I know all about the winter allure of Montreal’s frozen parks. A few years back, I went long-winter-weekending in Montreal in pursuit of a pretty girl. I took lodging in her apartment for the weekend. We were sipping coffee early on Saturday morning when I looked out her window and saw what looked to be a petroleum tanker pull up in the park near her apartment complex, and park near sturdy boards encasing a sizable oval for shinny. Seconds later the tanker driver fire-hosed hot water out onto the ice to form a perfect sheet. To this day I can vividly recall the white steam rising up from the ice as the scalding hot water worked its healing upon the preceding day’s skate scars. I remember how patiently and evenly the municipal employee spread the water out over the rink. It seemed a labor of true love. It speaks volumes about my bachelordom I think that I unpacked my gear bag after finishing coffee and went out on that sheet alone with a couple of pucks for hours instead of wooing the pretty Montrealer. It’s probably true: I used her for her neighborhood shinny sheet.

More winter-friendly charms: Montreal has never embraced basketball, and it’s rejected baseball. From this vantage, it strikes me as a hockey culture vastly superior to Toronto. But Montreal is also just plain colder than Toronto. Which is heart-warming to me.

Did you know that if you live in Montreal and purchase cable television that you cannot access ESPN? Boo-yaah! This is true of course all across Canada, but when Montreal native Ben Raby shared this tidbit with me a couple of weeks ago as we rode up to Hershey together for a Bears’ practice I felt an instant urge to immigrate North. It was during this recent Friday morning puck pilgrimage with Raby that I went Woodward and Bernstein on him about his hometown. I wanted him to regale me in all facets of his upbringing up North that spoke to hockey’s religious hold there. Which he did. This is what I learned:

• Just about every park has not one but two sheets of ice well maintained all winter long. One sheet is for shinny, the other for recreational skating. Well maintained.

• Here in Washington children at recess play basketball or soccer or toss around a football, but in Montreal, even the young girls will join in gymnasium floor hockey, or blacktop street hockey, and seldom do they allow Montreal’s frigid winter temps to keep them from facing off.

• No small number of teenagers make a habit of watching Habs’ games as ritual prelude to pursuing what we customarily expect teens to do in their evening leisure — take in movies, loiter at malls and shops, party together.

• Habs’ fashion is popular with young girls. They are the wearers of pink jerseys and traditional Habs’ colors. And teens are conspicuous today at Bell Centre, which has occasioned what Raby termed a genuine culture change in Montreal’s home rink. Old Montreal Forum was famous for its business suits and fedoras encircling the 100 level, and for being patronized by a distinctly mature adult fanbase. Over the past decade or so the replacement rink has become distinctly younger. Subsequently, more raucous.

• Saturdays in season on Sainte-Catherine Street are Mardi Gras for Montrealers before Habs’ home games.

From autumn through spring, beginning even before the formal start of training camp, the Habs are story number one, two, and three for Montreal’s sports media. I specifically posed to Raby this hypothetical: Imagine that the CFL Alouettes were victorious in the Grey Cup while on the same autumn Saturday night the Habs skated in a relatively meaningless regular season game against Columbus. (Not that one would ever posit a hockey game’s being “meaningless” out loud while within Montreal’s city limits.) What’s the section front of the Gazette or La Presse gonna look like on Sunday morning? Raby conceded that the CFLers would earn top billing above the fold, but he added, there’d be no bumping of the Habs off the section front.

Hockey town, hockey culture, hockey heaven. I miss it most in March.

photo courtesy of Ben Raby

photo courtesy of Ben Raby

photo courtesy of Ben Raby

photo courtesy of Ben Raby

photo courtesy of Ben Raby

photo couresty of Ben Raby

photo courtesy of Ben Raby

photo courtesy of Ben Raby

Umm . . . not . . . quite.

This season in Washington, it’s as if the Capitals barricaded Kettler with sandbags to prevent the very winning tide of Hershey hockey from bathing them in good fortune.

The Bears last June successfully defended their Calder Cup title of the season before, earning their 11th overall (best in the AHL). Then, anticipating a healthy contingent of promotions to the parent club, went about strengthening their roster for the following season. As they always do. For there is only one acceptable outcome to a hockey season in Hershey.

For some years now, there have been reasonable forecasts suggesting that all that winning in Hershey — all that championship pedigree on the farm — would, like a rising tide, lift the good cruiseship Capitals. It hasn’t happened. In fact, water levels are approaching the bridge this season for the parent club. It’s with this curious competitive disconnect in mind that I identify my next principle in my renovation of Capitals culture:

• How can Washington be more like the Bears?

You can point to the absence of a salary cap in the American League, you can further suggest that the Bears are uniquely advantaged as the big (and perhaps the only) game in their town, but the bottom line is that winning at pro hockey requires a lot of blocking and tackling basics, and the Hershey Bears block and tackle in pursuit of victory better than anyone in hockey. You don’t get 11 Cups with merely a big checkbook or by luck. Hershey has a championship culture. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to study it a bit closer, I think.

If I could help usher in a new culture for hockey in Washington, I’d urge a re-orienting of the Capitals’ relationship with its American League affiliate, trying to bring a little better balance to it. It’s one-sided not only in terms of winning when it counts, but in subtler ways that from my vantage evoke a bit of a patriarchal arrogance. For instance, I find it incredible that Alexander Ovechkin has never been showcased in a training camp skate or NHL exhibition or in a parent-affiliate exhibition before some of the greatest fans in all of hockey. It’s rather arrogant I think to in effect say to Hershey hockey fans, ‘Come on down to D.C. and see Ovi.’  The Caps should take him up there, and maybe even once a season. We are so fortunate to have him; absolutely we should share him with our affiliate. And so I say:

• Let’s give back a little to the affiliate that’s done do much for us in player personnel development.

It isn’t just Ovi who ought to be showcased in Hershey. Bruce Boudreau should be behind the bench again in Giant Center for an NHL exhibition game, or leading a camp session on the ice sheet in historic Hersheypark Arena.

George McPhee told me straight out a couple of seasons ago that, notwithstanding that other NHL clubs pursue them, he doesn’t like parent-affiliate exhibition games. Thinks the youngsters will try and show up the stars with some rough stuff, trying to make a statement with parent management watching. I imagine there’s validity in there somewhere, and of course a parent-affiliate exhibition game is his prerogative, but imagine the fun of such a game in old HPA, perhaps ticketing just Bears’ and Caps’ season ticket holders. The greatest hockey player in the world (prior to this season) ought to skate at least once in one of hockey’s all-time greatest barns.

Washington I think needs greater tangible integration with such a historic hockey town. Let’s try and change our culture a bit by better associating ourselves with one of the all-time best hockey cultures.

• Planes, trains, buses, and automobiles. The American League is a bus league, but not all that long ago, busing it wasn’t all that uncommon in the NHL.

Back when they were in the great old Patrick division, the Capitals never had 300 miles to travel to meet a division rival, and consequently, they logged a decent bit of time on buses. Today in the Southeast, the Caps have no such luxury, so they’re up in the air a ton. But buses are a touchstone to a pro hockey player’s development roots — at least for North American pro hockey players. I don’t think it would be such a bad idea to incorporate a wee bit more everyman travel to the Capitals’ comings and goings — remind them of their roots. Today, the Caps see buses pretty much only from the ride from the airport to the hotel, and from the hotel to the rink. I think this Capitals’ club should bus up to Philly, New York, New Jersey, and Long Island, harkening back a bit to the good old Patrick division days. Schedules permitting, Alan May and Craig Laughlin ought to be on a good many of those rides, and other Capitals’ alums, and they ought to share their history of the rides they took to lace ‘em against the dynastic Islanders, the nasty Flyers, etc.

And have you seen the caliber of bus pro sports teams utilize today? It’s not exactly roughing it. The Caps would still fly for 75 or 80 percent of their road travel in this scheme.

• TV timeout? Nah. But TV pitchman dough out to have a charitable kickback.

If you’re like me you’re having a tougher time watching Bruce Boudreau making bird calls, or elderly white man dancing, during his pitches for Mercedes Benz these days, relative to say last fall. It’s misplaced concern, though, I think suggesting that the Caps lose focus spending hours before television commercials cutting spots. All of this work is pretty much done in the offseason. Moreover, athletes and coaches have every right to earn supplementary income, to commercialize on their respective individual brand. It’s part of what makes America distinctive and insufferable.

However, management could approach the participants and ask if they’d be willing to direct a fraction of their television-derived income toward local charity. Some of them already do. But it’s at times like now when it’d be less galling to see the TV antics if we knew, for instance, that the Friends of Fort Dupont Foundation was benefiting from the mayhem.

It has to be acknowledged: the Capitals are exceptionally well immersed in their community, and their charitable commitments and impulses are exemplary. But you can always do more. Incidentally, when I participated in a bloggers’ roundtable discussion last weekend with my friends from Russian Machine Never Breaks and Capitals Outsider, organized by the Capitals’ Fan Club, donations in our names were made by the Fan Club to Fort Dupont. I really liked that.

This last principle for a reformed Capitals Culture is purely symbolic, but I’m a big believer in the power and effect of symbolism.

• The raised stick salute.

The toughest moments fans endure are those seconds that follow the season-ending horn, especially when it sounds on home ice. We endured that last April. But in that agonizing moment we also saw something special: Alexander Ovechkin, our captain, raise his stick high in the air in a salute to the Red Army. And the Red Army in turn warmly acknowledged its hero. I thought it was a special moment. And this morning, suffering as all you are, I worry that unintentionally the Capitals this season have frayed a bit of their special connection with so special a fanbase.

The Capitals like every other hockey team bounce off their bench at game’s end and embrace their netminder. But I think after every home game, before exiting the ice, win, lose, or revolt us with sub-par effort, every Capitals player ought to offer a raised stick salute to the foundation that is Washington the hockey town. No other team does it. What’s been built here the past 5 years has been so special. It ought to be acknowledged.

[If you missed Part I, check it out here.]

OFB blogger and reader, in middle age, need very nearby benches as respite during weekend shinny

“The truth is with fickle winter weather and a lack of hockey tradition, real Maryland pond players are as far apart as Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin’s front teeth,” observes Candus Thomson, in her gorgeously written January 30 Baltimore Sun feature on Maryland’s dedicated shinny skaters.

We about the region in touques and hockey sweaters praying for low winter temps possess a special devotion and, irrespective of our age, a child-like zeal for seizing the fleeting frozen conditions on local ponds and collections basins, Thomson discovers in her piece.

“The pond hockey season below the Mason-Dixon line can have the lifespan of a mayfly, so [shinny skaters] embrace the moment with all the energy of an end-to-end rush,” she notes.

“This is hockey as nature intended: pure, uncomplicated, joyous. No one complains about having to shovel the surface clear of snow or when slush soaks sweatpants as a skidding puck throws up a rooster tail of spray. Backpacks and winter boots mark goals and everyone is a referee.”

In her survey of solidly frozen local water bodies patronized by outdoor puck lovers, Thomson happened upon a figure of distinctive devotion, 56-year-old Bill Eckert, the “unofficial commissioner” of pond hockey in Maryland’s Carroll County.

“Each year as the calendar reaches its final days, Eckert keeps an eye on the thermometer. After a week of sub-freezing weather, when the ice grows thicker than a man’s fist and safe enough to skate on, he begins calling friends and neighbors and rounding up his children.”

“If you’re still a kid at heart, it’s still fun. It feels good afterward and you sleep good at night,” the commish told the Sun reporter.

Truer words were never spoken. A semi-senior circuit skater on ice sheets indoor and out myself, I can attest: my best nights’ sleep this winter have been on weekend evenings after a morning’s skate of local shinny. My stride lacks its burst of 10 years ago, my middle-age weight restricts my endurance in ways I care not to acknowledge, my reaction times in traffic are diminished, but my boundless appreciation for feeling that frigid air fill my lungs as I chase pucks on sheets without zones and referees feels as fresh and innocent as it did three decades ago.

Five hundred-plus miles to our north, on the same weekend as the Sun’s profile of shinny’s shine, arrived a fresh tale of terrific Arctic air avocation and recreation: up in Portland, Maine, one local successfully petitioned city government to support the construction of an outdoor rink set above a beautiful bluff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. The Portland Press Herald’s Dierdre Fleming details the shinny-devotion of Portlander Michael Roy in her feature ‘Must have ice.’

“Michael Roy’s addiction,” Fleming writes, “started four years ago. And it is an addiction, this pond-hockey love, his ice rink devotion, this nice-ice fix Roy needs four months of the year . . .

“Roy is the kind of hockey fan who goes around looking for open fields, envisioning hockey rinks, dreaming of ice sheets in more backyards.”

So thoroughly successful was Roy’s passion-pursuit in Portland that he even lured the local fire department into flooding his newly constructed rink with 28,000 gallons of water.

” On Jan. 22, when the rest of Maine was fearing the negative-zero temperatures to come, Michael Roy was smiling,” Fleming observes.

“The two perfect words I heard the weatherman say,” Roy told Fleming, ‘Arctic cold’.”

Roy actually has two sheets of ice up in Maine to maintain for his hockey heart’s skates all winter long. His two daughters at home like to skate. Naturally, they have a backyard rink for their use, maintained by dad.

“Since he built his first home ice rink for his two daughters four years ago, Roy has fallen into the winter ritual: checking the ice first thing in the morning and right before bed; going out to rake and pour hot water on it. It is a ritual rooted in nature, as natural as the tides.”

• 23 busloads of hockey fans from Quebec City, all attired in Nordiques’ bleu.

I used to think a half dozen buses of Flyers’ fans pulling up in front of old Capital Centre, and soon thereafter making the brawling on the ice appear child’s play relative to the fisticuffs those hooligans initiated in the stands, a sizable show of high-pitched passion, to say nothing of malicious mischief. I can’t imagine what 23 busloads of impassioned Quebecois will look and sound like in an otherwise empty Isles’ rink tonight. What a brilliant bit of passion-branding by Nordiques Nation.

Think about it: beyond the extraordinary volume of Quebecois crammed into 23 buses (and with all the attention this story is getting, maybe it’ll be more (seats for the game are still available — hah!)), it’s a 10-hour busride from Quebec City to Long Island. This Revolution en Bleu is basically surrendering an entire holiday weekend for two-and-a-half hours of lousy hockey, just to make their passion and commitment more broadly known . And even with a somewhat downscaled New York media monitoring the moment, they surely will.

What an embarrassing moment tonight will be for this apparently tenured-for-life NHL commissioner. I’m all for embarrassing him. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see the lower bowl in Glendale Bleu-ed-out by the Quebecois during a playoff game next spring. Canadians love migrating to the warm sun after a hard winter, and the moreso if unloved hockey in t-shirts and shorts is available.

Fanhouse has more on this massive breach of our borders by Nordiques’ bleu:

“The plan is that the large group of fans will sit in the lower bowl behind each net with light blue shirts that read ‘Nordiques Nation.” At the 15:00 mark of each period, the group plans to make a lot of noise to commemorate the 15 years it has been since the Nordiques left Quebec City for Denver. With rumors of relocation swirling for both the Thrashers and Islanders, the Nordiques supporters plan to make their voices heard in an attempt to help bring NHL hockey back to their hometown.

“We just want to show the N.H.L. that Quebec needs a team and is a better market,” [Quebec radio personality and event organizer Vince] Cauchon told the New York Times. “Maybe a third of the markets in the N.H.L. aren’t doing so well right now.”

“This is a paradise for hockey,” beloved ex-Nordique Peter Stastny said Saturday at the rally. “I spent 10 years here. I know what people are capable of here. They deserve an NHL team. Once the team is here, I have no doubt it will work out.”

At Saturday’s rally Peter was joined by his brothers and ex-Nordiques teammates Anton and Marian.

Can you imagine an ex- Florida Panther standing before an assembly of Miamians and declaring South Florida “paradise for hockey”? Can you even imagine an assembly of hockey fans in South Florida? Or Atlanta? Sunday’s Montreal Gazette identified four NHL markets as operating under marked financial duress: Florida, Atlanta, Long Island, and Phoenix. Almost certainly there are more.

“NHL franchises in Atlanta and Florida — two traditionally non-hockey venues — were recently named in Montreal’s influential daily La Presse as possible candidates to relocate to Quebec if an NHL expansion isn’t possible,” notes this Canadian business blog.

Where there’s smoke there’s blue fire.

Saturday’s crowd in Quebec has been estimated at between 75,000 and 100,000. “A crowd that big probably hasn’t marched on the Plains of Abraham since the British invasion,” said the Ottawa Citizen. Many of the marchers, press accounts acknowledge, wore the Nordiques’ famed sweater.

More from the Citizen:

“Purely on its own merits, Quebec City deserves an NHL franchise. Thanks to a higher dollar and a salary cap, the impossible — the idea of long-departed teams returning to small-market Canada — has become the possible.

“Though Quebec would be the smallest city in the NHL, it has a stable economy and the team would likely get more than its far share of support from Quebec Inc. Plus, the return of the Nordiques would rejuvenate one of the fiercest rivalries in the sport. Let’s schedule a Montreal-Quebec game every Good Friday, shall we?”

Quebec City and the province have committed $225 million of a needed $400 million for a new rink for NHL hockey and a down-the-road bid for a Winter Olympics Games — the new rink an imperative to the scheme. The support from the province — a pledge of nearly $200 million — arrived just last month.  The city and province now want the the Canadian federal government to cover the rest. The feds thus far have kept Quebec at arm’s length in the matter, with Prime Minister Stephen Harper calling for private money to comprise the shortfall. But the federal political dynamic is getting more interesting by the minute. “Several federal cabinet ministers attended the rally Saturday and other MPs have posed in Nordiques jerseys to show they are not turning a cold shoulder to the project,” reports the Citizen.

Another interesting political anecdote: Quebec City Mayor Regis Lebeaume was re-elected in his most recent mayoral bid with 80 percent of the vote, a central plank of his platform being returning the Nordiques to the city (an account, en francais, here).

And guess what followed Saturday afternoon’s Rally of the Blue? A hockey game, at Le Colisee, between the Canadiens and the Islanders.

A very winning culture on the farm

Barely a month ago, the town of Hershey was ensconced in celebration.  Again. A fitting conclusion to the best season in AHL history — and arguably one of the greatest in all of hockey — the Bears hoisted the club’s 11^th Calder Cup.

But the revelry was short-lived.  Just days after the boys in Chocolate and White captured the AHL crown, the team quietly dispersed, its members scattering to their respective hometowns.  Shortly thereafter, the mood in Chocolatetown shifted to one of anxiety and anticipation.  No secret: there would be notable graduations from this championship Bears’ club to the parent in Washington. And with free agency looming a mere two weeks away, Hershey braced itself for the inevitable depletion of its roster.

Last year’s squad saw 19 members of the 2009 championship team return, including its captain, top two scorers, and starting goaltender.  Despite the expected turnover of players as is customary in minor league affiliates, Hershey’s roster remained largely intact.  The Bears did not escape unscathed this offseason, however.

The first casualty came well before the start of free agency, as European sources reported that playoff MVP Chris Bourque had signed with HK Atlant of the KHL on June 23.  Although Bourque called the claims “premature” at the time, he failed to sign his qualifying offer from Washington prior to the July 15 deadline.  The Russia-bound 24-year-old was the only member of the team to earn a Calder Cup ring in each of the Bears’ last three Cup runs.  One skater does not a winning team make, but the loss does strike a significant blow to the Hershey offense, especially the power play.

Next to depart was centerman Kyle Wilson, who inked a two-way deal with the Columbus Blue Jackets on July 2.

The following day the Bears’ offense was further crippled when goal scorer extraordinaire Alexandre Giroux signed a one-way contract with the Edmonton Oilers.  In the past two seasons Giroux potted 139 goals and added 113 helpers en route to Hershey’s consecutive Calder Cups.  He and linemate Keith Aucoin sat atop the AHL in points the past two seasons, with each claiming a league scoring title—Giroux in 2009, Aucoin in 2010.

With Giroux moving on and East Division foe Wilkes-Barre/Scranton already overflowing with big-ticket players courtesy of parent  Pittsburgh, the Bears appeared to be in trouble.  By early July the only player acquired was veteran goaltender Dany Sabourin, and the lack of moves early in the free agency period left many questioning the resolve of the organization. A couple of weeks later, not so much.

John Walton, voice of the Bears and communications guru, assured the skeptics that management was not idle while the rest of the league appeared busy.

On July 7, the team announced that left wing Kyle Greentree and defenseman Brian Fahey had both signed with Washington.  Both proven performers at the AHL level, Greentree is expected to provide offensive prowess, while Fahey boasts better than 400 AHL games (regular season and playoffs combined) in his career, as well as a Calder Cup with Chicago in 2008.

The Chocolate and White bolstered the blueline the following day, as Lawrence Nycholat signed with the Bears.  An integral part of Hershey’s Calder Cup run in 2006, Nycholat returns after stints with Binghamton and Manitoba.  Via Tim Leone of the Patriot-News, Head Coach Mark French was pleased with the acquisition.

“Anytime you can add a guy with strong character and experience, especially winning a championship, it benefits your team,” the coach said.

Defenseman Bryan Helmer was not re-signed by the Bears.  Bereft of its captain and lacking veteran leadership, Hershey continued to reload to fill the void.  The club inked former Bear (and Capital) Brian Willsie to a two-way contract on July 14.  He skated in 284 games with the Chocolate and White between 1998-99 and 2002-03, amassing 96 goals and 108 assists in that time.

Walton commended the return of Nycholat and Willsie, saying “[They] are among the best character guys I’ve been around in my nine years here, so to have them back here to help this team win is an incredible boost to our chances next season.”

“The loss of Giroux is a big one, but the addition of Kyle Greentree (a non-vet) and now Willsie makes up for a whole lot of offense,” he added.

“There’s no reason to think that Hershey won’t be at the very top of the league in goal production again next season.”

Concerns for the upcoming season were further eased when five Bears accepted deals with the Capitals on July 15.  Andrew Gordon, Patrick McNeill, Zach Miskovic and Jay Beagle all signed qualifying offers, while Andrew Joudrey earned a two-way deal after playing on a Hershey contract last season.  Miskovic claims a spot on the Bears’ blueline after totaling six goals and 26 points in his rookie year; each of his counterparts is entering his fourth professional season.

Also still under contract through the 2010-11 season are reigning AHL scoring champion Keith Aucoin, Steve Pinizzotto, Mathieu Perreault, Francois Bouchard and defensemen Sean Collins and Patrick Wellar.

Despite the carnage of free agency this offseason, the Bears have responded by once again assembling an enviable array of talent and character.  In addition, there looks to be another infusion of high-end and impact young Capitals’ talents headed Hershey’s way this fall — the likes of perhaps Marcus Johansson, Stefan Della Rovere, Dmitry Kugryshev, and Joe Finley. Come fall, the most storied franchise in the AHL will look to extend its dominance over the league.  Like the New York Yankees the Hershey Bears win and then reload; the juggernaut looks poised to defend its back-to-back championships and will be a formidable force as it contends for the three-peat.

Jess Mikula is a statistician and web writer for the Hershey Bears. She files for OFB intermittently, most especially when we offer her free beer.

Only reptiles could like this weather — and the non-hockey playing ones at that. It’s not easy to move about in such a climate and remember better days. Like when we were buried under feet of snow and were house-bound, and watching hockey. But our friends at DCist have a Flickr account with an ample abundance of frosty images from our three big burials last winter. I enjoyed perusing them last night, and if you’re suffering from spiritual heat stroke as I am this week, you might, too. How welcome might this forecast look on our TV screens right about now:

The most mature among us became kids again in our wintry wonderland.

I recall especially the Redding Out of white Washington for a Sunday matinee against the Pens during Blizzard II. That was an enormous comeback win for the Caps, and how better to celebrate than with a good old fashioned snowball fight?

We got good use out of yardsticks, too.

SnOMG!

And you know who handles big snowstorms a bit better than Washingtonians? Moscowvites:

Stay cool.

(25) Not one, not two, but three blizzards buried Washington in the heart of hockey season. Blizzard no. 2 took out my home’s power for fully three days, but my beer was kept cold out on the patio in nature’s natural refrigerator. Undaunted — indeed, happy as a fatted bear in hibernation — I blogged by battery, in a Columbia snowmobile suit. This same blizzard coincided with a Sunday matinee between the Capitals and Penguins, and much-maligned-in-winter Washingtonians redded out all the white and celebrated with happy snowball fights afterward when the Caps erased a 4-1, third period deficit to stun the Pens 5-4 in overtime.

*I was invited to pinch-hit for the Patriot News’ Tim Leone and moderate a panel discussion on Hershey hockey at the Capitals’ first-ever fan convention. When I asked panelists Alex Giroux, Karl Alzner, and Michal Neuvirth for their reflections about the distinctive relationship Hershey’s players have with their fans, Giroux informed the ballroom of instances in which female Bears’ fans left undergarments fastened to his car in the Giant Center parking lot.

*I received email from a Californian identifying himself as a one-time co-chairman of the Save the Caps campaign of the early 1980s. I email back: would you be willing to to be interviewed? Yes, he said. I also received email from John Carlson’s family just days after his gold-medal winning goal at the World Juniors, with celebration images attached.

*I meet the New York Times’ Chuck McGrath up in the Verizon Center press box, recognizing him from his infectiously enthusiastic performance in the documentary ‘Pond Hockey.’ I quickly come to realize that McGrath needs to be ranked with Doc Emerick among the nicest in all of hockey humanity. McGrath spends months researching a sprawling piece on Alexander Ovechkin, and for it he directs questions to Eric McErlain and me at the rink and via email.

*Visiting Hershey for the Bears’ annual outdoor skate, I’m handed a microphone by John Walton and told to interview players and coaches as they exit the ice at the skate’s end. I learned that Mathieu Perreault skated Quebec ponds when it was minus-30, and that Andrew Gordon played shinny in Nova Scotia with Sidney Crosby. Later that day Walton emailed me videos of the interviews for use on OFB. And eventually he used footage of our shoot for in-game material at a Bears’ game in Giant Center.

(20) Listening to Mathieu Perreault acknowledge that he YouTubed, over and over, his game-winning overtime goal in an exhibition game in Chicago, and watching his eyes get wide as he related the exhilaration he felt on the team’s charter home that night. I was hardly surprised that he enjoyed the success he did wearing a Washington sweater in 2009-10.

*A Canadian member of the hockey media emailed me word of her potential ability to land me backstage to meet Rush at a gig of theirs in summer. Whoa Nellie Geddy Lee!

*Jenn Sterger.

*The C&O Canal froze hard this past winter, and it delivered virtually perfect ice one January Saturday morning for my buddy Eric McErlain’s first-ever shinny skate. I loved sharing that with him.

*It was love at first sight for me with Andrew Sherburne and Tommy Haines’ latest hockey documentary, ‘Forgotten Miracle.’ I wrote a review of the film and my filmmaker friends linked to it on the film’s web site. I get pretty emotional about the subject of American hockey in general, and having a few of my words associated with that project about American hockey history shook me up pretty good.

(15) Tara Wheeler, bald for St. Baldrick’s, steps out onto Verizon Center’s ice before a Capitals’ preseason game and makes that evening’s national anthem anything but routine.

The Hershey hockey communications duo of Mikula and Walton

*Quite impulsively a Washington hockey bloggers’ caravan formed for trips up to postseason Hershey this spring, and the puck banter I enjoyed in the company of the very puck-erudite Ed Frankovic and Ted Starkey came to serve as a much-needed salve for the disappointment of the Capitals’ early playoff exit.

*And speaking of blossoming friendships forged at the rink, two newcomers to the Capitals’ bloggers beat this season, Elisabeth Meinecke of DCist and Michelle Scalise of Comcast Sportsnet, enriched my rink experience greatly. There simply are no friends like friends in hockey.

*I was editing an interview file of Big Joe Finley an hour before a Development Camp skate, all alone in the media workroom at Kettler, my head buried in my laptop, when I was nearly jolted out of my chair by a thunderous slam of fists on the workroom glass that looks out on the rink. I look up, and there’s Big Joe, smiling down at me.

*Pancaking and coffee-ing it at a Hershey Bob Evans one January Sunday morning I was perusing the Patriot News sports section when I encountered Tim Leone’s magnificent four-page feature on Washington’s hockey bloggers, ‘Going deep: Washington Capitals out in front of media revolution‘. Tim nailed it, as you’d expect he would.

(10) Readers email OFB scores of their own stunning images from shinny skates during Washington’s abnormally frosty winter. I publish every one of them that makes me envious and smile.

*I never tire of participating in Federal News Radio’s ‘Saturday Night Caps’ program and its twice-a-season bloggers’ roundtable, hosted by Jonathon Warner. Blizzard no. 1 kept the bloggers out of Jonathon’s Northwest Washington studio, but still we had a great program. Jonathon always brings the bloggers back for a second show every season, and right before the playoffs started we had a Chamber of Commerce Saturday night in spring, another great show, and afterward pitcher after pitcher of patio margaritas amid a soothing breeze, all on the radio host’s dime.

*A producer from Versus contacted us and asked if we’d generate five questions for Mike Green to be asked as part of a bloggers’ interview session with Greener. We had great fun with that. Among our questions: Can we go for a ride in your new Lamborghini?

* I got invited to board Bear Force One and accompany the Hershey Bears to Texas, and help generate new media coverage for games three through five of the Calder Cup finals. It didn’t work out this season, but maybe next. What an honor to be asked, though.

* Video-recording a short-haired Tara Wheeler step out onto the ice at Giant Center before Calder finals Game 6 to sing the national anthem, and catching her give Bears’ players standing on the blueline a big thumbs-up right as she finishes. She’s a good luck charm, I tell you.

(5) Ed Frankovic and I interview Ottawa Senators’ general manager, and former Capitals’ bench boss, Bryan Murray after a Caps-Sens game here. We stroll down Memory Lane with Murray, and he patiently gives us detail-rich accounts of the good old days in the old barn in Landover. Ed and I decide to inaugurate a co-authored project going forward titled ‘Classic Caps,’ in which we’ll try and bring alive Washington’s rich professional hockey legacy.

*Tim Leone’s deft word-smithing, joined by Bruce Boudreau’s endearing self-effacing wit, makes Gabby a great read. We were thrilled and delighted to be able to contribute photographs to the book.

*In this lifetime I will never know the feeling of being associated with a pro hockey title team. But one night last autumn Hershey’s John Walton did his best to make feel as if I had been.

* This didn’t suck: being included among media accorded access to the Giant Center ice sheet as the clock wound down to zero after game 6 of the Calder Cup finals. Images and associations of joy I’ll carry with me the rest of my days. And best of all, I got to share the experience with my D.C. blogger buddies, Frankovic and Starkey.

(1) Mere hours before the arrival of blizzard no. 1 this past winter I carried off a photo shoot with my three favorite Comcast cutiepies, at the Sculpture Gardens Ice Rink, for OFB’s 2009 Christmas card. A fella could do a lot worse than get snowed in with these Hanson sisters.