[Miss Part I? Click here.]
What kind of job does a suddenly blind-in-the-middle-of-his-life man perform? For two years Collin McKinney didn’t see anything at all. Eventually, he could see out of his left eye an area “about the size of a 50-cent piece.” His medical remedies more or less exhausted, McKinney contacted the Virginia Department of the Blind and Visually Impaired. The work options offered him there — “moving paperclips” was how he described the meager administrative listings — were a poor fit for his broad and varied educational background and work experience.
But back in his Fairfax neighborhood, McKinney had developed an affinity for taking care of dogs belonging to his neighbors. He’d walk them during business hours, care for them during neighbors’ vacations. He developed a reputation for being something of a “dog whisperer,” effectively training unruly canine rascals on his block. Dogs and a blind man, working well together. Who knew?
Post- NHL lockout, and now fairly a fixture at Caps’ games, McKinney was enjoying himself and the friends he was making from the experience. Except for one set of fans: Buffalo’s.
“Buffalo fans are the worst,” McKinney told me. “They actually stole my blind stick one time from me at a game.”
Now you’re certainly reacting as I did as those words arrived on my ear — Buffalo Sabres’ fans . . . did . . . what?
It was two seasons ago, during the final game of the 2006-07 campaign, at Verizon Center, the one that was sold out, lamentably largely due to wave after wave of belligerent Buffaloan.
“Thank God I could see a little bit, because they decided to play keep away with my stick, and I managed to grab it back, which surprised them, I think,” McKinney related. “I couldn’t believe people would do that. They were so obnoxious and so foul-mouthed.”
As shocking as this story is, having been in Verizon Center that day (Washington’s hockey bloggers hosted an end-of-season party at the Chinatown Clyde’s after the game), I look back and think that something like this monstrosity was entirely plausible amid so large an ornery and inebriated set of visiting fans. Not all Buffalo fans in Verizon Center behaved badly that day, of course, but a striking and surly subset most certainly did.
“Collin,” I told my dinner partner, “there really was something about that day that was distinctive in a very bad way. A lot of people had a bad experience that day, although what you describe is off the charts — sub-human, really. Our team was lousy, theirs was in first [place], and the scene was just unruly and altogether unpleasant.”
Wanted: One Hockey-Loving Ocularist
In early 2008, as Collin McKinney grappled with the reality of having his right eye removed and replaced with a prosthetic, his “twisted” sense of humor set upon a novel idea. He was fitted with a standard prosthetic eye, but he again wanted to summon his passion for hockey to help alleviate his trauma. He had been in contact with an area ocularist to try and get the Capitals’ logo etched on a second prosthetic eye. In other words, when you looked Collin McKinney in his replacement eye, he wanted you to see his passion. But first he needed the team’s permission.
“I have a twisted sense of humor,” he told me. “If something horrible like this is going to happen to you, you better have a sense of humor about it at some point, because if you can’t laugh, you end up sitting around doing nothing, wasting away.”
“I just thought it would be funny and cool, ‘cause it kinda shows what I’m into.
“I don’t get tattoos,” he added with a laugh.
McKinney wrote Capitals’ owner Ted Leonsis, seeking permission to use the team’s trademarked logo on a prosthetic eye. He sent the owner his request in a letter. And the owner replied.
“‘Wow,’ I think was his very first reaction,” McKinney noted. “‘You really want to do this?’”
“I think he thought I was a kook at first,” McKinney said with a laugh.
The request, McKinney pointed out, required more than just the owner’s blessing — that of lawyers, as you might imagine. Capitals’ attorneys were consulted, but also ones from the NHL’s league offices. Ultimately, McKinney got the team’s permission, and that of the league. He also received an invitation from Leonsis to take in a game in the owner’s box, where he could model his passion-prosthetic.
Now comes the hard part. The personalized prosthetic comes with a $3,000 sticker price. McKinney, an early recipient of Social Security due to his disability, subsists on $12,000 annually and some additional, modest money from helping out his Fairfax neighbors by walking their dogs and performing odd jobs.
“There’s no way I can afford that,” McKinney noted. “But now I know that there’s an ocularist in town who’ll do it. That’s what is important to me. If he had turned me down I had already Googled the entire country for others [ocularists]. I’d have contacted every one of them. It’s not something I’m going to give up on.”
At this point I wanted to reach into my back pocket, pull out my fraying black leather wallet, open it and turn it upside down and empty out all of its contents in this cause. Problem there is that that wouldn’t have purchased McKinney a temporary tattoo.
“Things are thrown your way in life,” Collin McKinney told me over our final sips of Monday night beer. “You just have to find a way to move on.
“This idea I have for ultimately winning over . . . getting the better of, my misfortune, it’ll happen one day. I believe that.”
In my nearly 35 years as a Caps’ fan I thought I had terrific reason on top of terrific reason to support this city’s pro hockey team, and to champion its cause. Over the years it had hockey heroes — Rod Langway, Dale Hunter, Olie Kolzig, Peter Bondra, now Alexander Ovechkin — wear its sweater. It had endured, in searing and endearing fashion, a brush with death, a thrilling run to a Stanley Cup finals, a sale to a hockey-town-constructing-committed owner. And the drafting of a franchise-altering and anchoring talent. But in September 2008 I found the best possible reason yet to be a Caps’ fan: Collin McKinney wears our team’s colors, and life can’t attack his hockey heart. There’s a life-long, no-trade clause in Collin McKinney’s allegiance to the Caps. He belongs to us.
In a very real sense, the Ballston Massacre yesterday represented the culmination of the Capitals’ rebuild. Last September, Capitals’ owner Ted Leonsis decreed that the rebuild was over, asserting that his young team was primed for playoff contention. But being rebuilt as both Leonsis and General Manager George McPhee targeted 5 years ago, I believe, means more than that; I believe it is represented by what we’re seeing out at Kettler this September: the parent club enjoying the chic designation as Cup contender, and certainly an across-the-board classification as elite in the East. But also, concurrently, below them, resides a dozen-plus dazzling talents in juniors and the minor pros. With the team’s scouts consistently identifying gems in each year’s draft, the organization’s talent pipeline is annually replenished.
Alexander Ovechkin wants to make Washington a hockey town. And he’s well on his way. I think Hillary wants to cover a hockey town. I just want to shame Washington Post sports editors a little.
Welcome to the last business day without hockey in 2008. At the end of this weekend, feet will be back in boots, and stay there, inaugurating the 2008-09 hockey season. Many Washington Capitals veterans are already in town and skating out at Kettler, but the team’s rookies report for five days of instruction beginning this Sunday. We’ll even have a Caps-Flyers’ rookie scrimmage to follow in less than a week.
The NHL today confirmed 
The Buffalo Sabres today announced a brand new American League affiliation, in 
TSN
