Ghosts? How else would you explain consecutive playoff games against a weary foe in which pucks deflect off of Capitals’ rearguards and behind their netminder and into the cage, playing pivotal roles in consecutive upsets? And as our friend JP notes, those are only the two most recent such self-inflicted wounds this postseason. That sh*t just doesn’t seem to happen to the Wings, does it?

We love our hockey players, they are wonderful talents, they are to man exemplary civic figures in our community, and in just about every respect they make us proud to be fans. But they’ve an ultimate obligation in their profession — to get it done when it counts. To date, they’ve failed in that obligation. Given their accumulated postseason experience wearing our sweater, it is fair, beginning this spring, to hold them to a heightened accountability.

Ted Leonsis is right in suggesting that postseason prosperity involves, to a degree, having Lady Luck smiling on your side. And the Tampa Bay Lightning are a worthy adversary. But in year six of the Era of Ovechkin, with so many key roster ingredients in place, and with the sting of last spring still fresh, with Sidney and Geno and the Pens already golfing, this hockey club simply can’t author again yet another underwhelming showing in the NHL postseason.

The ramifications are enormous. Washington aches for a sports winner, yes, but Washington hockey specifically has a competitive mandate. Alexander Ovechkin was a lottery winning, and he knows what his role here is: to change our hockey culture. He’s done that just fine October through March. He’s had help along the way the last six years, and the reddening-out of our town — the conspicuous affection thousands of Washingtonians shower upon Ovi and his sport today is extraordinary — but it’s not enough. Nowhere near enough.

The durability of Mr. Leonsis’ business model requires a postseason breakthrough as well. Just take a look at all the upper deck empties at FedEx Field the past couple of seasons. There’s a social contract between a sports organization and its fans. Great dates ultimately have to lead to a kiss. Or we go find another girl.

This hockey club has the requisite skill and experience to rise to the challenge. What we don’t yet know is if it has adequate leadership. It’s a point that’s been debated with some robustness for more than a year now: Did the Caps get it right in stitching the ‘C’ to Ovi’s sweater? Failure this week in Tampa will bring fresh and heated scrutiny to that question. 2010-11 has not been a year to remember for our captain; its premature conclusion would intensify the evidence against his leadership. And the late-season arrival of Jason Arnott only adds fuel to that fire.

This is a postseason tailor-made for Ovi to ascend, but to date, we don’t have that breakthrough performance suggestive that he’s ready to seize that moment and lead his club. Tonight is one such opportunity.

Behind the bench, there is the obvious subplot related to Bruce Boudreau. All seemed reasonably well for Gabby a week ago, but when his club was gifted a lengthy break with which to rest and repair, they came out of it unable to meet the underdog’s challenge. That story is growing old here. Boudreau’s beaten an under-manned John Tortorella set of Ranger clubs twice in the postseason over the course of four springs . . . and no one else. Losing to the rookie, Guy Boucher? At some point (potentially soon) Capitals’ fans are going to ask: where is our Bylsma, our Tortorella, our Babcock, our . . . Boucher?

The team’s power play futility is a flashpoint in this discussion of tactical leadership. Its cumulative results last postseason and this are beyond nightmarish and nauseating: four for sixty. That’s four goals . . . in 60 opportunities. Tampa would bank in 9 or 10 off our dmen with 60 extra man opportunities. The power play personnel is a mish-mash of a mess, their attack ethos uncertain. Confusion and hesitancy reign supreme. The team had all of last week to work on it and get it fixed. Instead, it’s regressed. The head coach has to get it fixed, pronto. The Capitals will either achieve a competent power play this series or they will lose it. Tampa took out the Pens by achieving a glaring special teams discrepancy.

We also don’t know if in Nicklas Backstrom the Capitals have an elite talent centering the no. 1 line who can get it done when it counts. Great in games one through four versus Montreal last April then AWOL thereafter. Through seven games this postseason Backstrom has tallied merely two assists and is skating a -1. He looks anything but elite and dynamic. His scoring drought adversely impacts the team in both 5-on-5 play and power play production. His linemate Ovechkin seemingly senses the slump his center is experiencing, because he’s carrying the puck an awful lot in transition and attempting to make plays by himself. The result is a highly individualized attack by the first unit, which plays perfectly into Tampa’s trap. It’s gotten so bad with Nick that Boudreau bumped up the rookie Johansson to no.1 pivot duties. That’s no recipe for durable contention this spring. No contending team can have its no. 1 pivot merely along for the ride.

Along with my blogger buddies Ed Frankovic and Ted Starkey I was seated in Giant Center late last spring when the Hershey Bears dropped the first two games of the Calder Cup finals to the Texas Stars. The next three games were in Austin, and all looked bleak for the Bears against the Texas trap. Even in game 3 the Bears fell behind 3-1 after 20 minutes. But that Bears team had a warrior leader in Bryan Helmer, among others, and they banded together behind their coach who preached patience with the puck. Michal Neuvirth was in net for the entirety of that series, incidentally, and a fair number of those Calder winning Bears of course are wearing red this spring.

Late Sunday night, addressing the media, Alexander Ovechkin said that his team was traveling to Florida on Monday on a mission to win two hockey games. They really need to. The Capitals this spring need to find their Bryan Helmer. Here’s hoping he’s Russian.

There was a palpable buzz at the power plant early yesterday afternoon, for the Hershey Bears were making their first-ever visit to the historic site, and bringing along a special piece of hardware: the 2010 Calder Cup trophy. TMI has no small number of Bears’ fans (especially season ticket holders), and so this visit by this championship organization created a most special break from turbine room duty and reactor operator training in the middle of a mid-summer weekday.

The Bears do something special with this special trophy, the second-most famous in all of hockey. A team staffer maintains a full and strict travel schedule for it, and the team wants it moved all about Pennsylvania during the summer, where Bears’ fans are widely dispersed. And they want fans to get up close and personal with it. The Calder is heavy — more than 30 pounds it seems — and so the Bears’ John Walton stands ready to assist smaller members of the community with a photo-worthy lifting of the American League’s grand prize. This he did a few times Tuesday in the TMI cafeteria.

Calder also travels well beyond Pennsylvania. It gets Fed-Ex-ed at times. Since the Bears began winning it in bunches as affiliate of the Washington Capitals it has traveled, Walton estimates, to every Canadian province in summer time. It’s already visited Mathieu Perreault in Quebec this summer.

My most recent view of the Calder Cup came out on Giant Center ice after finals game 6 nearly six weeks ago, where it moved from Bear to Bear amid a victor’s shouts and hugs, an overflow Giant Center crowd remaining crammed in jubilation at the rare sight of a Calder celebration at home. I was reminded about how special that moment was to the central Pa. community yesterday as I saw the plant workers pass digital cameras back and forth among one another and reminisce about a 76-win hockey season.

Tuesday’s encounter with Calder seemed much different from last month’s but every bit as special to me: this was the Bears’ organization vividly reminding its community that it shared a stake in the triumph, that their emotional investment as fans merited a special, tangible reward. Hockey’s championship connections with its fans are more impressive, more personal than those of any other sport. This I freshly observed on Tuesday.

I met John Walton in the TMI parking lot near 2:00 Tuesday, and just returned from summer vacation, he welcomed Calder’s weight in his arms relative to that of his family’s travel luggage. We didn’t make it more than 20 paces from his car before the first plant worker stopped us with surprised admiration and the usual request. The Calder Cup stops for all photo requests, I learned on Tuesday.

We were ready to resume our arrival in the plant cafeteria, and somewhat reflexively I just lifted the trophy and marched it into the dining hall. For some years now the Hershey Bears have afforded me all manner of access and perks and support, and I guess I just felt like I was back among family, and presumptuously able to so participate. It was hot out, too, and I wanted to give JW a bit of a hauling breather.

Hockey’s hardcore fans come from all walks of life, and among those at a big power plant, all job descriptions. Many of the employees on Tuesday still wanted to talk about that sudden reversal of fortune Hershey enjoyed in the middle of Calder Finals game 3, when it sure looked like a 3-0 series hole was soon to seize the Bears. I thought it appropriate that the analogy of a light switch getting turned on in Hershey’s favor was articulated at a power plant yesterday.

There’s a great success story, too, about TMI, for those interested in the backfile on America’s most recognizable nuclear plant. After the accident in 1979, it took fully six and half years to get approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart the other reactor on site. That reactor recently set a world record in the nuclear industry for operating continuously for 705 days, and today it reliably provides electricity for more than 800,000 homes and businesses. On Tuesday excellence met excellence for the first time, and it was love at first sight. Also on Tuesday, TMI employees asked me what I could do to get that other hockey trophy up to the site for a visit.

photo by Ralph DeSantis, Exelon Corp.

I’d like to see the Capitals annually look a heck of a lot more like the Hershey Bears: quality goaltending, two parts skill, one part snarl, a formidible blueline, an overdose of chemistry in the room. And inspiring, adaptable coaching.

Maybe, just maybe, in year six of Ovechkin, we’ll at last see that in D.C. I say Alex has been made to wait long enough for the support parts he needs. (There’s something less than a frenzy to get Jose Theodore signed this July, I notice.)

Yahoo’s Ryan Lambert this weekend authored a highly thoughtful overview on this week’s free agency feast. His thesis is one I wholeheartedly agree with: in general, most often, teams grossly overpay for unrestricted free agents each July. But there are exceptions — astute signings that make a significant impact, and those are fantastically important because signing UFAs, unlike trades, come at no cost to an organization’s prospect or roster assets. I took particular note of Lambert’s observations on Anton Volchenkov’s contract:

“The market for a guy like Anton Volchenkov, as it turned out, was just about what it should have been: a far cry from the astronomical figures that were being thrown around before the summer began.”

A good signing, I say. Time will tell indeed.

But with the owner’s blog file I have before me an interesting conflict of philosophies. The owner has asked for the benefit of the doubt, for even more patience. Fine. But let’s have some sport with our differing views.

If Mr. Leonsis is right, and his team needs merely another season’s experience to break through to elite status in the league (as judged by getting in done in the glory season), if his Charmin-soft team advances to the 2011 Eastern Conference finals, I’ll write a check for $500 to his charity of choice. Heck, I’ll make good on that irrespective of any roster tinkerings between now and next February. I’m a good-natured sort in such matters. All his team has to do next season is what was expected of them this past, and I’ll pony up some serious dough.

And I’ll add to the fun. If his blueline next spring looks as it does right now, with these seven guys and with Jeff Schultz partnered with Mike Green up top, and they merely get to the conference finals, I’ll make that check out for even grand.

However — however! — if any of the Devils, Flyers, or Penguins, this past week’s big spenders in free agency, take out the Caps next postseason, and thereby make this summer’s agony for me look like hot tubbing with hot twins, Ted, you put me and a blogger of my choice on a plane and lodge us in Hawaii for a week, to recover. That expense will be the least of your worries.

You in?

I think I ought to tell these friends about the latest contest being sponsored by the Hershey Bears: a quick trip to the team’s web site will allow you the opportunity to potentially be one of twelve lucky winners of a jar containing the ice the Bears won their 11th Calder Cup on. Sheet of sweet dreams!

Both a cooling and warming thought, I think.

photo by On Frozen Blog

I watched John Carlson skate around Giant Center ice in the early moments of his team’s Calder title celebration Monday night with a cell phone to his ear, his eyes scanning the stands, and in that moment I thought of another Captain America in skates, Jim Craig, 30 years earlier, and his iconic search for his father in the stands at Lake Placid, American flag draped over his shoulders.

That image of Craig overpowers the rest of that aspect of his story, doesn’t it — all these years later I can’t quite remember if and when he found his father in the Olympic rink that day. Well, John Carlson had no trouble locating his family Monday night; they joined him on the ice moments later, and I was fortunate enough to meet them. The mother of Captain America 2010 emailed me a few times this past season, expressing appreciation for our coverage, but Monday night she was overseas on business, I learned from her sister and John’s stepfather. In mom’s absence the rest of the family offered me hearty handshakes and warm words that I’ll carry with me all summer long.

Standing among the Carlson clan I wondered how many hockey games young Carlson had played over the course of 2009-10, and his stepfather told me, “Tonight makes one hundred and one — not counting the World Juniors!” I got tired just thinking about such a slate.

Family is so central to the development of hockey players, and in this apex moment in hockey Monday it struck me as powerfully appropriate, and wonderfully warming, to see so much family out on that ice sheet, sharing embraces, exchanging kisses, holding and squeezing hands, laughing gleefully and most especially savoring and securing the moment with hand-helds directed at their brothers, sons, boyfriends, and husbands in skates.

Ray Bourque stood out prominently among the throng of family and girlfriends and friends gathered around the jubilant Bears. Chris’ younger brother Ryan, himself a gifted hockey player, was on the ice as well. The Bourque men bear a striking resemblance to one another. I was able to snap a photo of the Bourques gathered around Chris holding his just-earned Calder Cup playoff MVP trophy.

All forms of media were on the ice amid the celebration, and with respect to those on hard deadline, I could understand their need to interrupt the camaraderie and exuberance to get reaction, but I made a point of trying to remain a bit on the periphery and carefully and respectfully pick my spots to engage players and their families. I found Andrew Gordon alone for a moment and I told him that if things don’t work out in his hockey playing career he had a star candidacy as a hockey blogger. He got a good laugh out of that. If you didn’t follow the finals diary he kept for the wonderful blog Russian Machine Never Breaks, do yourself a favor and start at its beginning and enjoy Gordo’s prose gift to Hershey and Washington hockey fans that followed each game.

Among all the images of family and loving support I bore witness to within that jubilation scene Monday night the most indelible was that exhibited by sports’ best band of brothers: unleashed elation, teammate upon teammate. It was unbridled and boundless and beautiful. Its sound was so striking — banshee screams of glee, nickname to nickname, followed by what appeared to be bruising hugs. All unrehearsed of course, all so organic, and yet also seemingly so orchestrated in its fluid joy.

There was one other family prominently portrayed in the title-glow of Giant Center Monday night — thousands of Bears’ supporters on the other side of the plexiglass. Perhaps a dozen Bears’ players skated along the boards during the celebration and pointed hand-helds at their admirers, a hockey team and hockey town at one in passion and elation.

photo by On Frozen Blog

photo by On Frozen Blog

photo by On Frozen Blog

photo by On Frozen Blog

photo by On Frozen Blog

photo by On Frozen Blog

Francois Bouchard came along and said, ‘Let’s make it four cold ones.’

photo by On Frozen Blog

The Hershey Bears made history on Monday night, winning their 11th Calder Cup title and becoming the first team in American League history to do so after losing the first two games of the finals on home ice. The 4-0 final didn’t come close as indicator of Hershey’s dominance in game 6. The Bears got all four of their goals on the evening from defensemen, while Michal Neuvirth pitched a shutout. Best of all, they did it at home, sharing their triumph in real time with the best fans in all of minor pro sports, something they hadn’t been able to do since 1980.

All these years, all those titles, and all of them on the road. No wonder the largest crowd ever to see a hockey game in Hershey — 11,002 — jammed Giant Center to the rafters on Monday night.

Hershey has claimed Calder titles in consecutive seasons and three of the past five seasons, coincidental to their renewed affiliation with the Washington Capitals. In all five of those seasons the Bears have qualified for the postseason. In four of them they reached the Calder finals. It’s not a stretch to posit this five-year run as the greatest in this storied franchise’s history.

It would be nice if a little of this very winning Mojo could be transferred down the interstate a bit.

The Texas Stars Monday night had no chance. The competitive portion of the game was over moments after the puck dropped, no matter what the scoreboard said. This was a Texas team that had been extended to seven games in its preceding two series, and they arrived in Hershey 12 days ago bearing the battered badges of that labor. They gutted out two shocking wins on Giant Center ice over the finals’ opening weekend, but Hershey ultimately took to heart the admonition of their head coach to attack the Stars’ center ice sagging with perimeter patience and net traffic, and slowly Hershey seized control of the series as it combined a patient attack with more disciplined play and some power play success.

And some more overtime heroics. Eight Bears’ wins in the 2010 postseason came in extra time. None was more important than last Friday night’s game 5 overtime blow by Alexandre Giroux, which likely delivered the decisive psychological blow to a battle-weary Stars club. The Bears brought great skill and experience to the defense of their 2009 Calder title, but all postseason long they also brought gumption and determination and heart during sudden death.

Stars’ head coach Glen Gulutzan, seeking some momentum reversal for his suddenly beleaguered club, played a wild card with game 6: he benched goaltender Matt Climie in favor of Brent Krahn, and early on Monday night the move seemed magical, as the Bears peppered the former Calgary Flames first rounder with a barrage of pucks, Krahn turning them all aside. Upstairs in the Giant Center press box, an overflow of Washington hockey media wondered: would there be a failure to strike early during dominance by the home team, allowing an on-the-ropes visitor a series momentum swinging reprieve? It’s a storyline Washington’s hockey media knows all too well.

But Captain America said No! John Carlson struck on the game’s first power play, at 12:29 of the opening frame, and a Judas Priest reading on the decibel meter showered down on a suddenly slump-shouldered set of visitors. The Bears had retained all that series-swinging momentum from Texas.

Bears’ head coach Mark French would have you know that teams that rely upon a sag-and-clog system to try and defend high octane offenses are susceptible to scoring attacks from the points. Karl Alzner followed Carlson’s strike with a blast from the point less than two minutes later, and instantly a rout seemed likely. The Bears lethal first period concluded with a 17-4 wood-shedding on the shot counter.

Patrick McNeill would add a tally in the second stanza to erase any remaining doubt about the evening’s outcome, adding another in the final frame on the power play. This series’ last game was a laugher. The party that followed felt like it had been in the planning for 30 years.

photo by On Frozen Blog

* * * * *

My ever-edifying new media odyssey in hockey took another blessed turn with this season-concluding Hershey visit. John Walton, the Bears’ voice on radio and now television, had a spectacular surprise on Monday night for the Washington hockey bloggers who’d caravan-ed up I-83 a fair bit this spring. When we went to retrieve our credentials for the game we were informed that we’d be outfitted with distinctive wrist bracelets that would allow us access onto the ice sheet at game’s end, in the event that the Bears won and a big party erupted there. We got wide-eyed at this bit of news, as you might imagine. Ted Starkey and Ed Frankovic and I went out on the party ice all right, interviewing, photographing, videotaping, and most especially just gathering around one another at regular intervals — as Bears hugged and re-hugged and shouted and screamed — and freshly inquired of one another: Are we really where we think we are?

This was a very Walter Mitty moment.

I imagined that for the three of us this dream access — perched on a champion’s ice right as championship status was conferred — was very much like going to see the concert for your favorite band, and upon arriving at the venue being informed that you were welcomed backstage to meet the band.

* * * * *

But just as spectacular for me was my proximity to another production aspect of this big game. I was brought on the inside of the preparations by the singer of the evening’s national anthem. Meaning, as I rode up with Tara Wheeler in her car I became an audience to her preparatory vocal exercises, which included some uncanny Lady Gaga karaoke.

Inside the arena Tara stopped twice in the span of about 40 minutes to visit separate, private restrooms to practice the actual anthem while I stood vigil outside. And during the pregame I waited with Tara in the lounge that hosts players’ wives and significant others. This was no ordinary night of hockey, and ours was no ordinary routine.

Tara became increasingly nervous as 7:00 approached, even experiencing some mild nausea. But then she followed the Color Guard out onto the ice, took her position before a hockey house without a single empty seat in it, and belted out a beautiful rendition of our national song while I held her video camera and cried.

A couple of Texas Stars officials made a point of stopping in the media area near the end of the game to let Tara know that she’d sung the anthem quite spectacularly. Those kind of moments only happen in hockey, I believe.

* * * * *

Approximately 20 minutes into the caravan ride home it occurred to me that I would not again be sharing a two-hour car ride with my blogger buddies in the 2009-10 hockey season. Two hours up, two hours back, four hours total of car ride hockey talk, on every excursion. Not a word ever about our respective offices or full-time careers, an oil spill, or summer movie titles. Just talking pucks, as puckheads do. This was a spring and early summer during which the travel time to and from Hershey became as rewarding as the big event access and excitement. After a lengthy season of covering Caps’ hockey my blogger buddies and I still couldn’t exhaust our passion for this game while together, and at last the calendar was informing us of the end. Because of our Monday night dream experience we unanimously seized upon a stop at an all-night McDonalds for the largest milkshakes they’d serve us. We pulled out of the drive-thru with our sweet treats and I turned to our driver, Ed, and said, “Take the long way home.”

* * * * *

Back last autumn, early in the new hockey season and on his very first visit of the season to Verizon Center, John Walton approached my seat upstairs and held out his hand to show me the 2009 Calder Cup ring he’d received just days before. It was monstrously large, lavishly jeweled, just stunning. Then he removed it and put it in my hand, urging me to try it on. I actually had a champion’s ring on my finger for some moments. Where else in sports does this happen, I remember thinking then.

I thought about that moment last fall while my sensory surveillance was under assault as I stood on Giant Center ice surrounded by wildly celebrating Bears Monday night. On a handful of occasions I looked up at John Walton’s broadcast booth, trying to catch his eye, trying to convey to him in that moment my wordless appreciation for the manner in which he started and now oh so dramatically ended my 2009-10 hockey season. I didn’t catch his eye because of course he was too busy still working, nearly an hour after the game, still imparting his puck passion for his listeners. I will see him again at Capitals’ Development Camp next month, when likely I’ll surprise him by still wearing my dream bracelet.

photo by On Frozen Blog

He wonders why folks aren’t more concerned with the team’s general competitiveness. They are, but identities matter, and when your community is the capital home of the nation — the most important and powerful community in the world — identity especially matters. The legacy of team names here largely reflects this.

Additionally, the Pollin family authored a spectacular fail with their politically inspired name changing. Folks about town — market-tested now for going on two decades with the eyebrow-raising appellation — simply don’t want to move about with a ballcap with ‘Wiz’ emblazoned on it. I can’t say I blame them.

‘Wizards’ might pass (meagerly) as a team name in other communities (though conspicuously few seem to be leaping upon it), but the legacy of team names here is elevated well beyond it, dating back generations. Once upon a time we had a professional soccer team here named the Diplomats. They were known as ‘the Dips.’ It’s interesting to reflect on that insomuch as the baseball and hockey teams (and football for that matter) bear a strikingly similar shorthand. We’re a region that just reflexively foists a shorthand upon our teams’ names (O’s), and the reflex when it is applied to the basketball team evokes urinals.

More seriously, there is something of a national pride evoked for teams named Nationals, Capitals, Senators, or Diplomats. And a distinctive sense of elevation: by virtue of who we are as a community we do not do Cougars, Clipper Ships, or Storm with our team names. The Redskins, meanwhile, have a legacy so entrenched and noble (until Dan Snyder assumed omnipotent control over its management) that it has risen above pedestrian political correctness; only the hyper-egregiously politically correct can awaken each day and cower in offended sensibility by the name. Regardless, it’s not going anywhere.

But Wizards?

It’s incongruous. It bears not even a tangential relationship to anything about this region. It’s inexplicable — which incidentally is precisely what the Washington Post said about it at the time of its selection. It needs to die a death quicker than what I imagined when I first wrote about this a few weeks ago. More on that in a moment.

For no small number of over-30 Washingtonians the name ‘Wizards’ is patently insulting, their having grown up supporting a pro basketball team here with an infinitely superior name. This undercurrent of dissatisfaction is something Leonsis would do well to focus group if he wants to gain a heightened understanding for Washington’s long-held disdain for the replacement name. Dozens of OFB readers over the years have shared with me their refusal to patronize the hoops team merely by virtue of its name. It remains for many a sorry and sour transition. Again, identity matters.

The identity of our basketball team is a laughing matter.

If your basketball team wins 52 games but is named the Diaper Lickers folks won’t flock to its souvenir stands. Wizards isn’t Diaper Lickers in infamy, but it’s only marginally better.

Leonsis doesn’t need a lecture from me on the fiscal implications of effective branding for a sports team. That branding begins with a team’s identity. This isn’t a pleading necessarily to bring back the name ‘Bullets,’ but the mounting marketing success associated with the well-named teams here ought to be a compelling cause for Leonsis to right this ridiculous wrong. The owner has rightly earned a deep reservoir of good will for his remarkable remake of the hockey team, and so he can take some time in finessing this matter so as to appease the perceived sensibilities of the perps. But Leonsis should no longer wonder why this issue remains no. 1 on the minds of the region’s sports’ fans.

And on that front . . . I’m of the belief that there’s an additional impetus driving local sports’ fans animated interest in this matter. Whether he wants to acknowledge it or not, Leonsis represents a savior’s role for a beleaguered town when it comes to sports, and now he’s expected to resurrect the basketball franchise. Laud Pollin for building the buildings the teams have played in, but a full reckoning requires acknowledgment that from ’80 on the hardwood product he built was, frankly, abysmal. I think folks in town want a fresh and clean break with that so so sorry, so elongated past, and the Wizards of course represent the worst of it.

* * * * *

A caravan of Washington hockey bloggers today is carrying a special cargo up to Hershey for game 6 of the Calder Cup finals: the game’s national anthem singer. Tara Wheeler believes that tonight will offer her the largest crowd she’s ever sung the anthem before, and what a backdrop she’ll have for it. The last time she sang the anthem before a hockey game, at Verizon Center during the preseason, her head was shaved bald as part of her ongoing participation in support of the St. Baldrick’s Foundation. I remember well the reception Wheeler earned for her rendition that night. As a Penn State grad she ought to be received warmly in Giant Center as well. It’s nice to have a special Washingtonian playing a minor role in what may be the most memorable night of hockey for this hockeytown to the North in just about all its rich history.

Go Bears.