Angela’s family has 10 seasons tickets for the Hershey Bears. That’s but one of a couple of hundred novel facets signifying my lottery ticket number being called in meeting her. Some manner of family summit took place in early September to discuss how best to use an un-accounted for 10th ticket. It was determined that I would have it. Can’t say I’ve encountered family generosity quite like that before. Angela went to Giant Center during Bears’ training camp to retrieve her family’s tickets. That’s a very special evening for Hershey’s hockey fans, as they go down on the arena ice and are handed their tickets by individual Bears’ players, with photo-ops accompanying. Angela is a beauty one’s eye remembers long after an initial meeting, but Francois Bouchard saw her just as he had in previous Septembers and spoke up with concern: “If you don’t mind my saying, something doesn’t look quite right.” Angela briefly explained her new challenge. Bouchard then motioned over Graham Mink. Then more Bears players enveloped her in a circle of concern. Angela was very excited as she relayed this moment to me over the phone on the ride home.

Of course, the patronage of hockey games together this autumn is a far-fetched dream for Angela and me. Six days a week, alternating between chemo and radiation, she endures four-hour treatments at the Hershey Cancer Institute. Some days she can do no better than digesting a banana. I’m happiest this autumn when her text messages relate entire breakfasts consumed and kept down. What should be a spectacularly beautiful and fit frame of 130-plus pounds is today a spectacularly beautiful warrior’s frame of less than 100 pounds.

That life-altering August Friday the first person I reached out to in my frightened agony was my blessed puck chum goalie of a beauty queen, Tara Wheeler. When Tara was Miss Virginia and competing in the Miss America pageant a few years ago she seized a mission to immerse herself in the cancer wards for children at hospitals all over the state of Virginia. And I mean all over the state. I doubt there was one she didn’t visit. Most memorably, after her run at the pageant title, she shaved her head in a show of extraordinary solidarity with the brave children. She made national television appearances for it.

I remember not having the courage to call Tara initially, as my friend had never heard me sob. Silly notion. Our call lasted approximately 25 minutes, and the crying felt good, and I remember how there wasn’t more than a few seconds of commiseration before Tara issued me unmistakable marching orders. This wasn’t a moment to wallow in self pity, as sad as such news is, she delicately but forcefully explained. The partner against cancer plays an exceptional role, a durably taxing role, she explained. One of unwavering sustenance and optimism and encouragement. For the partner, it’s a bit of a poker table requiring all chips in, so right this moment, my friend told me, you have to decide if you’re all in. I hung up the phone with my pal, sobbed for about two minutes more, fell asleep deeply, and awoke Saturday morning calm and seemingly battle ready — knowing of course my engagement with this challenge was ludicrously limited relative to what Angela was confronting.

This autumn, instead of composing blog files, I compose love letters. I’d have done that anyway, but I seem to have energy and interest only for writing to Angela. A couple of weeks after my phone call with Tara, after I’d received a text from Angela that she was shopping for a wig with her mother, I wrote Angela and told her about the time I saw my friend Tara step onto the ice at Verizon Center and belt out the most beautiful rendition of our national anthem I’d ever heard, the arena ceiling lighting well illuminating the peach fuzz on Tara’s head. I looked down from the press box in that moment and tears streamed down my cheeks, because my friend, in her baldness, never looked more beautiful.

Another fortification for my fright-fight this fall: the return of Eric McErlain to my 18th St. office in Northwest. Long-time readers will recall my bragging about having Eric as a close-by colleague some four years ago. I met and befriended Eric in the Verizon Center press box. I learned about hockey blogging seated next to Eric. I became a hockey blogger in large part because of Eric. More importantly, I was blessed by his friendship. I once wrote a file here bragging about what it was like to come to the office every day and share the day’s first cup of coffee with one of the most accomplished hockey hearts and minds in new media. Eric left our office a few years ago for an exciting new challenge. Now he’s returned, and again he’s immediately next door to me.

Eric knows I can’t be in rinks this season as I’ve grown accustomed to being, thanks to the Capitals, and he knows precisely what I need with each and every coffee and lunch outing — my puck fix. I genuinely believe that God returned EMac to my office this autumn for a role well beyond managing our industry’s pressing need for deft stewardship of social media. I also don’t believe he’s leaving my office again any time soon. Thank God.

Rather impulsively one day this autumn I gave a reckoning of my anxiety to another great buddy in pucks, a fella named Killer. Week after week had passed with hardly an iota of complaint from Angela of what she was enduring; I was beyond inspired. I wanted the tough guy ex-Cap to know about the battle she was bravely waging. “You’re gonna love meeting her,” I wrote. “Send me Angela’s address,” one of the Capitals’ all-time great warriors texted me from his team’s bus. I knew what was coming next. In the package Killer shipped to Angela he penned an inscription on one of his warrior photos themed on how the biggest fights sometimes are waged by those in the smallest frames. Killer knows a thing or two about that. I regarded that outreach as a love letter in its own right.

A week or so ago I messaged Killer to give him an update on our region’s increasing concern with the struggling Caps. “Ok,” he replied. “Now tell me what really matters — how’s Angela doing?”

This fall I notice a lot my pacing in a path opposite that of the Red Army on game nights. It’s an odd experience, after marching with them all these years. None of them know it but they are all my friends, as this autumn has verified. I’m looking forward to rejoining them just as soon as I can.

Eric McErlain and Jonathon Warner during a commercial break this past Saturday night

Some topical highlights:

• The Capitals’ youth-laden roster this season is increasingly the focus of, in some corners, scapegoating scrutiny for the team’s struggles. Not so with our Saturday night panel; it has been the precocious performances of the likes of both young goalies, John Carlson and Karl Alzner, and even recent callups from Hershey that have served as steadying, reliable service all season long. Indeed, the kids have been a highlight in a season of precious few of them.

• Alexander Semin and his looming unrestricted free agency represent George McPhee’s greatest personnel challenge as a manager in his near decade-and-a-half tenure in D.C.

• On these Caps being “just a few points” behind the pace of last season’s President’s Trophy winners: It’s a false source of comfort. It was right about this time last season that the Caps ripped off a franchise-record 14 wins in a row. Who thinks this incarnation of Caps is poised to replicate that? The points-achieving discrepancy between the clubs, not quite readily apparent now, will be in the weeks ahead.

• The captain:  Where is his speed — his breakaway dynamism? (How many breakaways has he had this season?) There appears to be a lack of burst in his stride.

• Most distressing about this season to date: The team’s failure to skate with fire and grit and heart in more than a handful of games.

• The Winter Classic and HBO’s ’24/7′ treatment were bitchin’ good fun.

Eric McErlain, influencing hockey in a big way again

Customarily I’d glance over word of a revamped NHL All Star game with all the excitement of an online tutorial on wallpapering. But word from the league today of the 2011 All Star game in Raleigh going the route of Fantasy League selecting got personal for me: credit for the idea sure seems to belong to my buddy Eric McErlain, the godfather of hockey blogging.

The game’s formally being identified as ‘The 2011 All Star Fantasy Draft’ format.

Here’s the skinny on what the league announced today for the game:

• Balloting for the game begins on November 15 and runs through January 3. Fans will vote digitally, again.

• The league will provide a list of 100 candidate players; fans will vote for their top 6 (five skaters and a goalie) — but do so irrespective of conference affiliation. No East vs. West with this year’s game. Fans can also write in a player’s name.

• The NHL’s Hockey Operations Department will select 36 players to join the 6 chosen by fans, forming a 42-player All Star pool. Hockey Ops will also select 12 rookies for participation in a skills competition All Star weekend. The resulting 54 players will select two captains per team. These captains will then select their rosters during a draft on Friday night, January 28.

• The first pick in the draft will be determined by a coin flip. That’s pretty dull. A single shootout attempt against an All Star candidate goalie boasting the best numbers, perhaps, carried out by the two primary captains — with the first pick being the prize — would have added fun to the evening. Really, if you’re turning the All Star game into a Fantasy league exercise, is a shootout profaning in any way? Anyway, the draft represents the heart and fun part of the revamped All Star game: the captains will choose their sides just as in shinny games of our youth (when you didn’t simply toss sticks in a pile and alternately flip them to the two sides of the ice). The 12 rookies in Raleigh will be broken into two six-man teams for the skills competition.

Back in 2008, while blogging for AOL Fanhouse, EMac, reacting to the KHL’s All Star game format and wondering how the NHL could learn from it, wrote this:

First off, I’d keep the voting the same way it is now, with fans voting five skaters and a goalie from both the Eastern and Western Conference. But once you get those results, all other bets are off. Next, you match your two designated team captains with the coaches who have won the honor of coaching a team based on the best record in each conference.

“What comes next is a live draft aired between periods of the NHL Winter Classic. Working together with the designated coaches — for sake of example, we’ll say Claude Julien is matched with Ovechkin and Todd McLellan is paired with Crosby — the team captains will draft their All-Star teammates . . .

“Can you imagine the tension? What happens if Ovechkin wins the coin toss and gets to draft #1? Will he submarine Crosby and select his countryman, Evgeni Malkin, or will he snub Malkin in favor of snagging Pavel Datsyuk? The possibilities are endless!

Just a wee bit of parallel with what the NHL is doing in Raleigh this year, don’t you think?

Washington’s hockey community has long had a great deal to be proud about by virtue of the achievements and influence local bloggers have had while covering the Caps and the league. Now, though, we’re looking at a case where the most important blogging figure among them has actually inspired a revolution of one of the NHL’s prized marketing events with his creative thinking.

Just last month I sat on a panel on hockey blogging with EMac at the Capitals’ Fan Convention, where he was rightly acknowledged for pioneering NHL blogging. A month later it surprises me none that he’s still blazing new, fan friendly paths for our sport.