On Frozen Blog

The concluding half of my two-part look back at my top moments from the 2008-09 season. Part I is here.

(5) The Young Guns Add Another Gunslinger. It was with little fanfare that the Capitals selected John Carlson 27th overall in the 2008 NHL Entry Draft: he was a USHLer . . . he hailed from New Jersey. But three months after his selection he arrived at fall training camp and performed spectacularly. Among media who covered camp there was something close to unanimity of opinion that Carlson was one of camp’s seven best defenders, and some members of the Capitals’ organization felt he should have stuck with the club to start the season. But the grand plan for Carlson was to have him spend the 2008-09 season under Dale Hunter in London of the OHL.

It turned out to be a supremely wise development decision.

Carlson skated in 59 games during the Knights’ regular season; he finished with 76 points (16 and 60) and skated a +23. He was 19th among all OHL skaters in scoring as a rookie, and only Windsor’s Ryan Ellis ranked ahead of him in scoring by defensemen. More importantly, Coach Hunter was utilizing Carlson in every game situation as his go-to defender, and it wasn’t uncommon to read hockeysfuture.com reports of Carlson testifying to his skating 30 or more minutes a night for Hunter. During London’s postseason Carlson continued to rack up the points (7 goals, 15 assists in 14 games), and when the Knights were vanquished Carlson was immediately sent to Hershey.

OHLers typically do little more than skate with AHL practice squads in the spring. Not Carlson. He quickly found himself in Hershey’s top defensive pair, and he played a steady game throughout the postseason as the Bears captured their 10th Calder Cup. Carlson plays both ends of the ice exceptionally well, possesses elite hockey sense, and uses his ample frame in impact fashion. Once again it appears that Caps’ scouts have secured an impact defenseman very late in round one of an entry draft.             

(4) The Greatness of Hockey Played on Ponds is Made into a Movie, and Screened in D.C. One of the most flattering and rewarding relationships we’ve developed at OFB is with filmmakers Tommy Haines and Andrew Sherburne, documentarians who directed their cameras at the frozen ponds, creeks and lakes of Minnesota in ‘Pond Hockey.’ ESPN’s John Buccigross called it “The best and purest hockey movie.” The filmmakers took their documentary on a tour of select artistic movie houses across the country, and Washington’s Avalon Theater was one of 15 chosen. Some pretty prominent hockey towns weren’t.

I remember our screening taking place on a frigid November Monday night, and after encouraging moviegoers to wear touques, we had dozens of them donned for the screening. We’d interviewed Jose Theodore about his playing in the Heritage Classic in Edmonton in November 2003 when Alberta temps that night plummeted to -20. He signed a Capitals’ touque that we awarded during a drawing after the screening.

I remember a Bethesda schoolteacher approaching us about obtaining film materials for instructional use in his classroom. I remember a fair number of transplanted Minnesotans in attendance. I remember a wonderful number of kids attending, and during a nearly 30-minute Q&A with Sherburne afterward, the very first question came from a seven-year-old, who wondered when and where his pond hockey tournament was going to take place. I remember arriving home with a copy of the DVD Sherburne offered me, opening a beer deep in the night, and being transfixed by the movie’s menu screen, which offers a mesmerizing montage of Minnesota winter — a snow bath of our sport’s essence. But I remember most driving home from the theater and thinking, indeed Washington was becoming a hockey town.      

(3) Old Hatred Renewed: Caps vs. Pens in the Postseason. It became official on April 28 — the Caps and Penguins would meet in the postseason for the first time since 2001. Between 1991 and 2001 Pittsburgh and Washington met seven times in the postseason, with the Pens prevailing in six of the encounters. But the series were far from lopsided.

“The history between the franchises remains an open wound for a fan base desperate to move past years of misery,” the Washington Times’ Corey Masisak wrote in his series preview. The previous April, when the Caps met another old foe, Philadelphia, in the postseason, some segment of Flyers’ fans arrived in OFB comment space and suggested that the ‘rivalry’ Washington had perceived with Philly wasn’t matched in intensity of interest up North. No such hate-check takes place when the Caps and Pens square off, regular or postseason: we hate them, and they hate us.

The rivalry actually renewed with vigor right around the time that Gary Bettman and his crack staff completed a perverse ‘snake draft’ for the August 2005 Entry Draft, which concluded the league’s year-long labor impasse, and one that landed the Penguins the most coveted prospect: Sidney Crosby. Ever since, he’s arrived in D.C. to sections full of raspberry greetings. And Pittsburgh fans for their part don’t much care for Alexander Ovechkin.   

Capitals’ players professed being unaware of any organizational baggage associated with the failures against Pittsburgh of the past, but those words sounded hollow given the magnitude of the moment: truly this was one of the most significant rivalries involving a Washington sports team, the Pens had Washington’s number, and now both franchises had been impressively rebuilt and featured the two most compelling superstar players meeting in the postseason for the first time against one another. Amazingly enough, the series lived up to every bit of its billing.       

(2) He Plays Fast Forward Just as Long as He Can. Mike Green may well be redefining the positon he plays. Already some are calling him a “rover” — a hybrid between rearguard and sniping forward. Or maybe he’s just reminding us a little bit about #4. Whatever your thoughts about this young dynamo, his efforts beginning in late January and culminating on Saturday night, February 14, were ones for the record book. In Tampa on February 14, Green scored a goal in his eighth consecutive game, besting Mike O’Connell’s record of seven by a defenseman set all the way back in the 1983-84 season. Green would go on to score 31 goals on the season and earn a Norris nomination – with many more to follow, no doubt.

Especially cool about Green’s record-setting Saturday night: his father was a witness to it, part of the Caps’ annual father-son weekend roadtrip. In the days following the feat there’d emerge an interesting back and forth between Green and the Hockey Hall of Fame: the Hall understandably wanted his stick, Green and his family understandably wanted it in their home. Green ultimately relented.   

(1) Hat Trick x 2: Ovi and Sid Put on a Postseason Show for the Ages. It was Ali-Frazier. Duke-Carolina. The Hatfields and the McCoys, but perhaps with heightened hatred. A stud-on-stud rivalry, one forecasted and marketed for years ad nauseum, at last delievred all the goods. And more! Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals was simply one of the greatest — and perhaps the greatest – hockey games ever contested in the nation’s capital. The Caps got the better of the Penguins for a second consecutive game, but the story of the night was twin hat tricks by the league’s best players.

I was seated next to Tim Leone of the Patriot News, beat reporter for the Hershey Bears and Bruce Boudreau’s biographer, near 11:00 in the Verizon Center press box, wondering how he was going to chroncile for the morning paper what left everyone who saw it slack-jawed in awe. In my lead I decided to write straight from my gut: 

“To state the obvious, keep your ticket stub. Get the footage burned onto a disc and permanently stored. If Versus offers a replay, record that too, just as a backup. And clip the Tuesday newspapers of all their morning glory. Then, henceforth, set aside each May 4 for a replay of the game in your home, with a few cold ones.”