On Frozen Blog

Puckheads are hurtin’ in Hershey this morning. That community deserved a big party with its heroes last night, but the Manitoba Moose had other ideas. That’s hockey. Anyway, with the disappointment of Chocolatetown in mind this morning, I thought I’d pass along a collage of indelible impressions from my most recent visit, last weekend, which ranks as my favorite to date.

• A reporter covering game 3 made an error in a postgame press conference with the two coaches, and afterward, back upstairs in the press box, Tim Leone of the Patriot News immediately and discretely approached the reporter and offered clarification before the error could get in his file. Hockey people helping hockey people.

• I enjoy the honor of calling them friends, but I made a nonetheless extraordinary request of Tim and Bears’ radio voice John Walton over the weekend: I asked Tim to meet me in Hersheypark Arena early on Sunday afternoon so that I could shoot video of the great old barn and his reflections on his community’s hockey landmark, meaning his day at the rink would begin much earlier than usual. Which of course he obliged. And with Tim over at Giant Center afterward I asked Walton to join us for an on-camera chat on the Bears for a summer edition of OnFrozenPod. He, too, interrupted his pre-game preparations and walked us to the best possible vantage for the shoot. Both of course gave their customary erudite and insightful reflections on camera. Hockey people helping hockey people.

• My cameraman for the pod shoot took ill on Friday and couldn’t make the trip North, and late on Saturday night I wondered if I’d have to ditch my plans for Sunday’s video shoots. Then I found Brett Leonhardt of the Capitals roaming Giant Center early on Sunday, and I asked him if he could help me out and hold my camera while I chatted with Tim and John. Of course he obliged, but he didn’t merely hold the camera but rather treated the shoot as if it were a product for his employer’s web site, bringing varied shot angles and depth perspectives to the task, improving its overall quality. Hockey people helping out hockey people.     

• For game 4 I was treated to the company of Comcast’s Al Koken, seated immediately next to me in the Giant Center press box. Koken of course spends the vast majority of his coverage time down at ice level with the Caps, so it felt special to have his company upstairs. It also felt special because Koken, like me, goes back a ways with the Caps. I love watching hockey with a pro’s eyes beside me, and Koken couldn’t have been nicer. At one point I leaned over and asked him if, thinking back to his days covering the Caps on Home Team Sports, he ever imagined a day when all 41 Capitals’ home games would be sold out months in advance. He smiled and shook his head no. This great thing the Capitals have going is great in how it is luring legions of new and young fans to our game and in support of our town’s team, but I am also glad for its arrival for folks like Al Koken, who too often over the course of too many years had disappointing news to report from a market too long ridiculed for its reception for hockey.

• Bears’ General Manager Doug Yingst has a terrific wit. Down in the Bears’ locker room after Game 4’s heart-stopping finish, he walked past a pack of press who’d just finished chatting up the players and said, “Hey, I missed the third period, what happened?”

• Tipping back a few cold ones late night, well after files have been filed, at a shared pub table with Canadian and American print press, chatting up topics that can never be written about. Talking hockey in June like it’s January. How soon til the start of next season?

• On both Saturday and Sunday the Giant Center parking lot looked a lot like a state tournament for street hockey, albeit with miniature cages designed for the recreating tailgater as targets. Grown men took breaks from their grilling duties to play, as did very small children, barely able to hold small sticks, gallop in pursuit of plastic pucks and balls under idyllic summer sun. It was a pre-game, recreational reward for a fanbase whose team had played its way into June.  

• In his broadcast booth John Walton keeps a laptop opened to his Facebook page, and during game intermissions he reads on the air messages left there by Bears’ fans scattered across the continent. Tuesday night I was one of them, lodging about 2,000 miles west of where I wanted to be, in Giant Center. It is part of John Walton’s job to make the listener of his calls feel as if he were in the arena following the action with his own eyes. Walton does this as well as anybody in the business, as far as I’m concerned. We didn’t want him to have to work another night this season, but that he does is tonic for our summer-hockey-starved ears. A hockey person helping out displaced people.