Has there ever been a week of hour-to-hour hyperventilating over the health status of a hockey player in D.C. the likes of which we’ve seen with Alexander Ovechkin here the past week? I think not.
This is unchartered territory for Washington’s hockey fans. The Russian Machine at long last has broken down. He seemed indestructable. Now we know he’s a physical mortal (somewhat), and deprived of his prowess we are not taking his absence well.
We are not getting any work done while worrying!
The updates (such as they are) arrive morning, noon, and night; at Capitals Insider; within all of the non-media hockey blogs (less so ours); on the sports television scroll; by the second seemingly on Twitter. It would be most interesting I think if somehow we could tally, in aggregated fashion, all of the refresh clicks on all of the outstanding online sources for Caps’ coverage in these parts the past seven days.
Most in these parts I believe understand the opague status in which our living legend resides these days. It’s a longstanding staple of hockey’s culture. In organized crime, it’s called the Code of Omerta — defeaning silence, and death to those who break it. (Slightly less literally in hockey.) Most get it, but not all. Like Tom Knott.
But it’s also true that the Capitals have acquired scores of new and novice fans the past couple of years, many of them because of Ovechkin’s brilliance. Many of them presumably have followed the injury reports associated with other sports, such as football, or baseball, and aren’t understanding of why hockey does what it does with injuries. The Capitals of course have acted with this injury as they have with all others over the years. But I wonder: should they perhaps have done something slightly different in this instance, because of the unprecedented novelty of who it is that is sidelined?
By virtue of treating this injury just like all the rest the Caps have been forced into awkward and reactive positions. And that’s perhaps fine with them. And perhaps it’s also true that none of us in D.C. could have predicted how Ovi’s ailment would have consumed us as it has — it’s not like injuries to Redskins players much matter at this point.
I’m at pains to identify a development in hockey here over the past 35 years that rivals the intensity of concern that’s surrounded Ovi’s injury the past week. (Here’s a thought: how fun would Twitter and hand-helds have been late in the spring of 1998, when Susan O’Malley Redded-out then MCI Center with Red Wings’ fans for the Stanley Cup finals?)
On the one hand, I’m frustrated with the myopic attention this injury has commanded; I’d like to see Washington’s much-lauded and newly arrived puck-savviness directed more at the heroics of the upstarts in the Caps’ lineup now picking up the offensive slack. Just to streamline local sports anchors’ interviews with surviving Caps a bit: yes, the players do recognize that having Ovi out of the lineup is a big deal, and that they have added offensive responsibilities because of it. But it’s not a death; he will return. And inside Kettler Capitals, no one is dressed in black.
Am I a bad blogger for sleeping through the night relatively peacefully in this time, and not assigning my intern duty to refresh four or five open screens with all of the non-updates?
Partly because it’s early autumn hockey Ovi will be returned to the Caps’ lineup when he should be — when he’s healed, and no sooner. And not so incidentally, it’s not a bad thing in this Olympics-compressed season for Ovi to get a break from a brutal schedule; which in Ovi’s case, when the Olympics are joined by a potentially long postseason run with the Caps, could entail his having to play more than 100 high-intensity hockey games this season. See, I see a silver lining to this non-serious injury.
With the consuming coverage of the past week I’m beginning to believe that Ovi has indeed arrived at that status I suggested was possible a year or so ago: that of the region’s standard-bearer for athletic excellence and charisma, our sports cult hero. If this is so, it makes the passion-fret of the past week more understandable. We have been accorded extraordinary access to Ovechkin the dynamo on and off the ice, and suddenly we’re walled off from him. It’s jarring, unnatural, and most unwelcomed.
I remember when Riggo (and isn’t he having an interesting autumn!) was a quasi-king of sport here, and the feverish attention his back spasms (which occasioned treatment in traction at Sibley) earned. But that occurred in old media days. Hockey fans here in November 2009 are hourly refreshing and Tweeting in angst and wondering: will Russian hockey media be first with a genuine progress report? And: we just know the news is gonna be worse than we’ve been led to believe.
This lone, relatively non-serious injury may be crystalizing Ovi’s standing as an authentically historical sports figure in our region, one whose welfare, rather than be allowed to simmer in mystifying silence, requires special — individualized– communications treatment going forward. Mind you, hockey’s code of protection won’t be brushed aside any time soon. But Caps’ management may have to acknowledge Ovechkin’s rarefied realm in the region, and give some salve to a fanbase teeming with inexperience in such matters and more importantly outlandishly in love with their dynamic hero.
3 Comments
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
I blame Dave Feldman.
What fun would it be if we didn’t have to play the Caps guessing game of what does the term “upper body injury” mean now or to not have to keep reading reports from practice to try to guess the injury? The Caps have played without Alex before and survived. I think the team should treat him the same as the rest of the team in terms of injury reports. These games will allow folks to focus on the rest of the team as it really is the Washington Capitals and not Alex and the Ovechkinetts.
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