On Monday night in Verizon Center I received a most unexpected email solicitation from the Great White North — an invitation to blog for a Canadian sports site I’d never heard of, Fadoo.ca, part of the Canadian Prime Time Sports network. Fadoo was started earlier this year by Canadian television and radio sports personality Bob McCown, host of the FAN 590′s Prime Time Sports, Canada’s top-rated sports radio talk show. That program broadcasts nightly on the FAN 590 in Toronto and across Canada and is simulcast on Rogers Sportsnet.
Fadoo bloggers are comprised of musicians, CEOs, former GMs, broadcasters, and other notable voices. Which should lead us all to wonder: why want mine? Likely, it was a case of mistaken identity.
The Monday night invitation from Fadoo.ca wondered: could the site’s producer have some blog copy from me that night. There was some sort of imminent hockey blog launch or re-launch on the site, it seemed. This outreach arrived some time during the first period of Monday’s Caps-Devils game. While my first and foremost obligation is to cover hockey here in D.C., for OFB, I confess I get a special rush from writing something fresh for a fresh audience and on a special (i.e., hyper-aggressive) deadline. I just love that kind of challenge. And in this instance, the new blog audience struck me as truly novel: puckheads in the Home of Hockey, the Great White North! So I embraced the challenge.
I sent producer Ryan a quick, affirmative reply — how’s 800 words on Washington becoming a hockey town, by midnight, sound? He loved it, and fortunately I had intern Andrew alongside me to cover the Caps’ post-game locker room while I wrote.
Earlier today my file went up up North. I don’t presume that hockey-loving Canadians are following particularly closely Washington’s whirlwind love affair with pro hockey these days, so I wrote about it.
“It’s astounding for me to reflect on how much hockey has changed in my home town, the American capital, so recently and so passionately and so colorfully. A lot of it of course has to do with the Gr8 as we call him, Alexander Ovechkin.
“The hope of course is that Ovechkin leads the Capitals to their first-ever Stanley Cup, but no matter what happens in hockey’s postseason the next dozen years he’s under contract here, the city – our nation’s capital – is his. He drives a Mercedes about town, and flapping proudly in the breeze atop its windows are two red Capitals’ car flags. He’s our Ambassador of Hockey from Moscow. We’ve never had one before, and we’re lucky to have him.”
This new venture was fun for me, and at some yet undetermined intervals I’ll go back with more puck musings for my new Canadian friends. This morning I had this thought: now a published blogger in Canada, shouldn’t I be able to zip over to the Canadian Embassy here and stake a credible claim to some gratis Alexander Keith’s?
I hope you don’t think I’m a hoser for trying to have some fun with this.
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That was no goal, y’know! He was in the crease!
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