor, something truly transformative and terrorizing seizes us in our hockey hearts and brains. Last April and this, hockey has reunited the Hatfields and the McCoys. It is last century’s legacy of loathing, renewed. Dear God but it is good to hate like this again.

Should the Rangers go on to defeat the Caps in this series I will recall Nik Antropov’s flattening interference on Tomas Fleischmann, followed soon thereafter by Sean Avery’s slewfoot on Mike Green on the Caps’ blueline — both of which were determinative in the Ranger’s equalizing and momentum-altering goal — for decades. The NHL playoffs force upon us this brutality: injustice will visit you and your heroes, and you must take it. This is hockey.

And: it hurts worse when its agents wear orange and black, or black and intestinal yellow, or hail from Broadway. It just does. From elimination showdowns with them scars form. On Wednesday night, some old wounds re-opened. For some who are making their first or second wartime advances, last year’s bayonet stabbing by Philly was joined by a fresh stab and twisting of the knife from the Rags last night. Wear your scars proudly; the victory beer, should it arrive, tastes like nothing else.         

Those perennial losers in Tampa come at us with tears of regular season grievance for a goalie none of us can now name whom Ovi may have showed up with no. 50. Trust me, you’ll remember Sean Avery and his labor against Mike Green, Jose Theodore, and Alexander Semin this month years from now.

Scar tissue forms and it endures across all seasons and generations. If in October I call a buddy who’s a veteran of the Old Wars and I ask him who’s playing on Versus that night, and it just happens to be two old enemies, he’ll never refer to them by their geography. Why would he?

“Motherbleepers versus [really unprintable],” my buddy will inform. And I’ll know their identities just fine.