24 July, 2008

Category Archives: Hockey Heroes

Dave Fay Memorial Hockey Game and Silent Auction - Sat, 19 July, 2008

By The OFB Team
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

It is not often we publish the full text of a press release — in fact we have never.  It is also not often we are asked to help spread the word of such an important event.  We encourage you to catch some live puck action Saturday night, bid on some fantastic hockey items, or even send a check to Put Cancer on Ice.

PUT CANCER ON ICE to Hold Second Annual Dave Fay Charity Hockey Game and Silent Auction to Benefit Hockey Fights Cancer

July 14, 2008 - Washington, DC - Put Cancer On Ice™ (PCOI) will hold the Second Annual Dave Fay Memorial Hockey game this Saturday July 19, 2008 at 8:30 p.m. at Kettler Capitals Iceplex in Arlington, Virginia.

With support from the Washington Capitals and the NHL Hockey Fights Cancer, PCOI will augment this year’s game funds by holding a silent auction for authentic, autographed NHL and Capitals team items.  The 14 auction items include a Western Conference All-Stars jersey, a Nicklas Backstrom jersey, and a Limited Edition Young Guns (Ovechkin, Backstrom, Green and Semin) signed and framed poster, among others.  A full listing and photos of the auction items may be found on the PCOI website at www.putcanceronice.org.

“We have received amazing support from the Capitals organization, the NHL and the entire community for this grassroots event,” declared Rob Keaton, PCOI co-chair. ”Likewise, the Fay family has been helpful and encouraging of our efforts.  Mrs. Fay will join us Saturday evening and we will proudly display Dave’s 2007 Hockey Hall of Fame Elmer Ferguson Memorial Award.”

Dogfish Head Alehouses of Maryland and Virginia join annual PCOI sponsor, Mirant, in supporting this event. “Our Maryland versus Virginia format fit perfectly with the Dogfish locations.  Their support has allowed us to arrange for official event jerseys for each team commemorating the event,” explains Gavin Toner, another event co-chair, “and the assistance and support we have received from Beth Lenz and the entire Kettler Captials Iceplex team for this event, as well as our regular monthly games, has been instrumental in our success.”

The addition of local sports announcers, Steve Kolbe and Wes Johnson, has players for this year’s Memorial anticipating hearing their names called in true Capitals style.  “What started out a few years ago as a casual, monthly pickup hockey game among Caps fans has developed into a charity that we all are excited to be a part of,” explains Toner.

“What the PCOI group had done to honor Dave – and to fight cancer – is so appreciated,” offers Patricia Fay, Dave’s wife.

“We are honored and excited to again hold this event.  Dave’s support of our sport and unbiased, reliable reporting of the Washington Capitals made him a favorite of players and fans alike. Dave’s untimely passing from cancer last year was a loss for so many and we are pleased to again donate all proceeds from this event to Hockey Fights Cancer,” said Keaton.

We invite you to come out and watch the game and cheer on your home team as they play to win Lord Brown’s Boot and support the fight against cancer.  There is no admission fee to watch the game, but donations are always appreciated.

For event information, visit the organization’s website at www.putcanceronice.org.

Filed in Charity, Dave Fay, Hockey Heroes, Washington Times| Permalink| Comments (4)

Street Crime in Canada

By pucksandbooks
Friday, July 4, 2008

We love this story out of Kingston, Ontario, delivered this week by The Empty Netter: the Kingston town fathers decreed that children there were limited to a single hour’s play at street hockey during any four-hour block of time between 9:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., in a city bylaw known as the Street Hockey Policy and Code of Conduct.

The ’streeters, to their genetic credit, aren’t taking the matter lightly, or quietly. This is in Canada, for puck’s sake!  

Some Kingston sixth-graders initiated an essay writing effort in opposition to the heavy and misguided hand of government. A strong majority of the ’streeters not only opposes the time restriction but, as if to make me personally swoon with swollen hockey heart, the wearing of helmets too! “Helmets can block side vision, many wrote, and they can cost a lot, too,” Kingstonthisweek.com noted of the anti-headwear sentiment expressed by students in the site’s coverage of the concrete contretemps.

“If you are going to get run over by a car, I don’t think helmets are going to protect you much,” sixth grader Madeline Katz says. She sounds like the enforcer in the Katz family.

Colin Schobel, a school classmate of Katz’s, added that helmets are “silly” and “a waste of time because you are not going to hurt yourself running.”

Who else wants the Kingston sixth graders replacing the entirety of the City Council?

“Kids are becoming fat and fatter,” Schobel added. “So how are kids going to stay fit (when they are only) able to play for one hour? Think about it, you are wasting your time and your kids’ childhood.

“This is the lazy generation.”

Not among Kingston ’streeters, it isn’t. On a day when we below the 49th parallel remember the American Revolution, let’s salute too one every bit as principled by those who just want their game back.   

Filed in Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey Heroes, Hockey Rituals, Hockey Towns, Incompetent Referees| Permalink| Comments (2)

Remembering a Broadcast Giant in a Moment of National Glory

By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, June 11, 2008

If Al Michaels was the voice of the Miracle on Ice, Jim McKay — ABC’s only studio presence on the evening of Friday, February 22, 1980 — was surely its face. I was too young to remember the McKay of Munich; in my adolescence of ‘80 I hung on his every word.

We lost McKay last weekend, and so we lost a towering figure of broadcast excellence, a broadcast personality perhaps more associated with the Olympics than any athlete. But most painfully for fans of American hockey, we lost a vital touchstone to one of the greatest moments of our lives, and certainly sports’ greatest moment.

Those in my age cohort will remember well the extraordinary role McKay had to play that remarkable February Friday. ABC made the decision to tape-delay the U.S.-Russia medal round semifinal, which faced off at 5:00 p.m. , and so by broadcast time that night McKay was in on one of the best-kept secrets in the history of television news; virtually the rest of his nation of 230 million was clueless. Perhaps like the rest of his countrymen two hours later — ABC didn’t broadcast the game in its entirety — in the upset’s immediate aftermath McKay simply didn’t know how to process the significance of the world-altering American triumph, and so he could manage those opening couple of setup minutes with his well-practiced professionalism.

Still, looking back, McKay’s prime-time composure seems nearly as miraculous as the feat of Herbie’s charges that day.

Because he was a pro’s pro who undoubtedly sensed the culminating effect of the American team’s feats to that moment, McKay played it straight as he came on the air at 8:00. He graced a studio set that to today’s around-the-clock-and-channels, sports-devouring eyes would seem spartan. Actually, it wasn’t so much a set as a grand stage for one: just McKay, the dean of American broadcast sports journalism, in his ABC Sports blazer. It was a very newsy shot for a very newsy occasion.

Looking back on that extraordinary moment — I have a VHS copy of it, and badly am in need of a digital one — one can see and hear the standard McKay setup for a significant moment: an eloquent and efficient chronicling of the Americans’ unbelievable underdog ascent into Lake Placid’s hockey medals qualification round. But with the benefit of hindsight, you can also detect a glimmer in his eye. That glimmer was joined by the slightest upturn in the crease of his mouth as he concluded his intro with, “You definitely want to stick around for this one.”

Were truer words ever uttered on television?

What a wonderful moment in time to be free of the Internet, I think now.

I remember McKay principally for that evening but also for his less dramatic duties hosting ABC’s ‘Wide World of Sports’ on Saturday afternoons. McKay seemed to celebrate the totality of athletic excellence in his broadcast career, which is perhaps why he cherished working the Olympics — in their less vulgar incarnation, obviously. He played it straight then, too, although I seem to remember that when it came to American excellence in sport his narrations bore a subtle but unmistakable pride. We could use more of that today, I think.

In reading memorials of his career this week I was struck by the breadth of events he covered. He was ABC’s go-to guy for special events, for decades. He was a seminal media figure at horse racing’s Triple Crown races, and with ‘Wide World of Sports’ he’d anchor one of the most successful sports programs in television history.

Televised sports in America in the ’60s, ’70s, and early ’80s was far different from what we know today. It was almost singularly male in the composition of its competitors, and it was also at times kitsch-ish in its made-for-TV moments: If it was sporting Americana taking place — the Indy 500 or Evel Knievel attempting to rocket-jump the Grand Canyon — McKay was there to cover it. In reflecting on this it strikes me as Hollywood-script-perfect for McKay to have been there as he was that fabulous Friday night, isolated in that studio shot.

“Here were these college kids beating the Soviets and going on to the Olympic Gold Medal,” McKay said in an interview in 2003. “To me, that’s the greatest upset of all time in any sport that I can think of.”

Maybe it’s the effects of nostalgia’s dominating spirit, but what I remember about February 23 and 24, 1980, was McKay’s voice interrupting what by then had become marginalized competing Olympic sports, for his narrating over scene after scene of thousands of delirious Americans draped in Old Glory, painting a small New York town in our nation’s colors.

On February 22, 1980, and for the remainder of that unforgettable weekend, we Americans, beleaguered in so many respects as we then were, needed a shepherd of first composure and then appropriate and eloquent ecstasy for an event that forever changed our lives. Jim McKay was that and much more.

It was, truly, a winter Friday night of miraculous innocence. Gone, now, like the broadcast hero who ushered it into our lives, forever.

Filed in American Hockey, Hockey Heroes, Media, Miracle on Ice, Morning cup-a-joe, TV, USA Hockey, WJLA| Permalink| Comments (13)

Search No More for a Great Hockey Read This Summer: Stephen Brunt Finds the Essence of Bobby Orr

By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Perhaps half or more of contemporary hockey fans never saw the incomparable Bobby Orr perform, and with this in mind, we’re indebted to Stephen Brunt and his literary landscape-altering effort Searching for Bobby Orr (Triumph Books, 2007).

A Canadian sports journalist, a hockey fan and one of Bobby Orr most particularly, Brunt in his book catapults us back into the rural rearing grounds of Parry Sound, Ontario, of the 1950s and ’60s. He invites us into his immaculately constructed, heart-felt reminiscence of an iconic prodigy, a figure whose virtuosity transcended his sport.

It was Orr — not Richard, not Howe — who first represented hockey for Sports Illustrated in its Sportsman of the Year designation, in 1970.

A literature professor once told me you could identify a great book by the success or failure of its opening and closing sentences. If those two impress you, he told me, you can be reasonably assured that what resides between them is nourishing as well. Brunt begins his examination of Orr thusly:

“On the river, he could skate forever.”

Actually, the concluding paragraph of Brunt’s Prologue foretells a special treatment thereafter. In it he artfully delineates his first-ever attendance at a hockey game, as a youth in Ontario, the beneficiary of a hockey-loving neighbor who prevailed upon Brunt’s hockey-indifferent father. Back then, there was no such thing as attending a Maple Leafs game by the common Ontario family. So Brunt in the company of his neighbor Reg did what just about everybody else did then — he patronized the local junior team. But there was a particular reason for attending on the particular day they did:

“Remember, Reg said. Remember who it was you saw today. Remember so you can tell your own kids someday. Remember. For forty years, I have tried my best.”

Hockey, for Canadians, Brunt tells us, “seems organic. It emerges out of the trees and rocks and ice, out of the long winter months, the rare, precious daylight, out of facing down nature, surviving and embracing whatever it can throw at us, enduring to spring.” It is a reflection that speaks directly to the plasma and marrow of the book’s subject. Bobby Orr wasn’t manufactured in any rink or out of any structured hockey program. His greatness arrived remarkably early in life, outdoors, and it arrived of his own passion and seemingly of God’s blessings.

Just how great, how early? For the 1962-63 hockey season Orr joined the Oshawa Generals as a bantam-aged 14-year-old. The Generals were so covetous of him that they allowed him to skip all of the team’s practices during the week, every week, and merely skate in the team’s weekend games, in deference to mother Orr’s wishes. He was selected as a second-team All Star that rookie season in Juniors. He also completed the eighth grade.

Brunt is at his best when honing in on his memory’s scrapbook of Orr’s brilliance on the ice. It is a memory that paints a vivid portrait of a player forever changing the confining notion of his position before reaching his twentieth birthday.

“Wherever he was on the ice, the puck just seemed to come to him, as though directed by a higher force. And when he carried it, when he was stickhandling, Orr never needed to look down. He could somehow feel the puck there on his stick blade . . . Orr’s skating ability was remarkable but not startling at first glance . . . Orr seemed to have five or six different speeds, different gears, each of which he could achieve without any obvious extra effort. When he accelerated, there were no little stutter steps to get going, just the same smooth, graceful motion.”

If it’s numbers you need to evaluate Orr’s best-ever brilliance, consider no more than this one: in his 1970-71 season with the Bruins Orr amassed a plus-minus tally of . . . plus one hundred and twenty four. To put that feat into perspective, consider that in his absolute prime — 1985 — the 208-pt. Wayne Gretzky skated a +98.

“The truth is,” Brunt observes, “you can adjust Orr’s statistics all you want, you can build in qualifiers, and he still stands alone . . . Just measure Orr against his contemporaries. Measure him against all others competing in the same position. There is no comparison — and his 1970-71 season stands alone as the greatest ever played by a defenseman, if not the greatest ever played by anyone in the history of the NHL.”

In chronicling Orr’s era and the athlete’s role in it Brunt selects New York Jets’ quarterback Joe Namath as a referent, a touchstone to #4. The two achieved stardom strikingly early in their pro careers, and as the ’60s ushered in redefined notions of culturally acknowledged sexuality in America, both exuded compelling and marketed-for-the-first-time-by-athletes sex appeal. But Brunt wants his reader to recognize the limitations with the comparison. Namath actively nurtured his sexual aura, and sought off-the-field fortune and diversion with it. Orr’s was less brazen and crude — he was Canadian modest through and through.

To an extent. Brunt’s eighth chapter, ‘Spin the Bobby,’ ventures where no others in journalism seemed to have before. It details the late-night practice by Orr in Boston bars when, well-beered, he’d stand before a literal wall-length of willing women and submit to being spun around by his teammates, his right arm and index finger outstretched, and end the evening back home with her his spinning stopped upon.

And did you know that Orr’s influence extended even to America’s strip clubs, based on his method of taping his stick?

” . . . years later, in the stripper’s trade, a ‘Bobby Orr’ would be a way of describing how the girls on stage trimmed their pubic hair, with just one strip down the middle.”

Who knew a biography of Bobby Orr could be a summer potboiler?

The story of Orr can’t be told without its tragic dimension: ‘Hockey Achilles’ is the narrative of the Orr knees. There are two inescapable truths about them (principally his left one): almost certainly they bore an inherent weakness or fragility that bordered on the congenital; and were his career to have commenced just 10 years later than it did, it’s virtually certain most if not all of the insidiously aggressive, invasive corrective procedures on them — career-shortening in their cumulation — would have been avoided.

I can’t guarantee that Searching for Bobby Orr will be the best book you read this summer. But I can guarantee though that should you pick it up you’ll finish it with a heightened love for the game we love.

Filed in Boston Bruins, Hockey Art, Hockey Heroes, Hockey Reading| Permalink| Comments (2)

A Netminder’s Impact on a Community - The Video

By The OFB Team
Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Today we told you about a WJLA-TV featured segment on Olie Kolzig’s impact on a family with an autistic child.

Here’s the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ATKkxvbKr4

The departure of Kolzig is made a little more real when you see the graphic “Olie Kolzig - Former Capitals Goaltender”.

Filed in Hockey Heroes, Olaf Kolzig, TV, Video Clips, WJLA, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (2)

A Netminder’s Impact on a Community

By The OFB Team
Tuesday, May 13, 2008

As Olie Kolzig’s official departure from Washington Capitals approaches, he will leave the District with more than fond memories and his name in the Capitals record books—his impact in the community will persist in even more meaningful ways.

WJLA’s ABC 7 News at 5 today will feature a segment on an autistic child who plays for the NOVA Cool Cats and will discuss the impact that Kolzig and the Caps have had on him and his family. The NOVA Cool Cats are a special hockey team which “exists for the enrichment of the athlete with a developmental disability.” Kolzig has long been a staunch supporter of autism research and is a founding member of Athletes Against Autism.

Nate Ewell, director of Media Relations for the Caps, has been told that the segment is “Oprah-worthy;� it should air around 5:45 p.m. today.

Filed in Hockey, Hockey Heroes, Olaf Kolzig, TV, WJLA| Permalink| Comments (6)

Happy Mother’s Day to all Hockey Moms

By The OFB Team
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Filed in Hockey, Hockey Heroes| Permalink| Comments (0)

Sunday’s Alright for Fighting

By Gustafsson
Friday, May 2, 2008

Here’s a reminder that Hockey Fights Cancer Maryland’s event takes place this Sunday, May 4th. As we told you a few weeks ago, the event features a skate-a-thon with celebrities such as Duff Goldman - Ace of Cakes, skills competition on the ice, broom ball on the ice, rides, carnival games, vendors, food, and a silent auction. Additionally, there will be a Washington Capitals / Philadelphia Flyers alumni hockey game, a special appearance by the Hanson Brothers, Chef Duff from Charm City Cakes, and live music by The Zambonis - North America’s Favorite ALL-HOCKEY Band!

If you can’t make the event, you can still help raise money by participating in the online auction which is now open until 4pm on the 4th. Items include a Nicklas Backstrom signed NHL hat, a white Michael Nylander signed sweater, a 2007-08 Washington Capitals team signed sweater, and more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SP0eWaUQANg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndPLrSp525U

Here are the particulars: Hockey Fights Cancer Maryland, Sunday, 4 May, 2008 - Ice World in Harford County, Maryland. And if you run into Dave Zamboni, tell him OFB sent you.

Filed in Charity, Fighting, Hockey Heroes, Music, Philadelphia Flyers, Video Clips, Washington Capitals, Zambonis| Permalink| Comments (1)

The GeriHatricks: Very Young at Hockey Heart

By pucksandbooks
Monday, March 31, 2008

When it comes to recreational hockey, boys will be boys — even if they’re 72 years old. That’s the theme enveloping the GeriHatricks’ Annual Senior Hockey Tournament, contested each March at the Gardens Ice House in Laurel, Md.

This past weekend marked the 5th anniversary of the invitational tourney “for senior hockey players more than 50 years young.” Five years ago, a half dozen teams of AARPers made up the first gathering: four teams of 60-and-over rosters and two in the 70-and-over set. This past weekend, 19 teams, comprised in three age brackets — 50s, 60s recreational and 60s competitive, and 70s — delivered a truly national flavor to an event rapidly gaining in popularity and significance. Among the entries: the New York Golden Apples; the Central Massachusetts Rusty Blades; the Minnesota Old Timers; the Lancaster (Pa.) Regency O’Timers.

Saturday morning I arrived at the Ice House early enough to see the Skipjacks’ 50-something entry, featuring ex-Caps Yvon Labre, Blair Stewart, Gary Rissling, Nelson Burton, and Alan Hangsleben. They put a cane-whacking on Lancaster, 9-1. No wonder — talk about a ringer lineup! And Rod Langway was rostered with the Skipjacks, but some late-arriving conflicts for the weekend prevented him from participating.

The tournament is a particular recreational hockey highlight for me, as I’ve a 65-year-old father who competed in it in its first year and was returning to action this year after a two-year stint on IR with a bum knee. When I learned of the participation by all those ex-Caps this year, I asked Dad if he was nervous.

“I won’t see them,” he replied, “They’re in the kiddie division.”

The GeriHatricks started as an effort to create a seniors hockey team to compete in the National Senior Games Association Winter Olympics held in Lake Placid nearly 10 years ago. They formed and sent a team to the Games in 1999, and won a gold medal the following year. There no longer are Senior Olympics for hockey, but the idea of “seasoned skating” has taken off in greater D.C.

Today, the GeriHatricks are comprised of three separate seniors’ teams (all entered in this March tournament), two 60-something squads divided into the “recreational” and the “Gold” (more competitive) outfits, and a 70-something unit. They skate recreationally for 90 minutes every Wednesday morning at the Laurel rink, and recent growth in interest among the grey-set in skates is leading the organization to acquire additional ice time on Mondays. In the summer, they’ll skate early on Saturday nights. There’ll be a full-fledged, four-team league housed out of Laurel this autumn. The Golden Guys.

The leadership behind the GeriHatricks is a 72-year-old named John Buchleitner — known as “Lightning” among his teammates. His rookie year in hockey arrived a bit later than most in this tournament: age 65.

“I used to run [for fitness], then I couldn’t run anymore,” he told me. “My two boys played hockey, and one was over here [at Laurel], and he said to me, ‘Dad, there’s a bunch of old geezers here playing hockey, maybe you should do something with them.’

“I’d watched thousands of games because of my boys playing, and I read some books,” he added. Is it fair to say he became hooked on hockey while silver-haired?

“Oh my goodness yes!” he beamed. “The best part of it is being in the room with the guys. You see guys from all walks of life — doctors and lawyers and guys that work in marinas, it’s such a funny group of people. They all have one common interest, and no one cares where you’re from or what you do.”

This was Labre’s first GeriHatricks tournament. The 58-year-old former Caps’ great was being recruited hard all weekend by the competitive 60-something entries, but he’ll have to wait for the 2010 tourney to “graduate.” His more immediate concern, however, was readying himself for a second game late Saturday afternoon, as the 2-0 Skipjacks entered elimination play, and his NHL-battered knee was already acting up on him.

“I gotta go ice myself down,” he said wearily. “Four games in two days . . . this is more tiring than my old [NHL] days.”

While chatting with Labre Saturday morning, I had a chance to ask him for his impressions of the Bruce Boudreau-led Caps.

“The puck movement is the thing I notice, the big difference in the team,” he told me. “They don’t hang on to the puck like they used to. The quicker you move it the more the other team has to adjust. That’s what I find creates a lot of openings for them.”

Lancaster’s lone goal Saturday morning against the Skipjacks was scored with one second left in the game — with Labre defending.

“You had a nice plus-minus going until that,” I chided.

“Oh the goalie was mad, too,” he replied. “Would have been his first shutout since he started playing in this.”

Speaking of goalies, I wondered about the men who put the pads on between the pipes in a seniors tournament. Earlier this season, I listened in as Olie Kolzig detailed for the media the morning stretching routine he now has to execute to ready himself for games. He’s not a young man anymore, you know. But Kolzig is half the age of some GeriHatricks. Turns out, goalies in this tournament are allowed to be as young as 45, but “most of them are of age,” meaning, contemporaries of their teammates, according to Buckleitner.

It isn’t all about old timers hockey here. It’s also about free beer in between and after games. Bill Oliver of the GeriHatricks’ Gold squad is the owner and proprietor of Oliver Ales and Stouts, which was on tap all tournament long in the Gardens lounge above the playing surfaces. Seniors making the trek across country to Laurel for the weekend know that a few tasty cold ones are ever at their disposal.

The tournament utilizes modified USA Hockey rules. Minor penalties banish offenders to the penalty box for just one-and-a-half minutes — in life’s later skating laps, after all, time’s too precious to be long holed up in a sin bin. Correspondingly, majors (of which there are few) require just four minutes in the box. Imagine if Donald Brashear puts down roots here and joins Labre’s alumni team. There’s no body checking, of course. Delayed offsides are in effect — “once all offending players have cleared the attacking zone, play may continue” — and I asked Dad how long it takes 70-somethings to clear the zone.

“Sometimes minutes,” he replied.

The player conversations one overhears in and near locker rooms at the Ice House are a bit different with this tournament as well:

“I need knee replacement [surgey].”

“I’m slated for a new hip.”

“How are the great grandkids?”

I also learned that requests for player interviews after games require a bit of patience on the part of the reporter. This is partly due to players’ diminished dexterity in getting out of gear. Post-game refreshments, which among the early morning skaters may have included Bloody Marys, also prolong the delays.

A modern advance in hockey comforts is especially helpful in a tournament such as this: equipment bags with wheels.

My father’s team lost its first two games on Friday and entered Saturday morning’s matchup on the brink of winless elimination. They pulled out to a 1-0 lead and clung to it precariously until there were about 4 minutes to go in the game. Then Dad potted an insurance marker during a scrum in the crease. The comeback, at 65, complete.

Seated in the stands among a dozen or so proud sons, relatives, and friends of other players, I made a point of letting them know of the heroics.

“That was my old man,” I yelled with glee.

Filed in Area Youth Hockey, Former Coaches & Players, Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey Heroes, Old Time Hockey| Permalink| Comments (6)

Happy Birthday, Mr. Hockey

By The OFB Team
Monday, March 31, 2008

80 years young today

redwings_gordiehowe.jpg
For more on Howe, check out David Amber’s article on ESPN.
Filed in Hockey Heroes, Mr. Hockey, National Hockey League| Permalink| Comments (0)

The Enduring Appeal of Hockey’s Warmup Skate

By pucksandbooks
Monday, March 17, 2008

It is a ritual unlike anything else is sports. Fifteen minutes of a 20-man army unified in its movements and initiative. A synchronized orchestration on skates that announces the evening’s novelty of grace, timing, ferocity, and breathtaking skill. It’s sports’ most poignant prelude.

Does hockey have the most alluring and impressive pre-game warm-up in all of sports? Yes — and by a wide margin.

It is an event that ensnares the young especially, but quite often the parent as well, and with a comparable sense of awe and devotion.

We are moths to this flame.

To arrive at the rink in time to see warm-ups is to feel treated to bonus exposure to the planet’s greatest athletes, but also something more: it is to be witness to a highly stylized symphony of sights and sounds, the collective of which is a compelling commercial for hockey’s culture.

Unlike the pre-game routines of others sports, which commonly involve coaches organizing and orchestrating them, unsupervised hockey players appear to know instinctively when, where, and what to do on the ice 30 minutes before each game. They execute their exercises silently, sure of every movement. It is a display of the artist in the athlete, the armored warrior also the theater stage star: movements well-rehearsed, very well synchronized, poignant and powerful, the actors showcasers of sublime skills. There are long-established, well-regimented drills within the warm-up for the team to carry out, but there are as well, detected by the keen eye, isolated, individual exhibitions of other-worldly virtuosity.

Its purpose is to work up a sweat, but in the process it also inspires.

No matter the time of year that hockey is being played at Verizon Center hundreds of fans flock down as close to the rink plexiglass as they can for the 6:30 warm-up by the evening’s teams. Verizon Center, to its credit, has a policy allowing any ticketholder to scurry down low to the venue’s up-close seats to watch the entirety of the pre-game skate. The result is an every-night swarm of admirers hard by the glass, the young in rapture, their elders viewing with young hearts — both united in an appreciation for their dream access.

The players themselves seem to recognize how special a cultural moment in the sport this skate is. For Bobby Hull it was often an opportunity to sign programs clutched and extended out over the glass by boyhood Chicago. (The Golden Age of Hockey, with its lower side glass, allowed for a wonderful accessibility of fan to player.) At around 6:28 each game evening Alexander Ovechkin bolts out of the open gate of the Capitals’ bench like a rodeo bull too long lodged in its pen, seizes a puck before any teammate, and races with it for the warmup’s first wicked wrist shot rifled into the cage. He is, technically, 22 years old in this moment, but in his zeal and glee for the feat he may as well be 13 and in the throes of first-love with hockey.

Football players stretch and in dull assemblies conduct walk-throughs with their position coaches. Basketballers have layup lines (yawn). Baseball players meander through BP, leisurely ground balls, and fungo bat fly balls. But pre-game hockey, any night of the week, offers a Saturday night symphony of spectacular sights and sounds.

There is drama even to the procession of players rifling wrist shots into the unguarded cage in the skate’s opening moments. Which player can with the most precision pick the cage’s top corners? Whose shot carries so much sting that its riccochet returns the puck well out back into the skating slot? In my own warmups as a player I much never minded the misses on the pre-game net so long as they delivered that piercing crack against the plexi-glass; I figured it produced something for the netminder at the other end to think about.

The two teams take pains (most of the time) to respect the half-sheet territoriality of the skate, and this, too, adds an aura to the moment. Montreal’s Claude Lemieux precipitated perhaps the NHL’s most infamous pre-game brawl in the 1987 Eastern Conference finals versus Philadelphia. Lemieux liked to shoot a puck into the opposing net at the end of the warmup skate. The 1980s Flyers (Dave Brown, Rick Tocchet, Craig Berube, Scott Mellanby), as you might imagine, took none too kindly to this habit. On the night in question the Flyers even turned their cage around at the end of the skate to impede Lemieux. He outwaited them and fired away. Before it was all over, there were players brawling out on the ice in their socks and shower sandals.

Always there is a blood-warming soundtrack, too, to the prelude skate — carefully selected, generally hard rockin’ tracks that seem in synch with the high-octane mission ahead. From bantam to beer league to big league, loud rock music is a staple of player warmups. I’ve long meant to solicit from the beer league-ing among our readers their pre-game playlists and see what songs most commonly get cued up. Marilyn Manson a few years back seemed to offer up an anthem for eternity for hockey warm-ups in rinks across the globe:

I don’t want you and I don’t need you/ don’t bother to resist, I’ll beat you/ It’s not your fault that you’re always wrong/ the weak ones are there to justify the strong/ the beautiful people, the beautiful people

Whether I was 7 or 37 I never ceased to appreciate how thoroughly two NHL teams could chew up a 200-by-85 sheet of fresh ice with a mere 15 minutes of fluid labor. At 6:45 their snow-crusted sheet looks identical to the one inhabited for an hour by 200 Saturday public sessions skaters at the community rink.

I suppose my exposure to warm-up skates at old Capital Center was formative: it wasn’t just that I was young then but that the Pringle Chip’s seats were enveloped in such pervasive darkness, and so the shimmering white ice below that greeted the warm-up arrival, with so many players rushing about it helmetless, their era-appropriate long hair fluttering gallantly as their skate blades crunched and smacked pucks hissed, was hero-forming.

Warm-ups have changed a bit since then. They’re shorter now, it seems — 15 minutes instead of about 20. Also, slapshots have all but disappeared from them. I remember well the firing squad along the blueline pelting Al Jensen and Ron Low and Pete Peeters and Don Beaupre. I must have watched a thousand of these slapshots at the old barn before I turned 15, ever awestruck at their velocity and the nano-second of interlude between launches. Perhaps it’s because today’s sticks are so expensive, and the velocity they generate so significant, that slapshots have been removed from the routine. But it may also be the case that slapshots have dissipated greatly in games in general, as the time and space they require have vanquished — so players simply are warming up with the shots they most commonly use in games.

NHLers, all, were themselves at one time the wide-eyed, nose-pressed-against-the-plexi-glassers, and it isn’t uncommon to see players today toss a puck up over the glass or even bestow an underperforming (nonetheless still expensive) stick to a lucky youth at the end of these warm-up minutes. More common are the winks and smiles players perched next to the glass will direct at their young admirers on the other side. Eras change in hockey, but the sport’s elite continue to connect with their core constituents in this special slice of time.

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, Fighting, Hockey Art, Hockey Heroes, Hockey Rituals, Old Time Hockey, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (15)

Happy Miracle on Ice Day!

By The OFB Team
Friday, February 22, 2008

A wintry Friday it was 28 years ago today — a lot like today in D.C. A few of you, like us, and actually lived that fabulous Friday 28 years ago. But even if you didn’t, we’d like to know what that seminal day in American sporting history has come to mean to you. Share with us your lasting impressions of that event and its meaning to your hockey life.

A little snippet for you to rekindle the miracle mood:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwpTj_Z9v-c

Filed in American Hockey, Hockey Heroes, Miracle on Ice, USA Hockey, Video Clips| Permalink| Comments (4)

A Savior Ascends

By pucksandbooks
Sunday, February 3, 2008

Ovechkin - Caps @ Pens - 21 January, 2008We are likely to look back on this week and realize it as historically significant in the lifetime of the Washington Capitals.

The HockeyWashington hope in June 2004, when the Capitals then made Alexander Ovechkin the first selection in the NHL Entry Draft, was that he’d be not only a dominant performer around whom the team could be rebuilt, but that he’d be a transformational figure — outsized in his impact such that even Washington’s Redskin-centric big media would fall in love with him, and in turn, at long last give his sport its due.

He is, and the coverage is coming.

Beginning with his stage-stealing performance as a 16-year-old at the World Junior Championships in 2001 — he scored 18 points in eight games as a young midget in that tournament widely regarded as the world’s best — the hockey world waited for him to claim the mantle as the world’s best player.

He would do so this week.

Through his first two-and-a-half NHL seasons Ovechkin performed in high-octane, highlight-reel fashion, earning a well-deserved Calder Trophy in 2005, All-Star game selections, and most especially displaying on a nightly basis an unprecedented package of brutal power and dynamic offensive virtuosity. From his very first game he was recognized as ranking in the game’s elite, but last season he was merely terrific while the wunderkid Sid went Hart on him. A qualitative differentiation among elites appeared to have set in.

Then last weekend in Atlanta Ovechkin made the 2008 All Star Game his own. As an event it was a meagerly competitive showcase of oddly conceived skills drills, followed by shinny on Sunday; in hockey’s buffet, a mid-season pause for Pop Tarts and soda pop. But in the free-wheeling schlock of a shootout exercise AO made like Michael in his creativity and flair, and in an instant the sheet without Sidney didn’t seem so small.

The Caps were outclassed and blanked in Montreal in their first game back from the break, and on Thursday morning there was a palpable sense that a home-and-home sweep by the Habs might usher in the first slump of the Bruce Boudreau era. That was, it appears, a primal challenge for Ovie. That and Alex Kovalev’s high-stick hello in Thursday night’s opening seconds. Alex got mad, Alex’s team needed a victory, and so Alex decided the outcome — but in a manner that is now known as the Ovechkin hat trick: something broken (perhaps a nose), certainly some stitches, and goals in every period, including a game-winner in OT. Also, hit everything that moves. Hard. No surprise at this site: a talented hockey blogger — our good friend Peerless — coined it. A performance that saw Ovie pass Sidney in aura and Howe in bravado.

Not a bad night’s work.

Following came the Ray Ferraro video. The Washington Post getting engaged in the buzz. The fawning and head-shakings of his All Star peers published and broadcast. Canadian partisans a month ago singing Sidney’s anthem now are serenading Ovechkin’s supremacy — and doing so, befitting their heritage, with gratitude, for Alex’s ascension means that hockey has gotten better.

When in April 2004 the Entry Draft lottery results were made known at noontime that very sunny day I made a friend leave work and drive far and furiously to purchase Russian beer. That same friend rang my cell phone as I exited Verizon Center Thursday night.

“You were right then,” he told me. “He will will us to a Cup.”

On Friday morning my father rang my cell from a hotel in south Florida, where he was set to begin a sailboat vacation in the Caribbean. Traveling on Thursday night, he hadn’t been able to see the game. Early Friday morning, with his hotel cafe coffee, he glanced up at a flatscreen’s sports highlight segment of Thursday night.

“It was three minutes long,” he told me. “It led with Ovechkin. All of his goals. They showed all of them. Then they replayed all of them, in slow motion, as if the sportscaster anticipated that his viewers wouldn’t believe the results replayed in actual speed.”

This breaking news over-coverage was taking place in south Florida.

“We in Washington have our Gretzky,” my father concluded.

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, All-Star Game, Blogs, Hockey Heroes, Internet, Media, Montreal Canadiens, Sidney Crosby, Washington Capitals, Washington Post| Permalink| Comments (3)

Join Us for OFB Night at the Movies: ‘The Rocket’

By The OFB Team
Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Rocket - Movie PosterIf you’re like us, once or twice in December you like to take a break from the tsunami sea of shopping mall humanity and spend a couple of hours tucked inside a dark theater for a holiday season movie. Thanks to the supportive management at the Avalon Theater in Northwest D.C., and a partnership with the Washington Capitals and the Canadian Embassy, OFB readers have an opportunity for precisely this next Tuesday, December 18, when they’re invited to gather at the Avalon for a discounted screening of ‘The Rocket, the Legend of Rocket Richard,’ the icon of icons in Canadian athletic lore.

“As a young boy from blue collar Québec, Richard had a dream to play in the National Hockey League. Beneath his soft-spoken, working class exterior burned a passion that transformed this young factory worker into “The Rocket.â€? In the 1950s pre-helmet days of hockey, facing constant discrimination, The Rocket played with finesse, speed, and the fire that defied all odds and made him a legend.”

On Tuesday evening, December 18 at 8:30, OFB readers will be able to see ‘The Rocket’ for the discounted admission of $7 at the Avalon. Released in limited distribution in 2005, ‘The Rocket’ has played to strong reviews, and its DVD was released in the U.S. just yesterday. Some notable current and former NHLers had on-screen roles in the film: Sean Avery of the Rangers; Pascal Dupuis of the Thrashers; Ian Lapierriere of the Avalanche; Vincent Lecavalier of the Lightning; Stephane Quintal, a former Canadien; and Mike Ricchi, former Shark and Coyote.

One of Washington’s great old movie houses, the Avalon opened in February 1923 — “when patrons could watch a silent film for thirty cents.” By 2001, the Avalon was the oldest continuously operating movie house in Washington. We won’t get in for thirty cents next Tuesday night, but we’ll be seated in a classic cinematic setting for a strong film. Additionally, the Capitals are working hard to secure a few current and former players to attend, and we’ll have a post-movie bit of Q & A about Rocket and the movie with them.

We may even invite Gene Weingarten and Michael Wilbon.

The Avalon will be screening ‘The Rocket’ for us Tuesday night in Theater 1. We have 125 seats reserved at the discounted $7 admission. All OFB readers wishing to attend Tuesday night must email us their names and those in their party. Given our involvement with the Caps and the Canadian Embassy for this event, seats are sure to go fast. We do not want you driving into town on a whim next Tuesday night only to get shut out. So drop us a line with your full name and reserve your seats today: email@onfrozenblog.com

Who doesn’t like taking in a great flick during the holiday season, and in this instance, surrounded by hundreds of fellow hockey lovers? The Avalon will be showing ‘The Rocket’ each day from December 14 through 20, at 3:15 and 8:30.

The Avalon is located at 5612 Connecticut Ave. NW; (202) 966-6000.

Check out ‘The Rocket’s’ YouTube movie trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkcFx1p4-Cg

Filed in Hockey, Hockey Art, Hockey Heroes, Hockey Movies, Montreal Canadiens, OFB, Old Time Hockey, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (2)

In Hockey, It’s All in the Family

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Cup'pa JoeQuality human beings comprise the vast majority of the enrollment for the great game of hockey, and so when the giants within it are called upon to offer reflections on their journeys within the game, we shouldn’t be surprised at the quality they offer in that endeavor. It’s impossible to watch the NHL’s Hall of Fame Induction ceremony and not be persuaded that the humility, character, and most particularly the connection to family that hockey players demonstrate and articulate is unrivaled in the landscape of professional sports. Baseball’s induction ceremony this past summer, by virtue of the character of its principal inductees Gwynn and Ripken, seemed to take a step back in time and grace and generate a renewal of honor for a sport badly in need of it. But the NHL, with its highest honor event every November, has it every year.

The billing for Monday night’s ceremony in Toronto was a legends’ list of inductees, the best class ever, but listening to their tales of rising within dedicated families and their unwavering support structures — ones that are extended and amplified within the larger hockey family itself — one felt that this event, seemingly a spectacle for the rare-talent individual, was actually every bit as much an exhibition for the family unit that serves as the perpetual wellspring of greatness in this game.

The cameras last night delivered to us footage of the excellence of the inductees on the ice; their poise and emotion while reflecting on their honor on stage; but also regular glimpses of their families seated nearby and poetic testimonials from their sons as to their invaluable influence. All seemed interrelated and intertwined.

And in point of fact it is. The Hockey Hall of Fame has among its exhibits a simple home’s family room circa 1950 within which family members are gathered around a broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada. It also has a station wagon honoring the pre-dawn pilgrimages to the rink, played out over years through the hardships of Canadian winter, conducted as devoted ritual.

A hockey player’s developmental journey requires nothing short of an all-out commitment of time and resources from families. They arise on weekdays with newspaper delivery trucks to make pre-school practices in frigid blackness. They become road warriors of the winter weekend to travel to games and tournaments, and in 90 percent of Canada and the upper Midwest, that’s often desolate and dangerous travel.

Becoming a hockey player is rarely a fleeting, half-hearted venture. Perhaps that’s why this sport is played with so much heart.

Al MacInnis was the first honoree last night to acknowledge the role of family in his greatness, and as the first-ever Nova Scotian to be enshrined (incredible, that), he made sure that his extended family members in Port Hood knew of their role in his career. They had a place in the Hall of Fame, too, he said.

It was heartening to hear Scott Stevens testify to the impact he felt from his eight years in the Washington Capitals’ family. He thanked David Poile and Bryan Murray from management, and his defensive partner Brian Engblom. He characterized his tenure in town as “a period of growth” and alluded to being a part of the first Capitals’ team to qualify for the postseason — the first of seven straight such in D.C. he was a part of. And he thanked Capitals’ fans for their support.

The tear machine that is Mark Messier of course had ample reflections on the role of family in his career. He had ample reflections period, obliterating the prescribed four minutes for remarks with rambling incoherence that nearly outlasted his career. What if he’d been wearing a tuxedo system designed by Reebok amid all that sobbing?

Messier’s frequent pregnancy-long pauses allowed me to rememeber that at one time his family was reputed to have included Madonna. I rather delight in hockey’s figures of towering talent, their origins in towns of hundreds, their modesty unmatched in or out of professional sports, dalliance-ing with American starlet strumpets. That of course is the exception to the more mundane extension of family in this sport. Hockey players never forget their roots, or lose their attachment to them.

Filed in Baseball, Hockey, Hockey Heroes, Hockey Night in Canada, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Weather, Morning cup-a-joe, Old Time Hockey, Other Sports, Reebok, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (2)

Reminiscence and Appreciation: Peter the Great

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, November 1, 2007

Even in the prime of his career, there was a fairly pervasive sense that Peter Bondra, today the holder of six Washington Capitals’ offensive records, was never a member of the NHL’s elite class of superstar. Or even if he was one.

He was.

Truly, he was one of sports’ most anonymous superstars of the 1990s. I cannot recall even a modest ESPN feature segment showcasing his ample arsenal of sniping skills. This for the scorer of more than 500 NHL goals — most of them in bunches. And ESPN was the NHL’s broadcast home for almost the entirety of Bondra’s career.

No matter. He may have scored in record-setting fashion without media fanfare, but he surely secured the career-long, passionate appreciation of Caps’ fans.

BonzaiApproximately 95 percent of his 503 goals (472) were scored in a Caps’ sweater. He is remembered as fondly as he is by as many Caps’ fans as he is because in addition to scoring as frequently as he did, he did so with an endearing, infectious exuberance: there was artistry to his besting NHL goaltenders in elite fashion but also in the wide-eyed, even wider grinned, pressed-against-the-plexiglass manner which he celebrated with the home crowd.

Bondra’s place in the pantheon of all-time great Washington athletes is secure. He merits mentioning among the likes of Darrell Green, Walter Johnson, and Wes Unseld as a giant in athletic D.C.

A compelling case could be made for his classification as the Capitals’ all-time best player. Some of his offensive records (such as his 32 shorthanded goals) will withstand even Alexander Ovechkin’s special forces assault.

Peter Bondra retired from professional hockey this week. He was, from the finding of a single Caps’ scout (Jack Button), the greatest gift HockeyWashington ever received. Who would have imagined that such a slice of hockey heaven could be plucked from round seven (1990) of an entry draft?

Bondra ranks among the most popular players ever to wear a Caps’ sweater, and it was easy to understand his appeal: he didn’t just score lots and lots of goals, he did so with a sniper’s flair and a stallion’s speed. And in the immediate glow of the red lamp’s lighting and the shriek of the celebratory siren, he capped it off with his genuine exuberance. He invited the home crowd into his glee and in so doing nurtured a career-long connection with Caps’ fans. A half-inch of plexiglass ever separated Bonzai from them in the Capital Center and then MCI Center, but that physical barrier seemed only conceptual in his hundreds of celebrations over 14 years here.

In recent seasons I’d become distracted from my longstanding appreciation of Bonzai by some insiders’ reflections of intermittent acrimony between Bondra and the Caps as well as my conviction that he never should have worn any sweater but Washington’s. Management and the Bondra didn’t always see eye to eye, with blame likely shared by both sides. This, too, is part of his legacy in Washington. But now that I don’t have him any more, now that I can’t have him any more, I really miss him. Continue reading ›

Filed in Former Coaches & Players, Front Office, Hockey Heroes, Peter Bondra, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (7)

OFB: New Fan of the Caps’ Fanclub

By pucksandbooks
Friday, August 10, 2007

Craig Laughlin, Teshawn Johnson, Boyd Gordon - photo courtesty Vic Ignacio - Washington Capitals Fan ClubI went to Kettler Capitals Wednesday afternoon planning on interviewing one special hockey player but actually met up and chatted with two. Teshawn Johnson, 8, of the Distrct was camping at Kettler while I spoke with Boyd Gordon. How he got there caught my attention.

Teshawn was one of two area youths whose participation in the camp was sponsored by the Capitals’ Fanclub. Zoe Pellowitz of Alexandria was the other lucky camper. Some time earlier this summer area rinks were alerted to the Fanclub’s commendable intention and asked to choose among their Mites two skaters to send out onto the Kettler ice for a week with the likes of Craig Laughlin, Brian Pothier, and Boyd Gordon. The Fanclub pledged to pay their way.

Teshawn is a center for a Mites team at the District’s Ft. Dupont Ice Rink. At 8, he’s no newcomer to hockey. “I’ve been playing hockey since I was 2,” he told me. 

He is an enthusiastic Caps’ fan, and his favorite hockey player is Alexander Ovechkin. I asked him what he was enjoying most about camp, and he gave me an answer perhaps every center should. “I really like the passing drills.” He was also greatly enjoying the company of his fellow campers.         

What I like most about this story, besides the fact that two young hockey lovers who perhaps otherwise wouldn’t have camped at Kettler did so, is the sense of community in the men and women in the Fanclub. I don’t know any of them individually, but it’s clear that their attachment to the Caps and hockey is predicated on a heck of a lot more than weekend roadtrips.

Filed in Area Youth Hockey, Hockey Heroes, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (2)

The Silent Indictment

By pucksandbooks
Monday, July 23, 2007

Cup'pa JoeI read no new Harry Potter this past weekend and instead familiarized myself with details about likely indictments in baseball (Barry Bonds) and basketball (NBA referee Tom Donaghy). In Saturday’s Washington Post, Dave Sheinen had a fascinating account of Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s startling indifference to Bonds’ inevitable home run record. The commissioner — the chief executive officer of the sport — is apparently uncertain if he’ll be in the ballpark this week or next when Bonds passes Hank Aaron’s home run record.

Necessarily, and instantly, I drew a parallel between Bonds’ record pursuit and Wayne Gretzky’s with Gordie Howe’s most goals scored one more than a decade ago. This summer, neither Selig nor Hank Aaron have much stomach to be seated near home plate when Bonds rounds the bases for the 756th time. I call it The Silent Indictment.

In March 1994, as Gretzky honed in on his 802nd goal, both Commissioner Bettman and Gordie himself followed #99 in the L.A. Kings’ games. Gretzky being Gretzky, he didn’t have them travel all that long, scoring the record goal precisely where he should have, in Edmonton. It was the among the mightiest of individual records that was about to fall, much as Aaron’s is in baseball, and Bettman and hockey royalty accorded it its full weight in commemoration.

It’s a staggering juxtaposition. The most significant testimonial to the record-breaking moment on the diamond this summer will likely be offered by the game’s TV play-by-play voice. And even there, you wonder what manner of reaction he’ll offer. Elation? Relief? Contempt?

There’s a queer and almost perverse juxtaposition, too, in place when comparing the physical makeup of the athletes who pursued these hallowed records in different sports. Wayne, who likely never lifted a weight in his life, let alone entertained thoughts of injecting horse hormones into his bloodstream, surpassed the brawny shouldered, iron-elbowed, and menacing demeanor and determination of hockey’s greatest power forward, Mr. Hockey. There could be no second-guessing about the legitimacy of Wayne’s virtuosity or his rightful claim to the record. Aaron was the Wayne of his era, diminutive in physical stature but a world-altering presence with his talent. Today he’s pursued by a fraud, a freak, a pariah, an emblem of our judgement-free sports culture.

The cage into which Gretzky scored his record-breaking goal today resides at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Perhaps Bud Selig will follow hockey’s practice and establish a commemorate display of Bonds’ record at Cooperstown one day: an encased syringe.

Filed in Baseball, Gary Bettman, Hockey Hall of Fame, Hockey Heroes, MLB, Morning cup-a-joe, National Hockey League, Other Sports, Washington Post| Permalink| Comments (1)

Huge Loss for Local Hockey: Brian Melnick (1954-2007)

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, July 3, 2007

Montgomery Blue DevilsThe greater Washington area lost a pillar of its youth hockey community this past week, when Brian Melnick, former president of the Montgomery Youth Hockey Association for 12 years, passed on June 27.

It was on Melnick’s watch that youth hockey participation exploded in this region.

This loss hits home for me, as I’m a Montgomery County native and, more importantly, Brian’s son Andrew is a hockey teammate of mine.

Brian Melnick started out as the Head Coordinator of Montgomery’s hockey instructional program for about four years, and during those times served on Montgomery Hockey’s Board of Directors. He was a frequent road warrior, as so many who serve the region’s youth hockey community must be, attending his own and other league meetings but also following the promising hockey careers of his two sons, Andrew and Gregory. Born in the District, raised in Chevy Chase, and raising his own family in Montgomery County, Melnick was as local as they come in these parts.

Melnick’s hockey work, of course, went unsalaried, and he sacrificed countless hours and weekends, purely to better the game that he so loved. In so doing, he greatly bettered the Montgomery community.

“This was all after 12-hour days at his job,” his son Andrew told me. “During all this he still found the time to make all of the games my brother and I played in.”

The impact of his presence was shown at his funeral last Friday, where nearly 1,000 people mourned, many former players, coaches, and parents involved with MYHA.

During Melnick’s 12 years as Montgomery president the level of player participation doubled and today stands at well over 1,000 registered members. What began as simple winter recreation at the dawn of Melnick’s commitment evolved into a hockey development program garnering national respect and now, virtually annually, a pipeline of players earning college hockey scholarships.

Chip Mitchell, President of the Montgomery Youth Hockey Association, issued this statement:

“I’m very sorry to report that MYHA has lost one of its longest-standing and most influential members, Brian Melnick. As many of you know, Brian was the President of MYHA for twelve years. Brian’s hard work and dedication, as much as anything, helped MYHA build the club we have today. In addition to being a tireless volunteer and powerful voice both within our club and at the CBHL, Brian was a genuinely nice person. The entire MYHA family will miss Brian.

“Anyone wishing to honor Brian’s memory can do so by making a contribution to the Congestive Heart Failure Fund at the Washington Hospital Center.”

Filed in American Hockey, Area Youth Hockey, Hockey, Hockey Heroes, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (1)