On Frozen Blog

From my vantage there were two lead storylines from Sunday’s 5-4 defeat by Columbus. Storyline 1A trumps storyline 1B by a wide margin: How badly is he hurt? “Day to day” is the official company line, as is the proverbial “upper body injury”; no update on his health will be offered before Tuesday morning’s skate. The all-world left wing may well have suffered his injury in a scrum in front of the Blue Jacket bench in the second period, one precipitated by Jason Chimera as retribution for his being (cleanly, very) planted in about the third row of the seats by freight train Ovi.

Storyline 1B: the Caps demonstrated commendable and conspicuous perserverance and nettle battling back from a 2-1, third-period deficit, with their best player – their diesel engine — shelved, while facing a talented Columbus team and a netminder who through eight periods had surrendered a grand total of one goal to them. It was a statement third-period performance . . . until the bitter end.

• You know how they say that a single shift can totally alter a hockey game’s momentum? Sunday night’s game turned toward the hosts from a single penalty killing shift led by Mike Knuble and Quintin laing. It was heroic, and it rightly occasioned a standing ovation from the Red Army. For upwards of 50 seconds, with the Caps trailing 2-1 and holding on for dear life without Ovi, Knuble and Laing wrought forechecking havoc on the man-up Jackets, seeing to it that the puck pretty much never advanced beyond the end line of Steve Mason. In that moment many in the press box I wager believed that Mike Knuble was seizing the reins of leadership with his fallen All Star teammate out, demonstrating what veterans often do in tough times . . .  which makes what he did in the game’s final few minutes all the more perplexing.

• It was as stupid and senseless and needless a penalty — and as intolerable — as you’ll ever see. Bruce Boudreau called is “stupid” and “selfish,” distinguishing it from a “team penalty” taken for the betterment of the team and which often a team unites around to kill off. That’s hardly what Mike Knuble did late in period three. There seemed to be steam coming from the coach’s ears in the post-game presser. He fielded one question from the press and instantly asked if that was all they had for him. He wanted to be in that room like most folks want to be in a dentist’s chair.

• What does it say of a long-time vet like Jose Theodore that he refused to meet with media after a game like last night’s? No Capitals player wanted to meet with the media afterward, which by and large is understandable, but there were three Capitals’ players who by virtue of their impact in the result needed to be accountable to the media last night: Brooks Laich, Mike Knuble, and Theodore. Laich and Knuble met with the press, doing tough but stand-up duty.

• With Ovi out of the lineup, the Caps needed to become lunchpailers in the final 20 minutes — authors of ugly (but nonetheless beautiful) hockey, and they did. Recall where on the ice their three third-period scores struck: Laich in tight; Laich again, in the slot, with Knuble doing the dirty work in front; and Laing also in tight. Gloriously ugly, and the 18,000 in the Red army, so accustomed to celebrating brilliant puck movement and world-class playmaking, adopted a unity roar for working-class hockey. It was gloriously ugly.

• On Raffi Torres’ first goal, which evened the contest at 3, Jose Theodore either tossed his goal stick aside as he moved laterally in his cage or had it slip out of his hand. I couldn’t fathom any reason he’d toss it aside — it wasn’t broken, as he didn’t replace it after Torres tallied — but he was left without his most important defensive tool while kneeling on the ice. Torres subsequently scored on a soft backhander throught JT’s five-hole. I couldn’t ask the netminder about the play afterward because he was nowhere to be found.

• Rick Nash reminds me of Eric Lindros when Lindros was dominant, but Nash has appreciably better hands, and he’s a smarter hockey player than Lindros ever was. Moreover, he listens to his coach and heeds his dictates, which is why he’s used to great effect on the Blue Jacket penalty kill.

• A Charles McGrath of the New York Times attended last night’s game. I recognized his name when I saw it, and seated just a few feet away from him, I vaguely recognized him from something reasonably hockey important, but at first I couldn’t put it all together. Then I realized: McGrath played a small but poignant and eloquent role in the documentary ‘Pond Hockey.’ I asked him about his role in the film, and he smiled all the while recounting it for me. The Minnesotans who made the film, Andrew Sherburne and Tommy Haines, contacted McGrath wondering if they could could talk to him on camera. As it turned out, they arrived during a cold front that had settled in on the New Jersey community in which McGrath resides. “We take our pond hockey seriously there,” he told me with a chuckle.

• McGrath is in Washington to write about Alexander Ovechkin. In the postgame last night he engaged three bloggers for a robust discussion of the Capitals’ system and style of play, Ovi’s transformative effect on this town, and the importance of the Caps’ Young Guns core. He filled page after page of his reporter’s notepad with blogger reflections. It was about 10 years ago, wasn’t it, that media consumers were told their marching orders and how to interpret the complex affairs of the world by the likes of the New York Times. Last night a sampling of Washington hockey bloggers helped a cheerful and engaging New York Times reporter interpret Washington’s hockey world. Welcome to a very changed world.