On Frozen Blog

It seems to me that people who attend a season’s very first home exhibition game, on a Monday night, necessarily rank among those who most missed hockey over the summer. I was struck not only by the overall volume attending Monday night’s 2-1 Caps’ loss to Buffalo — the crowd was demonstrably larger than those of a good many regular season games in 2005-06 — but how many on a warm muggy night wore their red sweaters. Yes the Caps are the hot sports ticket in town these days, but it seemed to me that last night there was a palpable urgency on the part of a hungry fan base to be seen on Metro and in Chinatown reaffirming, showcasing an allegiance of which they’re distinctly proud.

* * * * *

I’m not sure this should pass without comment: the Washington Times on Tuesday ran a front-page color photo of the Caps’-Sabres’ game in a box announcing the score . . . of an exhibition game . . .on the front page. I mean, that’s the stuff you’d expect of a print daily in Toronto or Montreal, no? (And maybe not even there.) Think coverage times have changed?

* * * * *

I made it my focus Monday night to follow every second of every John Carlson shift, virtually ignoring the performances of the forward lines he skated with. I did so for a couple of reasons. For one, I saw him play a decent bit up in Hershey in the 2009 playoffs, and I watched him closely then, looking to see how comfortable the 19-year-old rookie, straight out of Major Juniors, seemed on the blueline of a 100-point Bears club contending for a Calder Cup. But I also wanted our Hershey readers to gain a sense of what I saw from him against an impressive Buffalo lineup. I took notes on every one of his shifts except only a small handful that lasted less than 10 or 15 seconds due to situation substitutions Gabby made.    

• On his first two shifts Carlson skated I thought with conspicuous caution, lurking a fair bit removed from the action. I thought this was understandable — the highly touted rookie candidate not wanting to make a glaring mistake at the start of what to date looms as the most important week in his young hockey career.

• The longer the game went on the more comfortable and confident Carlson seemed to become. He was partnered with John Erskine. The Sabres understandably dumped the puck in deep behind Erskine, who’s not the swiftest skater in the league. It only took Carlson two such dump-ins to read the strategy and make an important adjustment: he galloped hard and fast over to his partner’s side of the ice just as the dump-ins began, and with this head start he was easily able to get to the puck first at the end boards and corners and make safe and effective clearing plays ahead of Buffalo checkers. I really thought this was heady execution by the kid.   

• If Carlson’s first period was inconspicuous and ultra cautionary, he seemed commendably assertive in the final two frames. He made a good many savvy reads and switched from the right to left side of the ice to cover for his partner as circumstances warranted. He consistently made hard and accurate passes, both to Erskine on the cross-ice point in the Sabres zone and on breakout passes to the likes of Nick Backstrom and Keith Aucoin in his own end. I especially liked how he smacked his stick on the ice in open space to alert his teammates to his being a weakside safety valve on the Sabres’ forecheck, or an open shooting lane option on the point. 

• No glass-shaking, bruising hits, but Sabres’ forwards certainly knew of Carlson’s presence down low.

• I confess I was looking for more of the physical from Carlson, as he is now in possession of an NHL frame, and he used it to great effect with the Bears last spring.

• I also expected to see greater separation speed from him with his skating. He often skated upright and with some seeming listlessness away from the play, I thought. 

• Midway through the second period Carlson took away the center of the defensive zone ice while Erskine took a Sabres’ winger into the boards, and when the puck went back to a trailing Buffalo forward for a quality scoring opportunity Carlson blocked two consecutive shots with his skates.

• He really seems to know how to use the boards as his ally under pressure, and not just to steer a puck away from a checker but to place it in a reasonably useful or transition position for a teammate.   

• It reads “Carlson” on the back of his red sweater, but it just as well could have read “Precocious Composure.” He’s a jewel alright, and for the foreseeable future, Bears’ fans are in for a treat.

* * * * *

This story in Monday’s Charlotte Observer really caught my attention. A bunch of college football teams are already being ravaged by flu, including no.1 Florida. But no sport suffers from influenza as much as hockey does, and for understandable reasons: the prevalence, despite strenuous drying efforts by all training staff, of wet gear; frequent airplane travel in the prime of flu season; and very odd labor and rest hours, among other reasons.

Every hockey season is a fresh worry about too many guys getting the flu at the same time, but we’ve learned early this autumn that there will be separate strains of flu impacting the entire continent, and vaccine for H1N1 won’t be available in wide distribution potentially before the Winter Olympics. H1N1, while its symptoms aren’t appreciably worse than common flu, carries a longer gestation and therefore could be sidelining a good many NHLers for a week or more.

I wondered therefore what if anything unique NHL clubs were doing to prepare for the two separate flu strains sure to lay siege on millions of Canadians and Americans throughout this fall and winter. The short answer, it seems, is that there isn’t much they can do. The Caps typically get flu shots after a game one night in the autumn, and they’ll do so again this fall. And they’ll have to wait like everybody else for H1N1 vaccine to arrive. But just as Urban Meyer and other football coaches have discovered this fall, NHL coaches could arrive at the rink and discover sizable contingents of their roster laid up in bed, and healthy help may not necessarily be available on the farm.