On Frozen Blog

As we near the arrival next week of Washington Capitals’ Development Camp and the return of live hockey to follow, I figured I’d wind down this week with a final bit of reflection on the 2008-09 hockey season in D.C. This is a reminiscence encapsulating not just the Washington Capitals’ season but a macro view of how I experienced hockey generally in my home town throughout fall, winter, and spring. It’s a vantage that allows me to narrate a more personal perspective. I’ll offer a ranking of moments and events in ascending order, bringing forward five today and a top five tomorrow.

I really enjoy reflecting in deliberate fashion about each and every hockey season we’re fortunate enough to experience in our community. On a most top-level summary, I’d suggest that this past season was one where there was a consensus designation for Alexander Ovechkin being (1) the best hockey player on the planet; and (2) an athlete of historic significance in Washington — and covered by local media at long last as such. And I would also suggest that across the North American hockey world there was this past season a striking acknowledgment that Washington was fast metamorphosing into a full-fledged hockey town. Not a bad set of dominant themes, eh?

Anyway, let me begin honing in on the moments that were most significant for me. And of course I’d welcome your sharing your own top moments from the season with us and our readers.

(10) A Very Bad Beginning Foreshadows a Very Bad Ending. The Capitals opened the 2008-09 season on the road in Atlanta, against a Thrashers’ team not forecast to do much under rookie coach John Anderson. The game took place on a Friday night, and it marked the Capitals’ debut by netminder Jose Theodore, acquired via free agency after Cristobal Huet jilted the Caps at the free agent altar, signing with Chicago. The Theodore signing was controversial — particularly if you read this blog around the time of its announcement.

Opening Night anticipation was heightened more than usual this October 10 by the curiosity of the Caps embarking in full fashion on a post-Olie Kolzig era. But by the midway point of game 1’s period 2 a heck of a lot of Caps’ fans tuning in likely were wishing for Kolzig’s return. The Thrash scored early and often on Theodore, chasing him from the net in his Capitals’ debut before he could finish the second period. The Capitals lost 7-4, and faster than anyone in the Capitals’ organization could have imagined, a pall was cast on the most important position in hockey before the season was 60 minutes old. It didn’t help matters that the very next night, in the team’s home opener against Chicago, Theodore whiffed on the first shot he faced 26 seconds in. The Caps went on to win their home opener, and Theodore steadied himself appreciably during the regular season. But then game 1 of the postseason arrived . . . 

(9) Merry Christmas, Caps’ fans. On December 23, in their final game before the Christmas break, the Capitals faced the Rangers in Madison Square Garden and early on seemed intent on delivering coal and switches in red stockings hanging upon Washington chimneys. Listless and lifeless, they fell behind 4-0. It was Blowout City. Theodore got pulled, BJ replaced, but Theodore returned for the start of period three. It was a most peculiar night of puck. Ovi got the Caps on the board, but still they trailed 4-1 entering the final frame.

What a final frame it was! The Caps made a game of it with a pair of power play tallies, and then Ovi struck again in dramatic fashion, snaring a Rags’ clearing pass out of mid-air, corralling it in right at the New York blueline, and racing in and putting a deft deke on Henrik Lundqvist to knot the game at 4 with under 8 minutes to play. The holiday merriment of Madison Square Garden was gone. Shaone Morrisonn capped the astounding comeback by blistering a slapshot past Lundqvist 59 seconds into OT, unleashing red-mob jubilation in the Rangers’ zone and an extra strong dose of celebratory eggnog before the television sets in D.C.    

(8) A Captivating Cover Story. Thanks to a saint of a grandmother, I had Sports Illustrated delivered to my home every week of my youth beginning with my seventh birthday. Still I remember how special it felt to see a Washington athlete featured on the cover of SI. When it comes to the Hockey News, appearances on that cover by Washington Capitals’ players are especially rare. Which made the October 21 issue a real eye-opener: it’s one thing to have your team praised for its play there, it’s quite another to be labeled ‘The Most Exciting Team in the NHL.’ (Take that, mullets!) It’s easily the most memorable and cherished THN cover I’ve encountered in more than a quarter century of reading it.

(7) College Hockey’s Annual Party Comes to D.C. Quite wrongly, I assumed that the NCAA Frozen Four would be a lot like the NCAA Final Four in basketball: a real big party principally for the supporters of the four participating schools. Boy was I wrong. Over three days beginning April 9 I saw college hockey fans wearing team sweaters from literally every division I program in the nation. Folks flew in from Alaska to attend the Frozen Four’s three championship games. Then I learned why: patronage has its privileges with this event. There’s a fiercely competitive lottery each year for Frozen Four tickets, and the lucky winners get first crack at securing ducats for the following year’s Frozen Four. As you keep re-upping each year you draw better seats.

But there’s a purer reason, too, for the fan loyalty this event has cultivated: it’s just an amazingly special product. College hockey has an aura and heritage all its own, and those who make the pilgrimage from afar for its concluding party each April are there to toast to it. In their team’s sweater.

In the leadup to this special puck party I remember being gravely concerned for weeks about the quality of ice at Verizon Center, for in the first half of the NHL season ice quality here was again an issue for many Caps’ players. But Verizon Center did its part — our home rink was wonderfully cold for the Frozen Four, and ice quality wasn’t an issue. And the players sure did their part — BU staged one of the great comebacks in all of NCAA championship history with its stirring last-minute heroics against Miami in the title game. This was a party attendees didn’t want to end.       

(6) Led by a Legend Out of Game 7. Fairly inexplicably, the second-seeded Capitals fell behind the seventh-seeded Rangers three games to one in round one of the Stanley Cup playoffs in April. Then they staged a terrific rally, winning decisively at home in game 5 and playing just as well in Madison Square Garden in game 6. That set the stage for game 7 back at Verizon Center.

The game wasn’t a classic, but it sure offered something close to a classic ending. Both teams played fantastically disciplined — a grand total of three penalties were whistled during 60 minutes of play, a most refreshing reversal of zebra labor relative to the preceding game 7 at Verizon Center against the Flyers in 2008. And when it was 1-1 with just 5 minutes remaining and all clad in red were burdened with anxious woe, Sergei Fedorov played the role of season savior, missile-launching a sick half-slapper into the smallest of corner openings past Henrik Lundqvist. Bedlam.

I was seated next to my friend Dmitry Chesnokov in that glorious m
oment, and this is what I wrote later that night:

“My favorite friend in hockey, SovetskySport’s Dmitry
Chesnokov, sat down next to me for Tuesday night’s third period. We
analyzed the action just as we have the past three hockey seasons from
up high. At 15:01 of the period, two-plus hours of tormenting tension
were punctured in a flash, high on Henrik Lundqvist’s glove side again.
It was a 4:59 read on the scoreboard few Caps fans will ever forget.
The arena erupted in an eardrum-piercing frenzy.

“It took me a
full two seconds to digest the drama of the moment as delirium
obliterated shouted conversation with the writer next to you, and then
I turned and punched my good friend from Moscow in the right arm. This
was a moment for him, uniquely, to savor. But my friend didn’t flinch.
He didn’t look at me. He just stared down at that sheet of ice with its
fast accumulating glee of sweatered red, surrounded by two bowls of
18,000 new best friends.

“It occurred to me: Sergei Fedorov, much
more so even today than Alexander Ovechkin, is a national treasure of a
hero all across Russia. He is an enduring legend. A good many who
follow hockey I suppose believed him this April to be past his
series-winning heroics of his legendary past. My good friend Dmitry in
this moment I think was hero-worshipping. Rightly so.”  

 Coming tomorrow: My Top 5 storylines from the 2008-09 hockey season.