08 September, 2008

Category Archives: Hockey Reading

Pictures and Prose Comprising a Lovesong to Our Game

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Have you ever wanted to convey all the passion in your hockey heart for the game you cherish to a buddy who just doesn’t get it, and felt meager to the task? Well Andrew Podnieks’ A Canadian Saturday Night: Hockey and the Culture of a Country is both poignant expression of his very hockey heart as well as a marvelously considered reckoning of his country’s congenital love affair with hockey. It is also a beautifully illustrated keepsake for your coffee table. It’s not meant so much to be read cover to cover as coveted and intermittently perused, which in a sense makes it a fantastic light read for summer, when we miss our game so.

While offered from the uniquely Canadian vantage, Podnieks’ prose lovesong actually achieves more than its aim of capturing and illustrating Canada’s puck passion: it fairly invites the reader to testify that Canada’s passion has actually been broadly exported and replicated across oceans and borders. Still, Podnieks is proud of the hold hockey has in his homeland. “You cannot live in Canada without being touched somehow by hockey,” he writes. “And, yes, that is a good thing.”

The work is a set of 65 single-page snapshots from the hockey heart, accompanied by photographs that are alternately historically significant, clever and amusing, and artistically apropos. They have a flair about them, too; how better to convey the odd but enduring allure of ‘Slapshot’ than with a tight shot of Todd McFarlane’s fabled action figures?

Podnieks’ subject(s) matter is meant to convey the fullest range of hockey’s hold on his country, down to the tradition of NHL fans fashioning their own Stanley Cups out of aluminum foil and brandishing them at playoff arenas each spring. In his preface Podnieks powerfully foreshadows his reverence for, and acute insights into, hockey’s storied culture:

“Hockey is not just sport and it’s more than a passion; it is an ingrained part of who we are, how we live our lives and go about our business. Grown men play the game until they are too old and their bones too brittle to endure the rigours of skating . . .

“There is an artistry to the game, both a ferocity and a beauty that make hockey appealing. It’s creative but played at breakneck speed . . . It’s very much a thespian game that develops character and plot . . . It is a game that includes the mentally strong and the emotionally weak, the sportsman and the cheap-shot artist, the hero and the villian, the brave man and the coward.

“Hockey players walk among us — they are like us. They are not overly tall like basketball players; they are not beefed up like football players or juiced up like baseball players. They are essentially average size and weight. What separates them from us is that they are in meticulous physical condition and have incredible speed and strength — and they have an indefatigable will to win that the average person simply does not possess.”

Podnieks knows better than to take his subjects too seriously. Within his rumination of the role beer has played in the live and broadcast consumption of hockey, he writes, “hey, is it just coincidence, or is a beer bottle shaped just like the Stanley Cup but without the bowl on top? Or is it the Cup that’s shaped like a silver beer bottle?”

A sampling of his other subject treatments:

  • House-League Jacket: “A young player cherishes it like it’s his birth certificate, and with it he is accepted into the country called Hockey . . . The jacket authenticates a child’s on-ice endeavors . . . You wear it to tournaments, to special occasions. You never wear your hockey jacket while playing road hockey or doing yardwork . . . It’s essentially a boy’s tuxedo . . . You wear it to school to identify yourself as a hockey player, and in Canada that identity gives you instant credibility.”
  • Grapes: “Cherry got in his hottest water yet when he said the majority of visor-wearing players in the league were French Canadian, a comment that upset many. No one mentioned that, statistically, he was absolutely correct . . . Regardless of controversy, Cherry understands the hockey code, the game played underneath or outside of the rulebook . . . Cherry is something most Canadians are not. He is in your face, unafraid to speak his mind, and seeks the approval of no one . . . he loves the game as he loves life.”
  • Sharp Skates: “A quality skate sharpener is like a barber, tailor, or mechanic — find a good one and you keep him for life.”
  • “CAR!”: “who in this country has not heard the peal of kids’ voices screaming, “Car!” as a car approaches and slows? The ball carrier puts his foot on the ball to stop play officially and maintain possession. The goalies pick up the nets like they’re gates at a border crossing and move to the side of the road to let the car pass. They then move their nets back to the middle of the road, and the game continues. You do this until it gets dark, or until the guy whose ball it is says he has to go home for dinner, or until you’re simply too tired. The next day, you play some more.”

“This book is an attempt to define the collective history of the sport,” Podnieks writes. He’s collected hockey history all right. I hope he finds more of it.

Filed in Canada, Hockey, Hockey Art, Hockey Reading| Permalink| Comments (2)

A Book Worth Saving for Your Reading List

By Mrs.Gustafsson
Saturday, June 7, 2008

[Admin note: Frustrated with her husband's snail-pace reading speed, Mrs. Gustafsson stole the following book from him, read it, and provided this review -- before Gustafsson would have made it past the second chapter.]

The summer season is rapidly approaching and many travelers will be compiling a list of books to read while on vacation. The hockey fan should consider Saved, by Jack Falla. It follows the season of Jean Pierre Savard, a goalie for the Bruins and his quest to win the Cup as his career is winding down. There are no surprises here but the book is loaded with hockey history and behind the scenes looks at the life of a professional hockey player. Falla covered the NHL for many years for Sports Illustrated and he brings the reader into the locker room, the rink and lives of these fictional characters.

At first Jean Pierre (JP) appears to be the main character as the first thirty pages focus on his background information, how he became a goalie and his college career then launches into present day. We are introduced to his best friend and teammate Cam Carter, get a glimpse of JP’s personal life which includes a Ferrari and a lot of sex, which should entice the male reader to pick up the book. However, as the book progresses the real main character becomes evident, the hockey culture and game. Hockey is all JP has ever known and as the end of his career looms, he is terrified by the prospect of not knowing what to do with the rest of his life. Three concussions during the season cannot deter him from his need to keep playing, even with a warning from his fiancée Faith McNeil, a former college classmate and hotshot basketball player, now a dotcom millionaire and doctor.

Gustafsson obviously has done a good job over the past eight years because I was familiar with the majority of the names, terms and events mentioned in the book and some basic hockey knowledge does make the book more pleasurable. Falla does provide a lot of detail, so that the new hockey fan will not be completely lost while reading this book. An example is the description of the Vezina Trophy. The reader learns for whom the trophy is named and why, and the details about Vezina’s final game and untimely death. Sports metaphors run amuck in the book, which at times was cumbersome to this reader. It may be a gender difference, as the book is told from a male point of view, because while a sports fan I certainly don’t answer every question directed to me with a sports reference.

As JP moves through his season and a trade from the Bruins, he gives details about the games he playing, what they mean during the different points of the season, what needs to happen for his Cup run to continue and how it feels to have someone else gunning for his job the entire time. Most readers cannot identify with being a professional athlete and being paid millions of dollars a year. But they can relate to being in their thirties, not knowing what to do next in their lives and struggling to hold onto their youth. This, coupled with the hockey history woven throughout the book makes it an enjoyable and quick read. (Provided the reader does not have a four year old and six month old vying for his or her attention.) As you pack your bags for the beach, mountains and beyond make sure you include Saved.

Filed in Hockey Reading| Permalink| Comments (4)

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)

On Beaches, Backyard Grilling, Deck Beers, and the Pre-Eminent Value of the THN Draft Guide

By pucksandbooks
Monday, May 26, 2008

There’s wide variety to the recreation we employ on summer’s first (and long) weekend. Families pack the car and head for the beach. Those remaining at home often host the season’s opening backyard barbeque. Still others take in a ballgame with the kids or garden or dive into summer reading in a hammock. My time-honored tradition associated with this holiday weekend combines the anticipation of Christmas morning with the devoted labor of study for final exams in graduate school: Memorial weekend inaugurates my Season of DraftGeekdom, and on its kickoff Friday I stroll excitedly to a District bookstore near my office to secure the newly arrived Hockey News NHL Entry Draft Preview. With it I will whittle away the long weekend hours, come rain or shine, intoxicated by three-paragraph summaries of eighteen-year-olds who are the hoped-to-be future of hockey.

THN’s not the most informative or important of my Entry Draft resources, but over the years it’s tended to arrive on newsstands in Washington quite near the holiday weekend, and so its procurement serves as the spiritual kickoff to my holiday weekend. It’s true: during one of the calender’s most powerful symbols of summer my thoughts and doings remain lodged in winter.

Once I possess the cherished Guide, I make like Sandy Berger leaving the National Archives.

I was business traveling from the American Southwest during the end of this past week, and so my trip to a Washington-area Borders or Barnes & Noble for the Guide was delayed until Saturday morning. This caused sleeplessness in me only Tuesday through Friday nights. My Draft addiction is such that I actually entered all the newsstands in my airline’s gates in both the Vegas and Phoenix airports this week hoping to find the Guide.

As if. I may as well have been searching for Vermont Maple syrup there.

Returned home and being out in the Maryland suburbs added some drama to my Guide search Saturday morning: typically, I couldn’t be certain of finding this or any other edition of THN there. Initially I struck out at the Borders at Bethesda’s White Flint Mall, but at my next stop, at the Barnes & Noble just up the road on Rockville Pike, I discovered the Guide prominently showcased with two or three other special edition sports magazines. 10:25 Saturday morning was a Christmas morning moment for me.

Of course I could subscribe to THN or even order the Guide on line and be assured of securing a copy in time for Memorial weekend, but I actually savor the shopping search for it. It’s just become a highly personal routine that delivers a highly personal reward for this DraftGeek.

Whether at the beach or in a mountain chalet or simply relaxing hard by my retired father’s pool, I make a fair portion of summer’s first weekend a devoted study of the Entry Draft eligibles. A lot of Washingtonians remember boardwalk dalliances or Bayside flirtations from Memorial weekends past; I remember first learning of Joe Finley’s USHL thuggery under a cloudless Ocean City sky in May 2004.

Pre OFB, my devotion to the Draft knew no limitation of season, no rival for my affection, and rather was a year-round pursuit. But blog feeding has marginalized my single-minded immersion in the devotion. So Memorial weekend, arriving almost a month to the day before the Draft, has for the past couple of Mays for me carried a heightened sense of homework. I have a lot of catching up to do.

My studying typically includes the THN Guide; all 245-plus pages of Central Scouting’s Draft guide (I print that out in the office after hours); TSN’s thoughts draft; and at least three well-regarded mock drafts posted at hockeysfuture from “insiders” whose forecasting over the years has proven to be reliable. Beer-bellied family men struggle to deliver refreshments-laden coolers to the family beach blanket across acres of sun-baked sand on May’s final Saturday; I grunt from the backpack weight of my literature pertaining to 18-year-old hockey players hailing from towns I’ll never visit in this lifetime.

There are estimates that on Memorial weekend Saturday an excess of 100,000 sunbathers convene on the Maryland and Delaware beaches. Among them, beach towel reading is commonly comprised of lurid paperbacks, newspapers, and various categories of best-sellers. Lugging my beach-bound backpack teeming with reams of Entry Draft drivel, I was — and am — aware of my idiosyncratic subject matter reading. I figured that no more than 5,000 of Ocean City’s 100,000 sand-studying in shades could be joining me in wondering whether the WHL’s class of prospects in a given year was superior to the Q’s.

Part of my devotion-addiction in this weekend’s pursuit is premised on the novelty of the whole thing. I just really like knowing where a Moose Jaw Warriors’ third-liner — who bears a fiery streak of viscousness, mind you — ought to be selected according to a plurality of draft prognostications. I admit, with pride, that I am a card-carrying member of sports’ equivalent to a Star Trek conventioner.

Memorial Weekend 2008 in Washington will be remembered for its beauty. How could it not — according to THN, still available on the draft board when the Caps pick in round one should be one Anton Gustafsson.

Filed in DraftGeek, Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey, Hockey Reading, National Hockey League, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (4)

An Offseason Snapshot of a Revolution’s March Onward

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, May 13, 2008

The volume and variety of news pertaining to Olie Kolzig’s departure from the Capitals last week was instructive in these new media times. When we at OFB verified that Kolzig’s home was listed for sale last Wednesday, which wasn’t a particularly difficult endeavor (all manner of such information, including taxes paid on a particular residential property, are a matter of public record), we got dinged by two members of the Capitals’ communications team, one in particular suggesting that the news’ arriving via “a blog” was, ipso facto, cause for its being disregarded.

Meh.

Nonetheless, lunches and face time with the old goalie were hastily arranged by old media on Thursday, and by Friday the news holdouts had their confirmation — the goalie indeed was pulling up his roots in town. The take-home point for someone like me last week was this: more time is needed to persuade select members of even an ahead-of-the-new-media-curve organization like the Caps that media times are-a-changin’.

Which brings me to this past Monday’s Washington Post, and Norman Chad’s column therein. Relying partly on the hackneyed trope of stuffing his column with reader questions and his witty rejoinders (aka lazy journalism), Chad addresses Zach from Ohio’s query, “Are bloggers journalists?” A straight, sober, and reasonably thoughtful reply would have been “Not really.” A really thoughtful reply would have gone along the lines of, “Not really, because journalists are fast becoming bloggers.”

Instead, Chad huffed, “Let me put it this way: Just because you start cooking rib-eye steaks on your George Foreman Grill doesn’t make you an executive chef.” It might also be said that a bad cook who pork chop shops at Dean and Deluca still serves up a lousy dinner.

An interesting thing to do at NHL games in the new media era is to make mental notes of old and new media present at say Caps’ games and compare the quality of products generated a day later. To a certain extent, some of the old guard are hamstrung by the unyielding dictates of convention — what I call formulaic sports journalism. Or: corporate writing. Get the time of the goals right. Be sure to acknowledge the left winger’s third straight game with a secondary assist. Fatten file with recorded jock-speak filler — irrespective of how mundane, cliche-ridden the reflection.

The adherence to this dying script is precisely the point of new media’s rise.

To be fair, the Caps have two print guys on the beat who carry off the conventions as well as can be expected. They’re quite good. What’s more interesting to me, however, is, in a relatively short period of time, the meteoric popularity of their online readership for their respective blogs. These readers, like us, might miss a game file or three along the way but daily, sometimes hourly, monitor these guys’ blogs, which often are treasure troves. There, away from the conventions, away from the rigid formula, we go inside the team, inside the sport. There the scribe’s personalized passion for the game at times comes to life. It’s prose with a Budweiser, and they’re buying. Their readers sure are.

Another distinction, perhaps: at times I skim the old media game files, sweeping through the inverted pyramid prose swiftly for any event my eyes on the game didn’t detect. However, I never skim that reporter’s blog files. I suspect I’m not alone in this habit.

Back within the formula, it isn’t always the athlete at fault for the poverty of reflection. If there are 60 questions directed at a hockey team by 14 reporters in 20 minutes of post-game access, irrespective of the city, irrespective of the prestige of the news outlet, I can assure you that 40-plus are of the “Did he or she really just ask that?” variety. Don’t take my word for it. Watch ESPNews and its revolving door rotation of intellect-numbing game pressers. Or if you’re really interested in surveying the limits of Darwin’s Theory, tune in to the Super Bowl presser the Tuesday of game week. That’s George Orwell’s Animal Farm come to life. Some reporters are just plain stupid; many more though are asking questions whose answers feed a script. Gotta file, gotta formulate.

I can assure you that when Greg Wyshynski is in the arena the last thing he’s looking to do is fill his recorder with jock-talk. Chatting with him during a game often is more entertaining than the product we’re there to chronicle. His is a creative mind ever abuzz with unconventional coverage ideas. And this is largely why his blog numbers, be they at Deadspin, the FanHouse, or now Yahoo Sports are the envy of those of every old media outlet in press row.

One of the reasons this “debate,” such as it is, about bloggers and reporters exists is because it itself is an old media convention. Like Andy Rooney, it persists, perpetually. It has a radioactive half life. It’s erroneously conceived, superficially analyzed, and nurtured by a whiff of controversy. Therefore expect it to be around still 24 years from now.

More interesting to me is the embrace of Washington’s hockey bloggers by big media’s online or alternative editions. Rare was the week during this past season that one of us wasn’t excerpted in Washington Post Express. Eric McErlain transitioned from blogging at his groundbreaking site Off Wing Opinion in 2006 to covering the NHL for NBCSports.com last season, and this year he’s doing the same for the Sporting News. Jon Press joined McErlain at AOL Sports last year. Wyshynski of course is a blogging man very much in demand.

Just in the last week I found promo snippets for two of my OFB files slotted into the NHL team pages at Sports Illustrated’s web site. There’s nothing sly or sinister about that — SI needs content for its hockey pages in the offseason, apparently, and they’ve come to regard lil’ ole OFB as a source. Readers who normally wouldn’t know about OFB are, thanks to the big slick mag site, getting a look at us.

Lest you think old media in its new configuration is gobbling up gifted writers and consigning them to the old marching orders know that all of McErlain, Press, and Wyshynski are blogging for their new employers. That appears to have been a business decision by big media.

Each passing week is bringing about a remarkable evolution in information dissemination and consumption, in sports, politics, public policy, you name it — and in the process, in a very healthy way, obliterating the confining limitations of the old guard and its tired old formulas.

Isn’t it great to be a hockey fan today and to possess a healthy appetite for quality coverage and analysis of your team and its sport and to have that appetite nourished by the breadth of new and old media we’re now seeing? Even in the summer. Ahead, more quality voices will get added to the online chorus while the dour defenders of the tired, outdated approach whither and recede. The Revolution continues.

Filed in Blogs, Corey Masisak, Hockey Reading, Internet, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, OFB, Print, Sports Illustrated, Tarik El-Bashir, The Sporting News, Washington Capitals, Washington Post, Washington Post Express, Washington Times| Permalink| Comments (18)

Positive Press for Perreault

By pucksandbooks
Saturday, April 19, 2008

Earlier this week the Telegraph-Journal of Saint John, New Brunswick, chronicled the completed Q-League playoff series between the Sea Dogs and the Acadie Bathurst Titan, which eliminted the Titan and sent Mathieu Perreault packing for Hershey. Take a look at Marty Klinkenberg’s description of Perreault:

“The Titan’s Mathieu Perreault, meanwhile, was fantastic, just as he has been throughout the series and the entire season. Looking as if he is ready to skate beside Alex Ovechkin in Washington, Perrault flew up and down the ice as quickly as the cartoon Road Runner, dodging and weaving and pirouetting through and around defenders. The leading scorer in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League and a Capitals draft choice, Perreault had three assists on Sunday to go with the four points he scored in the Titan’s victory at Harbour Station on Saturday night.”

Tim Leone of the Patriot News profiled the American League newcomer on Friday. “Perreault, who joined the Hershey Bears after completing his junior season with Acadie-Bathurst (QMJHL), made a solid pro debut Wednesday night in the high-pressure playoff situation of Game 1 against Wilkes-Barre/Scranton,” Leone wrote.

Bears’ head coach Bob Woods said of his new center, “He’s a kid that’s got a lot of speed and grit to him for a smaller guy,” adding, “I thought he did well . . . He hustles and he competes and wins battles and he’s got some pretty good offensive touch.”

Filed in American Hockey League, Hershey Bears, Hockey Reading, Mathieu Perreault, Media, Print, Prospects, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (2)

Game-Day Chats To Chew on

By The OFB Team
Friday, April 11, 2008

?Both big papers this afternoon hosted helpful time-killing/nerves-distracting chat sessions — the Post with Caps’ beat reporter Tarik El Bashir and the Times with Ted. There was terrific give-and-take banter in both; we urge you to check them out in their entirety.

The owner, on his youthful recreational hockey background: “We played roller hockey on 6th avenue and 45th street. Or we ran around and played with a crushed beer can as our puck. I miss those days! I once hit a slap shot and the crushed can embedded itself into my friend’s calf. He needed a tetnus shot, but he made the save!”

On his good luck superstititions and pluralism in the owner’s box:

Question: Do you have certain rituals for big games, like a lucky tie or socks or guests at a game?

Ted Leonsis: “I do now . . . what I listen to on iPod when working out — I have to wear my red Caps home jersey and I have a certain lucky watch. And I have a Georgetown Jesuit priest in the box tonight, and I have the hockey rabbi working on our behalf too.”

On the big concern about the prevalence of orange and black in the Phone Booth tonight:

Ted Leonsis: “We did everything we could to sell only to Caps fans — I am hopeful we will have a red out — but if our fans re-sell their tix on Stubhub, etc. — what can we do? We did not sell any tickets in blocks to any Philly organizations.

“I hope we see how loyal Caps fans are — and that they believe in the team. You are our 7th man.”

Over at the Post chat, Tarik took a questions about the durability of local support for the Caps; the keys to the series, and a rejuvinated Sergei Fedorov:

Washington, D.C.: It’s great to see so many Caps fans at the games now. Do you think that all these fans are for real and are genuinely going to stick with the Caps and follow them? Or do you think that they are fair weather fans that may wither away?

Tarik El-Bashir: “I think these fans have been out there all along. They were just waiting for the product to justify spending a few hundred bucks to see a game.”

Chantilly, VA: If you had to break the series down to one or two key points, what would they be? Does it boil down to goaltendending time and time again?

Tarik El-Bashir: “Two things:

“1) Stay out of the penalty box. The Flyers’ power play was second in the regular season at 21.8 percent.

“2) Keep the crease clear. Huet can’t stop the shot if he can’t see it.”

Warsaw, VA: Sergei Fedorov seems like such a class act. I can’t think of anything better to happen to a player of his caliber in the twilight of his career (except of course, to win it all).

Has this experience rejuvenated him? It seems like it has rescued him from the doldrums of a regimented system approach to one that is closer to a style that suits his game and skill. Is he enjoying the experience, partcularly being back in the spotlight in Russia as a member of the Caps?

Tarik El-Bashir: “He’s loving life at the moment. He’s said a number of times that this experience has made him feel 10 years younger. The presence of the three other Russians — and the winning — helps, of course.”

“It’s going to be interesting to see if he takes less money and re-signs here, or if opts for another payday somewhere else, or if he retires.”

Filed in Blogs, Hockey Reading, Internet, Media, Philadelphia Flyers, Print, Stanley Cup Playoffs, Tarik El-Bashir, Ted Leonsis, Washington Capitals, Washington Post, Washington Times| Permalink| Comments (1)

A Final Day of Calm To Enjoy Before the Postseason Storm

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, April 10, 2008

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I’ve savored these past five hockey-less days in D.C., immersing myself in a million metric tons of media, much of it local, pegged on themes like “the hottest team in hockey,” “a team of destiny,” “George McPhee, master architect,” the sum total of which is: Washington Capitals, media hogs in the nation’s capital. The Pope arrives here in town next week, and his Holiness can only hope to enjoy a media contingent comparable in size to that of the Caps these days.

Perhaps he will celebrate mass at Nats’ Stadium in red vestments. The Pontiff, Rockin the Red!

Last night I arrived home in time to catch the top-of-the-hour broadcast of Capitals’ TV, er, Comcast’s ‘Sportsnight,’ and immediately saw the mug of SovetskySports‘ Dmitry Chesnokov, out at Kettler interviewing AO. Jill Sorenson’s 5-minute feature highlighted “the Russian invasion” of the Capitals. Earlier in the week I read a Corey Masisak feature on the Capitals’ fourth line. Both big papers’ beat reporters traveled to Philadelphia early this week to capture the flavor of the Flyers for Washington readers.

Pope Benedict XVIEven riding a full route on a Metro car — single-tracked — isn’t time enough to canvass all the print coverage of the Caps this week. Who needs TSN or the National Post when the Washington press corps is Redded-Out? I haven’t had time to survey what might be downloadable on iTunes.

In the here and now I’m savoring this week of Washington as a very hockey hockey town. We’ll get to the battle of I-95 soon enough; for now I’m grateful that the culmination of a historic performance by the Capitals this spring — Saturday night’s division-title-securing victory and the appropriate perspective it invites — didn’t have to get shouldered aside 48 or 72 hours later by a postseason game 1. For their perseverance and passion Washington’s hockey fans deserved their week in the media spotlight.

Standing in the bowels of Verizon Center Saturday night awaiting the locker room arrival of a sweater-off-their-backs-busy Caps’ team, I heard and felt the Sea of Red’s sonic shakings fully 20 minutes after the game’s conclusion. Which occasioned this thought: irrespective of the Capitals’ postseason performance, the team this offseason should strongly consider producing a DVD documentary of the dramatic (to put it mildly) alteration in performance by and outlook for the team. Pro sports teams accomplishing comparatively little do so annually, but the metamorphosis of hockey here, I believe, ought to be chronicled as both a keepsake for fans and a powerful marketing tool for the as-yet-not-converted.

This product should be chock full of clips of AO’s historic season; the feel-good story of the acsent from the American League by Gabby; the deadline day dealings by GMGM that today are lauded all across the hockey commentariat; and of course the breath-stealing run of victory after victory over the season’s final few weeks.

This would-be DVD ought to amalgamate some of the many, many fresh and informative broadcast segments that have formed a glorious glut of puck on local TV this spring. This would help chronicle the arrival of Washington as a hockey town. That of course is a relative term, but it’s unassailable that the massive increase in local television viewership for the Caps, the love affair local media is having with our sport, the mere hours it took to sell out games 1 and 2 of the playoffs here this weekend, and the Sea of Rockin Red are emblematic of an unprecedented prominence for hockey here. This ought to be celebrated.

I’ll enjoy tomorrow night’s puck-drop and that altogether new atmosphere in our rink as much as anyone. But there’s a dream-like, 4th of July night on the Mall quality to the coverage of hockey in my hometown right now, and until about 5:00 tomorrow night I want to remain fixed within its glow.

Filed in Comcast SportsNet, Corey Masisak, Dmitry Chesnokov, Hockey Reading, Jill Sorenson, Media, Philadelphia Flyers, Print, Sovetsky Sport, Stanley Cup Playoffs, TSN, Washington Capitals, Washington Post, Washington Times| Permalink| Comments (6)

Sunday Morning Literature Search

By pucksandbooks
Sunday, April 6, 2008

Brew an extra pot-a-joe this sunny-despite-the-rain Sunday morning and luxuriate in some outstanding coverage of Washington hockey history made at Verizon Center last night.

‘Coming All the Way Back,’ by Tarik El Bashir, The Washington Post

” . . . in front of a manic, red-drenched sellout crowd at Verizon Center, the Capitals seized the moment.”

‘Mission Accomplished,’ by Corey Masisak, The Washington Times

” . . . Alexander Semin whipped a perfect cross-ice, backhand pass to his countryman, who broke in alone on the left wing and ripped a slap shot over Florida goaltender Craig Anderson’s right shoulder at 15:03 of the second period . . . The 38-year-old Russian’s offensive production has trended upward at season’s end. After registering one goal and five points in his first 12 games with the Caps, Fedorov has eight points in the past six contests.

“Maybe I looked a little younger, but I feel it right now,” Fedorov said. “I feel the same as the guys who have never played in the playoffs. I am as excited as they are.”

‘Capitals clinch Southeast division,’ by Jospeh White, Associated Press

“The Capitals were easily the worst the NHL had to offer — 6-14-1 — when coach Glen Hanlon was fired on Thanksgiving Day and replaced by career minor league coach Bruce Boudreau, who turned the team’s personality upside down by introducing an attacking style featuring the league’s most prolific offensive player (Ovechkin), the NHL’s top goal-scoring defenceman (Mike Green, 18 goals) and a rookie of the year contender (Nicklas Backstrom, franchise-rookie record 69 assists).”

‘Ovechkin, Capitals snare final playoff berth with 3-1 victory over Panthers,’ the Canadian Press

“Long before the final horn sounded, the sea of red-clad fans had turned the arena into an earsplitting din of cheers of their team, “M-V-P!” chants for their star player, a chorus of “Bruuuuuuce” for their coach. The owner responded by blowing a kiss to the crowd.”

‘Feeling just like playoff hockey,’ by Dan Daly, The Washington Times

“File this one under Great Moments in Washington Sports History . . . Granted, they didn’t win the Stanley Cup — only the Southeast Division — but it sure felt like it.

“If you’re looking for a freeze frame, how about the sight of Ovechkin leaping onto Semin after 2-1 became 3-1 — and knocking his teammate to the ice, creating the most joyous of dogpiles in the right corner?”

‘Capitals headed to playoffs on late-season resurgence,’ by Ryan O’Halloran, The Washington Times

“A year ago, the Washington Capitals were strangers in their own building, limping to another nonplayoff season. For the finale, Verizon Center became Buffalo South. The Sabres were in town, and their fans made up more than half of the 18,277 in attendance.

The Capitals’ fans were drowned out, and superstar Alex Ovechkin was booed every time he touched the puck.

It was embarrassing but expected. When winning teams like Buffalo and Pittsburgh visited, they had the advantage.

Fast-forward to last night in Chinatown. Again, the announced crowd was 18,277. Everything else was different — most importantly, the result.”

‘Dialed in for the Long Stretch,’ by Thomas Boswell, The Washington Post

“What Capitals’ fans have been watching since November, and especially in the last three amazing weeks, is the genuine article, the completely deserved and totally-real happy ending . . . After years of taking it, the Capitals may finally be ready to start dishing it out.”

Filed in Blogs, Corey Masisak, Dan Daly, Hockey Reading, Internet, Media, Print, Stanley Cup Playoffs, Tarik El-Bashir, The Hockey News, Thomas Boswell, Washington Capitals, Washington Post, Washington Times| Permalink| Comments (3)

“Cold-Cocked” Is a Hot Read

By DC Sports Chick
Monday, February 25, 2008

When I first saw Lorna Jackson’s book, “Cold-Cocked: On Hockey,” I knew it was going to be an interesting read, judging by the use of the F-bomb on the back cover. And I was not disappointed by the actual content of the book. “Cold-Cocked” is one writer’s point of view about hockey, specifically about how women watch and relate to the game. Jackson uses her personal relationships with her daughter, husband, and friends to show what hockey means to different people and different genders. She’s a Canucks fan, and takes the reader through her experience as a fan and as a professional in the time before the lockout. For example, at one game when a young boy gets a puck in the face, she sees Todd Bertuzzi in a different light than a group of men behind her:

Bert has his face pressed against the glass, watching Every stop in play - the nurse comes down, the Host is back giving out gifts and writing down info - Bert’s watching…Bert checks on the injured boy. But the guys behind us are interested in hookers and fat salaries and brutal hits. The obvious and overwhelming heart of a guy like Bert doesn’t interest them. If it does, they don’t talk it up. We see who we are in players - self-identification, the sociologists call it- who we want to be, that’s why we make them heroes.

I agree with her. If I had been at that game, I likely would have had a similar reaction. Does that lessen the impact of the game or make me a wuss? I certainly don’t think so. But that group of guys would disagree, or chalk it up to being a woman. Why can’t there be room for both sides or even a hybrid- one that sees the players as warriors, or the other side that sees the players’ humanity?

Continue reading ›

Filed in Hockey Reading, Media, Print, Vancouver Canucks| Permalink| Comments (5)

OFB Book Review: Off The Post

By Gustafsson
Saturday, February 9, 2008

Off The Post - by Risto PakarinenThis is a small book. A small book about hockey. This is a small book about hockey and a Finnish guy whose very first memories in life include the smell of a hockey glove.

And he calls it a fond memory.

Risto Pakarinen is a Finnish freelance journalist based in Stockholm, Sweden and a regular contributor to both The Hockey News and NHL.com in North America. I met Risto via the hockey bloggers group on Facebook.com and he was kind enough to send me a copy of his book Off The Post.

Off The Post is comprised of short stories and blog posts — mostly from nhl.com — from November 2005 to October 2007. At only 122 pages, it’s a quick and entertaining read that gives us in North America a glimpse into what it’s like to be a hockey fan in Europe trying to keep up with players in the NHL.

Risto doesn’t root for a particular NHL team — though he sees many Leafs games on TV in Sweden because that’s what they show — rather, he follows players which are obviously mostly Finnish (such as Teemu Selanne), as well as Wayne Gretzky. His stories revolve around the players, international hockey, and his personal hockey experiences. He also describes how he quit on hockey and how, like The Godfather, he got sucked back in.

Check out an exerpt of the book here, listen to Risto’s interview with Paul Kukla here, then order the book here. Risto’s humor and storytelling will surely entertain you. When you’re done with the book, Risto has a request:

… I hope that once you’re done with [the book] — you can read the entire book in about an hour — that you’ll give it to someone you think will enjoy it.

I’m not saying that so you’ll … order another copy… but because it would make me feel good.

Like a glove in my face.

I honored Risto’s request and passed the book along at last night’s Caps/Canes game. I enjoyed the book and if you’re a fan of hockey, you’ll enjoy it too.

Filed in Hockey, Hockey Reading, National Hockey League| Permalink| Comments (0)

Success with the Press, Too

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, February 7, 2008

The Hockey NewsThe Capitals are expecting some prominent media coverage of the team’s winning ways next week. Alexander Ovechkin and the team will be the feature cover story for next week’s Hockey News. Also likely next week, a Michael Farber feature on AO and the team in Sports Illustrated.   

More immediately, Coach Boudreau chatted with Washington Post Online readers this afternoon. A transcript of it can be found here.

The THN cover will be Alex’s fifth on a standard issue, the sixth if you count an “All-Access Pass” special edition THN put out last year.

Update: Let’s toss an ESPN Boudreau Revival story from Scott Burnside into the mix.

Filed in ESPN, Hockey Reading, Media, Print, Scott Burnside, Sports Illustrated, The Hockey News, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (1)

Washingtonians Helping Out Washington Hockey Players

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, January 24, 2008

Morning Cup-A-JoeOn Tuesday a Washington Post staffer emailed me the link to Jeff Nelson’s wonderful profile of the Wilson High School hockey program, which started and took root in recent years under Head Coach Paul McKenzie. McKenzie succumbed to pneumonia last year, and in his absence the Wilson program is struggling to remain solvent and intact. If you haven’t read the piece, you really should. From the moment I finished it late Tuesday afternoon it got inside me and banged around inside my head and heart. At first I couldn’t quite figure out why — I had no personal connection with McKenzie or his players, none either with the school.

Agitated but unsure exactly why, but sure I’d been made aware of a story necessitating action, I emailed Ted Leonsis. At the time I had no idea that he was away at Sundance. In my email I said, “It’s the District’s first public high school hockey team. We can’t let it fail.” By “we” I meant Washingtonians.

One of the take-home points from Nelson’s profile is the uneven skating surface confronting many scholastic teams in the region — the District’s foremost among them. Wilson’s team stands as the only public school in the city playing hockey, and it’s barely surviving. Scholastic hockey in these parts is dominated by private schools mostly in Maryland — DeMatha, Mount St. Joe’s, Good Counsel — and one in the District, Gonzaga. There are as well relatively strong public high school teams in Montgomery and Howard Counties. Most Virginia schools have cash-strapped athletic budgets, and there’s a shortage of ice sheets there as well. Many schools in the state don’t have hockey programs at all.

But it’s the District that is the region’s true wasteland for youth hockey. In the District facilities offering a sheet of ice, boards, and goals number one: Ft. Dupont, which of course is Wilson High’s home. For hockey to take root in the city’s youths a not-so-small miracle has to occur. Paul McKenzie was that miracle.

From Tuesday’s Post:

“On the Thursday after his death, McKenzie’s hockey team took the ice for its final regular season game. The team that had lost 10 of its previous 13 games dedicated its final regular season contest to his memory and won, 6-0.

A few days later, the players were among more than 400 people to pack Cleveland Park Congregational Church for McKenzie’s funeral. They wore their home jerseys and were mentioned in eulogies. On the family’s way out of the church, the boys formed two lines by the doors and made a ceremonial arch with their hockey sticks.

Philip Castiel, the team captain, gave a speech during a service afterward: “During [the past four years], over 30 young high school hockey players, both boys and girls, were given a gift by Coach. That gift is the love of the game of hockey.”

In my email to Leonsis I told him that this story was a call to action for the region’s hockey lovers — most particularly, the team’s bloggers. Often we rally around a hot story and offer our respective takes in alternating hues of humor, wry reflection, and cleverness, but in this instance, my gut told me that we needed to rally around a cause. I also knew that if we in the blogging community were to try and do something of substance for Wilson’s program, we’d need the Caps’ help.

I sent my email and ran out to grab some dinner. I was home less than 30 minutes later and had waiting for me his reply: “We’re on it,” the owner wrote. Approximately 50 seconds later, I had email from Kurt Kehl, who heads up the Caps’ communications team. “Just let me know what I can do to help,” he wrote.

Next I sent a note to the bloggers, letting them know that if we’d coalesce around this cause we’d have extraordinary support from the Caps.

Late Tuesday night I couldn’t fall asleep, as I still had this sad story in my thoughts and ideas for responding distracting me. In my restlessness some time after midnight I realized my commonality with these kids from Wilson, and therein the source of my anxiety: I was more than double their age, a working stiff, a suburbanite, but like them I called Washington my home, and like them I’d fallen in love with hockey, against the odds, here. Back in my youth someone here had ignited hockey’s passion within me. Now, though, the flame at Wilson was flickering. Far from involving nameless, faceless youths across a city line, this story was personal for me.

Wilson High School BannerOn Wednesday the team’s treasurer, Tim Aluise, reached out to us here. He told me that Wilson’s long-term goals are to expand Coach McKenzie’s vision by reaching out to less economically advantaged kids and minorities in Washington. “We want to to foster skills and a love of hockey,” he said. “Most city kids do not have this opportunity. We hope to fill the void.

“To do this, we envision needing ice time, which is the most expensive line item in our proposed budget — to introduce the sport at the middle school level so kids in the city are prepared for playing high school hockey.”

Ft. Dupont, Aluise told me, is expected to expand to two sheets of ice, and when that happens, “we hope to draw players from across the city to fill out the future team and develop a full-fledged program. Money is an issue to get the ice time — we are desperate for ice time at any local rink.

“It is more costly to have idle teenagers,” he added.

Also on Wednesday I was sharing my I-wanna-help thoughts with the Post’s Dan Steinberg, who reacted by giving the idea a real big primary assist on his blog. I suspect that going forward Dan and his colleagues at the paper will help even more. They brought us this remarkable story, after all.

There are an innumerable number of worthy causes ever clamoring for our attention. But individually, I think, we respond to those that find a way of reaching us and disrupting us out of our comfort zones. That’s where I am with this Wilson hockey team. I don’t know yet what we’ll do on their behalf, but I’m excited that mere hours into my concern I had to send about three email messages to marshal the support of Washington’s hockey establishment. I hope you’ll join us in the endeavor.

Filed in Area Youth Hockey, Hockey, Hockey Reading, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, Print, Ted Leonsis, Washington Capitals, Washington Post| Permalink| Comments (8)

Hockey Hearts Under Construction at Wilson High

By The OFB Team
Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Today’s Washington Post chronicles the extraordinary story of the District’s Woodrow Wilson High School hockey team and its heart-wrenching struggle to overcome the death of head coach Paul McKenzie last year. It’s about as must-read as must-reads get.

Filed in Area Youth Hockey, Hockey Reading, Media, Print, Washington Post| Permalink| Comments (7)

Chit Chat on Choppy Ice

By pucksandbooks
Friday, December 7, 2007

Excerpts from this afternoon’s Washington Post online chat with Caps’ beat reporter Tarik El-Bashir:

Arlington, Va.: Why are we only now hearing serious complaints about the ice at Verizon? I’ve heard rumblings about that for years but never from the players before now. Also, the Devils have been talking about the same problem at their new arena, but that doesn’t seem to have adversely impacted on their recent play…

Tarik El-Bashir: I think the ice has been bad for years, but this year, for some reason, it’s been worse than ever.

Remember, Verizon Center is one of the busiest arenas in the league — something is almost always going on there.

But the veteran players I’ve talked to don’t care about that. One told me the other day that MSG, the busiest arena in the country, has better ice than Verizon. Now that’s saying something.

I would be very surprised if the Caps don’t bring in some experts in the coming days or weeks to take a closer look at the situation. That’s what most teams do when players start making noise about the ice.

Washington: Could all the perspiration that Reebok’s uniform system is repelling away from players’ bodies be collecting in warm pools on the ice surfaces?

Tarik El-Bashir: That’s a problem. But that’s not why the ice at Verizon Center is so sloppy.

Look, I’m not an ice expert. But when I walk into Carolina’s building, I get really, really cold. Same in Tampa, Toronto, Edmonton and a bunch of other rinks.

At Verizon, I usually take off my jacket because it’s so warm. That’s not a good sign. The players have made remarks about that, too.

Washington: Thanks for doing the chats. What creates good ice or bad ice for a hockey game. What can be changed, a new ice system?

Tarik El-Bashir: I wish I knew. I’ve got to be honest, in all my time to covering the sport and playing it as a youngster, I’ve never thought too much about ice. it’s not something that comes up often — it just has in recent days because of Chris Clark’s comments.

But I do know this: some rinks have ice experts who go onto the rink, check the ice and take samples from it I presume for testing.

[OFB note: for a fuller discussion/explanation of the qualities of good and bad ice, see this OFB file.]

Hershey, Pa.: Tarik, just how much longer will hockey fans have to endure Gary Bettman? The uniform fiasco (now contributing to bad ice), the ridiculously unbalanced schedule — can’t the entire NHL see that no one shows up at Verizon for Southeast games, but fans pack the place for the old Patrick division ones? He’s been on the job 10 years longer than most commissioners, and his failures number in the hundreds. What will it take to see change?

Tarik El-Bashir: Gary Bettman got the owners their coveted salary cap. Teams are worth more now than they were when he became commish. So, in short, he’s going to be in the corner office for a long, long time.

Washington: Your paper’s high-profile sports columnists long have been on the record ridiculing and belittling hockey. Gene Weingarten joined them earlier this week. Clearly the sports editors there aren’t all that hot on the game either. Does such institutional animosity toward hockey make your job harder?

Tarik El-Bashir: It doesn’t affect me directly. I kind of operate in my own little world. It’s a one reporter beat. And I kind of like it that way.

Filed in Hockey Reading, Ice, Tarik El-Bashir, Washington Capitals, Washington Post| Permalink| Comments (1)

Enshrinement Day for Two from D.C.

By pucksandbooks
Monday, November 12, 2007

Hockey Hall of Fame - LogoTwo members of the Washington Capitals’ family today get inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame: Scott Stevens, who played eight seasons with the Caps, and the late Dave Fay, the team’s beat reporter for the Washington Times for nearly a quarter century. The Hockey Hall of Fame web page offers poignant profiles for all members of the 2007 class of inductees.

Mike Vogel is in Toronto for the ceremony, and not surprisingly, he’s merged business with pleasure, having already filed some thoughts on an OHL game he took in with Ron Weber and the Times’ Corey Masisak this weekend, which featured the game’s next great talent, 2009 draft eligible Jonathon Tavares of the Oshawa Generals.

No doubt we’ll be able to see snippets of the inductees’ speeches tonight in between periods of games, but with Corey and Mike covering the proceedings the best accounts will come from Washington writers this week.

[Update: The NHL Network will be televising the 2007 Hockey Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony tonight from 7:30pm - 9:30pm]

Filed in Blogs, Corey Masisak, Dave Fay, Hockey Hall of Fame, Hockey Reading, Internet, Media, NHL Network, Print, Washington Capitals, Washington Times| Permalink| Comments (2)

The Primitive Timing of Season Previews

By pucksandbooks
Friday, October 12, 2007

I received helpful feedback recently from Associated Press reporter Peter Kerzel, who penned the Caps’ preview for this season’s THN Annual Yearbook. You may recall my suggesting that Kerzel’s file, which featured curious forecasted line combinations among other personnel considerations, delivered the impression of being a bit outdated for this reader. Turns out, Kerzel had to have his forecast submitted to THN editors in the second week of July — “barely enough time for free agents to get signed,” Kerzel told me.

“We were allowed to make some changes the beginning of the following week,” Kerzel pointed out, “but at that point, everything was formatted and the books sent to press so they could be in stores by mid- to late August.”

Here’s how early in the summer this preview was penned: Kerzel collaborated on the project with the Washington Times’ Dave Fay.

“Dave thought he had a pretty good handle on personnel,” Kerzel said. “Of course, that was before Fleischmann’s ascension, Kozlov’s move to center, Backstrom’s move to wing, [and] Clark’s move to the third line.”

“I’ve run into this same issue before, when covering the Caps and putting together a preview for The Sporting News. The year Washington acquired Jagr, the trade was consummated literally at the deadline for copy to be finalized.”

“If not for a really good editor, a guy named Ray Slover, who helped me turn around a rewrite on a dime – while still keeping the same amount of space that had already been allocated – the whole preview could have been out of date almost immediately. It’s just an inherently troublesome part of the process.”

In his preview Kerzel picked the Caps to finish 10th in the East this season. “I still think the Caps are on the bubble as far as playoffs go,” he told me, right before the season opener. 

Kerzel’s THN preview this summer also offered some conspicuously kind words for the team’s bloggers.

“The whole notion of blogging has really caught fire. One of my baseball  pals, Roch Kubatko of The [Baltimore] Sun, was given blog duty a couple of years ago and wasn’t sure what to make of it – demotion? Lack of interest from the bosses? Two years later, his baseball ruminations are the most well-read blog on any of the company’s newspaper’s blogs. He’s developed a cult following.

“And I can say for sure that blogging has changed the way most media outlets approach their jobs. I know with my work for the AP, the fact that someone can blog it right away on a daily paper site means we’ve got our feet to the fire to turn around the news much quicker these days.”

Filed in Dave Fay, Hockey Reading, Media, National Hockey League, Print, The Hockey News, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (1)

Trevor, the Morbidly Obese Goalie

By Gustafsson
Saturday, October 6, 2007

From time to time, we get emails from our readers informing us of hockey tidbits or other happenings that we might otherwise miss. Some are blog worthy, some are not. Our most recent email comes on the heals of OFB’s first book report. Mr. Leonsis assigned us our next book by sending us a link to a book expert in the Wall Street Journal.

In his latest book, Andy Roddick Beat Me with a Frying Pan: Taking the Field with Pro Athletes and Olympic Legends to Answer Sports Fans’ Burning Questions, author Todd Gallagher tackles some of sports more thought provoking questions. One such question is why an NHL team has not dressed an obese goalie to completely fill the net so the opposition couldn’t possibly score?

Gallagher investigates the legal, medial, physical and practical issues the question raises. Finding a morbidly obese goalie is a challenge, so he has a special-effects guru construct a fat suit to replicate such an “athlete”.Andy Roddick Beat Me With A Frying Pan - by Todd Gallagher

The only way to fully test this theory was to get an NHL team to shoot against the faux fatso. My esteemed editor, Jed Donahue, got in touch with a fellow Georgetown graduate who was doing nearly as well as he is: Ted Leonsis, billionaire owner of the Washington Capitals, whom the Sporting News once called one of the twenty most powerful people in sports. Leonsis, who made his fortune in the world of telecommunications and technology, is a bit of a visionary. And while his vision may not have originally included allowing the professional hockey team he owns to take slapshots at a guy in a fat suit, he saw the potential and gave the stunt the green light.

With a team of highly skilled shooters in place, we needed someone to get in the suit. I certainly wasn’t going to do it (insert fake injury/ailment/note from my mom here), so I enlisted George Mason University goalie Trevor Butler.

The experiment was obviously conducted before the end of last season, but the reactions are no less funny.

Their reactions were even less encouraging than Johanna’s icy responses were. Most players wanted nothing to do with an elephantine goalie. Defenseman Ben Clymer was so ashamed of being associated with the tub that he tried to identify himself with a fake name (he used center Kris Beech’s). Winger Dainius Zubrus put it bluntly: “It would be embarrassing if there was a goalie that big.” Defenseman Steve Eminger confirmed my worst fears about how our big man would be received when he said opposing teams would simply try to run him over in the net. The Real Kris Beech had an even more depressing comment for our new star: “You might spear him and see if chocolate came out.”

The excerpt is a great read, and while this may be the only hockey reference in the book, it is one I look forward to reading.

Our thanks go out to Ted for the heads up.

Filed in Dainius Zubrus, Hockey Reading, Steve Eminger, Ted Leonsis, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (1)

OFB Book Report - Jonesy: Put Your Head Down & Skate

By Gustafsson
Friday, October 5, 2007

The Middle Atlantic Press was kind enough to send us an advance copy of their newest title, Jonesy: Put Your Head Down & Skate, by former Washington Capital Keith Jones. Drafted in the seventh round of the 1988 draft by the Caps, Jones also played for Colorado and Philadelphia.Jonesy: Put Your Head Down & Skate

“Jonesy is the story of Keith’s career in the league as well as all of the interesting stories he accumulated over the course of his career, playing with some of the league’s best players in the last 15 years…”

Written with ESPN’s John Buccigross, it’s a relatively short book, 187 pages, and a quick and easy read. I finished it in an evening. As you follow Jones’ hockey career, you are treated to some interesting stories (such as his connection to Clyde Petkovich) and some odd facts. For example:

  • The first NHL game Keith attended was in 1987-8 when the Washington Capitals visited Maple Leaf Gardens. Keith’s first NHL game as a player was almost as a Capital at Maple Leaf Gardens.
  • Keith is the only player in history to score his first NHL goal at a neutral site.
  • Keith is the only player in NHL history to be on three different teams that blew a 3-1 playoff series lead (Washington, Colorado, Philadelphia).

Jonesy has its serious moments as well. In the introduction, Keith discusses the death of his older brother Greig for the first time throughout his hockey career and how the experience gave him strength and a human quality he previously lacked. The book ends with an ultimate touching and tear-jerking account of why John Poor and his Keith Jones Capitals jersey was the richest man in the rink.

Although the book has a few issues, such as the over use of the term “cup of coffee” when referring to a brief stint playing in the NHL, it should not dissuade you from picking up a copy and enjoying the insights.

Also, be sure to check out Off Wing Opinion as Eric McErlain has been posting some excerpts from the book and has part one of his