13 October, 2008

Category Archives: Hockey Rinks

A Rink, a Team, and a Town Becoming One

By pucksandbooks
Sunday, October 12, 2008

It’s about time to begin awarding a game star to the home crowd at Verizon Center. The atmosphere there for hockey now has no rival within Washington’s sports landscape.

During his post-game show last night, WTOP’s Jonathon Warner, commenting on the atmosphere of Verizon Center for the Capitals’ home opener, told his listeners that Caps’ fans had picked up right where they’d left off last spring — cramming the rink in a sea of red, and creating an electric home-ice advantage for the home team. He was right. I knew Saturday night’s game would be a sellout, and I also knew that thousands would be heeding the Caps’ call to wear red. The Caps were raising a division championship banner to the rafters, and commemorating a remarkable turnaround in 2007-08. It promised to be festive.

But there was something distinctive about this hockey home opener relative to all others preceding it in Washington. In the leadup to it this week you could sense about town a prestige for this evening. It wasn’t just that the ticket was hard to come by, a genuine hot commodity. It was that there was in the city a real and pervasive anticipation for hockey’s return. Washington today seems aware that the boys in red on skates are a premiere form of entertainment. And the locals want to be a witness to it.

It’s uncommonly clogged trying to navigate the sidewalks of Chinatown before and after Capitals’ home games now, and the humanity moves in a common color. The drab grey and tunnel black of underground Metro is pierced by a blossom of rose-red love for the hockey team on game nights.

Saturday night I saw teenage boys and girls in the stands with their faces and torsos painted red. I saw women with red dye in their hair. I saw nearly 20,000 people attired and tattooed and painted and dyed in a common passion. And my sense was that many of them weren’t in the rink for one night only.

I first noticed a dramatic change in the atmospherics of the Phone Booth last spring, near the very end of the regular season, at the height of the standings surge. For the Capitals’ pre-game warmups a solid three or four thousand fans, uniformly cloaked and coated in red, encircled the team in its warmup end in the lower bowl, standing the entire time. They weren’t arrived in a typical trickle but rather amassed on time in a stunning show of solidarity. Ovi’s Red Army. Each successive game, through the playoffs, delivered more of the same.

I saw the same thing Saturday night.

About 5 minutes into period 2 Alexander Ovechkin knotted the game at 2, and this unleashed three levels of “M-V-P! M-V-P! M-V-P!” roof-shaking serenadings. The home crowd is so in love with its luminous left wing.

The best part of this is that he appears to be every bit as much in love with his admirers in the rink.

Then of course he sealed the victory late in the third Saturday night with one of his patented power slides across the slot and nearly-knock-the-cage-off-its-moorings wrist unleashings, sending the red rink into delirium. Comcast’s Lisa Hillary interviewed Ovechkin in the victory’s aftermath, and it seemed to me that more than half the rink remained to serenade him freshly with their “M-V-P” chants. Of course Ovi soaked it up.

These sort of dramatic and infectious demonstrations of love between city and athlete don’t occur every day or year or even decade. Cal Ripken was devotionally admired by Orioles’ fans, but in the stadium during his playing days, on a nightly basis, the baseball atmosphere was largely without distinction. In Verizon Center during no. 8’s shifts one gets the sense that 40,000 eyes are on Ovi; when he scores, 20,000 throats seem to sing.

Now consider this: we are merely at the infancy of this F Street love affair with hockey.

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Towns, Morning cup-a-joe, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (8)

Tales of Heroism from Hershey

By pucksandbooks
Monday, September 29, 2008

Be wary of skipping past the comments to our files. For one thing, we think we are regularly on the receiving end of some of the most thoughtful and insightful comments of any hockey blog. For another, there are moments when the sentiments of readers’ hockey hearts are more deserving of publishing than our own . . . as with the instance of a mother discovering a photo published here of her son receiving a hockey stick from Oskar Osala, and her deciding to enrich the lives of OFB bloggers with her family’s fabulous story.

“What a thrill!  We are the parents of the young Bears fan who got the stick from Oskar on Friday night. Our son is an obsessed Bears fan, and was over the moon when Oskar handed him that stick. My husband and I are long time Bears fans, and some of our first dates were at games at the old barn. We were at the last game there and the first at Giant Center.

“Friday night was such a great time for us, because we all just love our hockey, but for our family it means a little bit more.  Please indulge me with a little story about why we love the Bears, and look forward each season.

“Our son (the one in the photo) was born in Guatemala. He was still there waiting for our adoption to be completed when he was diagnosed with cancer at the age of 9 months.  He began treatment while still in Guatemala, and continued treatment when he came home to us in October of 2003, just after his first birthday. We were thrilled when his Oncologist at Hershey Medical Center told us that despite the fact that he was on Chemo, we could still take him to the Bears games. Our son LOVED hockey from the first minute. It was hysterical to watch him so focused on the game. He was so funny trying to move around and watch around those “rookies” who would get up during play. We were able to continue to take him to all of the games.

“He was treated with Chemotherapy until July of 2004. We thought all was clear until March of 2006 when he had a local recurrence of the cancer and once again had to start Chemo, and this time also with radiation. He treated that [treatment] from March until August of 2006.

“We were fortunate to have many friends and fellow hockey fans who arranged at that time for Bruce to meet Frederic Cassivi, and from that first meeting our son had found a favorite. The Cassivis were so good to us, and over the years we have come to call them friends. We were able to make every home game of the playoffs and of the Calder Cup Final, in between lengthy stays at the hospital. Just after the Calder Cup win, we were able to go to the party at the Giant Center, and the photos we have of our son and Frederic with the Cup are ones we will treasure forever.  Our son had no hair and was obviously sick, but his smile is the only thing you notice in those photos. Frederic and his family came to visit Bruce in the hospital, and so did Coco the Bear. I have to tell you that we felt incredibly special to be part of such a wonderful Bears family.

“Bruce is now 2 years off treatment and is doing fantastic. He is healthy and doing everything that an almost 6-year-old should be doing, and more.

“We try to get to as many practices as we can, and we love going to the Arena because we can be so close to the players.

“The bottom line is that we also love that old Arena . . . my husband and I love it because it means a lot to us to have started our lives together at the games, but we especially love it because our son LOVES it even more . . . he can climb all over the seats and get right up next to the glass to tease with the players and try to pick out the ones he already knows.

“And every now and then he can make a connection with a player like Oskar . . . a young kid himself who took the time to stop and say hello to a little hockey fan, and to offer something that to Oskar was just one of his sticks, but to our son it was magic . . . a link to a player that means so much . . . and a moment that brought tears to his mother’s eyes.

“Thanks for that, Oskar . . . and thanks to the Arena for the memories that were and the new ones that are still being made.”

Filed in American Hockey League, Calder Cup, Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hershey Bears, Hockey Heroes, Hockey Moms, Hockey Reading, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Towns, Oskar Osala, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (8)

The Hot Ticket in Town: Hockey

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Monday night the Capitals hosted their fourth and final open house at Verizon Center. My colleague Gustafsson attended one last month, and he reported being struck then by the scarcity of available seats, particularly in the Phone Booth’s lower bowl. As in, few seats available down low for any game in the 2008-09 season. Monday’s final open house afforded me an opportunity to verify this remarkable phenomenon with my own eyes — when it comes to claims of really full houses for hockey in this town, night after night, trust but verify, I say — and inquire about the strategies of a summer-long, creative and aggressive push by the Capitals’ sales staff to capitalize on the feel-very-good story that was, and is, hockey in Washington in 2008.

I met Jim Van Stone, Capitals’ Vice President of Ticket Sales and Service, at the F Street entrance to the Phone Booth near the start of the open house, briefly chatted with him about our respective summers, and then walked with him to a perch in the lower bowl. What I saw there astounded me.

We stood in an aisle between sections 100 and 121, two lower bowl sections encompassing perhaps 1,500 or more seats. Soon we were joined there by Tim McDermott, Capitals’ Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. The Capitals had placed white placards on the backs of seats that were available for purchase in the new season. Among these thousand-plus, premium-priced two sections of seats there wasn’t a single seat to be had, for a single game, during the entirety of the 2008-09 hockey season. And the scene among the rest of the lower bowl wasn’t appreciably different: a smattering of available seats — many of them just singles — dotting the purple vista like rare dandelions in a well-cared-for lawn. Couldn’t have been 50 of them in the entire lower bowl.

The movement of hockey tickets for the new season has been a very well cared for venture by the Capitals’ sales staff. Management doubled their size at the start of the summer, and the enlarged sales army went on the offensive, incorporating new technology such as clever electronic brochures featuring Comcast’s Lisa Hillary, for instance; the enthusiastic ticket-pitch participation of Capitals’ players and even Head Coach Bruce Boudreau; and last but not least good old fashioned, time-tested, cold-calling perseverance.

There was one other element integral to summer’s startling sales volume, Van Stone told me: June’s FanFest out at Kettler, scheduled hard on the heels of the Caps’ domination of the NHL Awards Gala in Toronto. Recall that the Caps arranged to have all of that hardware — Ovie’s Pearson, Hart, and Richard trophies as well as Coach Boudreau’s Jack Adams’, set out at the practice facility for photographing and admiration by FanFest patrons.

“FanFest was phenomenal for us,” Van Stone told me. “You couldn’t put a price on that for us.”

He has a point. In those four trophies, each of which is about the height of Jeff Schultz and the weight of a stuffed gear bag, the Caps were able to showcase their glorious and star-studded present and pitch a credible claim that it was in place in Washington for as long as the mind could imagine. And in honors volume, likely being added to, soon.

I asked Van Stone about Comcast’s Hillary and her participation in marketing the team, and if he thought that could be interpreted as a conflict of interest for a reporter covering the team. He offered me what I thought was an insightful perspective on the strategy.

“You know what I’ve found in hockey — everyone’s a partner with you, everyone wants our game to be successful.

“It’s a bit of a tribal mindset,” he added.

I found this latter reflection spectacularly searing in its truth. Go to a “lifer” in our sport, someone with a career vested in it, seeking help to help the game, and expect to get both hands extended out for offered labor. And a smile to go along with.

Alexander Ovechkin wants to make Washington a hockey town. And he’s well on his way. I think Hillary wants to cover a hockey town. I just want to shame Washington Post sports editors a little.

But back to the Phone Booth, fast becoming a building of burgeoning humanity. Now the Capitals of course have no direct control over allocation in the Club Level — the best-seats bane of the Booth. But just as we saw in ‘07-’08’s stretch run and in the first round of the playoffs, expect a sizable set of fannies in there this season as opposed to the vast sea of mid-level emptiness of years past. Winners with out-of-this-world superstars have a way of heating up interest in the lobbying and fat-cat perches.

More tangible, however, is the disappearance of seats in the loge levels. Those are the right-above-the-lower-bowl set at both ends of the rink (orange in your pictured seating chart). Really good seats. One end section of them is entirely gone, for the entire season.

“Do you see those three white placards on the three seats in the other end?” McDermott asked me. “That’s all that’s left.”

Just three single seats available out of the two end loge sections. (At this moment I briefly recalled Yahoo’s Ross McKeon and his call this summer to pull up the stakes on hockey in Washington. You know, for Washington’s indifference to the sport.)

Also gone, entirely, for the season: the Eagle’s Nest; and, upper bowl corner perches typically priced at about $25.

The Caps have set aside 2,000 seats for groups and an additional 2,000 seats for individual game purchases. Individual games go on sale this Saturday. Van Stone was blunt about the fate of high-profile games such as Detroit’s Saturday matinee arrival in January and the two dates with Pittsburgh: “They won’t survive the weekend,” he predicted.

All told, the Caps have a solid 10,000 “full equivalent” season tickets on the books, which doesn’t account for another 2,000 patrons seated in suites and the Club level. More could have been sold were it not for the group and individual game set-asides. McDermott told me that game-day sales and walk-ups account for an additional 3,000-5,000 purchases. When you run the numbers, the turnstiles are-a-humming: really, on no night in 2008-09 should Verizon Center draw a crowd for hockey south of 15,000. The Caps ranked 20th out of 30 teams last season in the number of tickets actually purchased (as opposed to the Susan O’Malley Attendance Meter), and on Monday night McDermott predicted the team would rank somewhere between 10th and 15th in paid attendance during the upcoming season.

More good news: Student Rush is returning. It’ll be on Thursday nights. $15 for a seat in the upper bowl, $35 for one in the lower (better be a small campus), and again this year, the students get fed, too: a Chipotle burrito comes with.

The Caps have so many new plan holders (”well over 4,000,” Van Stone said) that the team held two nights of orientation for first-timer season ticket holders out at Kettler earlier this summer. All of the benefits of being a season-long stakeholder were explained to them, and at the end of the seminar the newbies were invited to skate on the Kettler sheet with Dave Steckel, Karl Alzner, and Eric Fehr. (Symbolic of the team’s youth.)

The Caps this summer have made having a ticket stake in the team a special status. Beyond the value of having guaranteed access to seats for every game, membership, the Caps have demonstrated, indeed does have its privileges. All season ticket holders were mailed a commemorative laminated ticket for opening night against the ‘Hawks, and all were also shipped lanyards with a plastic sheathing for their tickets. VIP planners — those down hard by the glass in rows A and B — have instead of individual tickets a laminated badge akin to the all-access passes we’ve all seen worn by roadies for rock bands. Cool stuff.

If you build it they will come is the memorable refrain from a very memorable Kevin Costner sports movie. The “It” being hockey is being built in Washington, and they are coming, very much red and rockin’.

Filed in Comcast SportsNet, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Towns, Lisa Hillary, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, TV, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (10)

There’s TGIF, Then There’s Today

By The OFB Team
Friday, September 12, 2008

Welcome to the last business day without hockey in 2008. At the end of this weekend, feet will be back in boots, and stay there, inaugurating the 2008-09 hockey season. Many Washington Capitals veterans are already in town and skating out at Kettler, but the team’s rookies report for five days of instruction beginning this Sunday. We’ll even have a Caps-Flyers’ rookie scrimmage to follow in less than a week.

Hockey is back!

We wonder, what was your favorite hockey story of the summer — not news item, such as new contracts for Mike Green or Sergei Fedorov, but perhaps some unexpected pleasantry that helped you bridge the puck-less chasm? We’d love to hear about it in your comments.

This was ours: imagine yourself a 13-year-old hockey camper (a goalie), and fresh off your summer session, back in the room, you’re just about to remove your gear when a member of the Ottawa Senators pokes his head in the room and asks if there’s a goalie who could come back out and stand in front of a dozen-plus 90-mile-an-hour slapshots for 90 minutes? A sizable number of Sens had arrived at Bell Sensplex for a customary August intrasquad scrimmage, and they were short a goalie. Now imagine being a real big Senators’ fan and being in that room all ready to go in your gear.

That’s what happened to youth house league 13-year-old Christian Rusu last month.

“At first, I didn’t know what was going on in the drills because they were going so fast. It’s nothing like I have ever seen before. I came out to the top of my (goal crease), and, all of a sudden, I looked one way, then the other, and the puck was behind me and I was thinking, ‘Where did that come from?’”

Best of all, young Christian played well in net in that scrimmage — the Senators’ players said so. Better still:  Christian’s father arrived at the rink to retrieve him in time to learn of the experience. We bet that was a special car ride home.

Filed in Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey Heroes, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Rituals, Hockey Towns, Kettler Capitals Iceplex, Rookie Camp, Training Camp, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (8)

Need Two for the Rookie Scrimmage? Be Online Next Thursday

By The OFB Team
Thursday, August 28, 2008

Caps’ fans wanting to get into Kettler Capitals Iceplex for the September 18 scrimmage between the Caps’ and Flyers’ prospects that day will need to be online and at the Caps’ Web site next Thursday, September 4, when the team will issue free tickets required for admission. Per the team press release today on the event:

“The Washington Capitals’ 2008 rookie camp begins Sept. 14 and culminates with a game against the Philadelphia Flyers rookies on Thursday, Sept. 18, at 3 p.m. at Kettler Capitals Iceplex.

“Every on-ice session during rookie camp is free and open to the public to attend. The game against Philadelphia is also free, but a ticket will be needed to gain admission. To secure a ticket, fans will need to RSVP at WashingtonCaps.com. Since seating at Kettler Capitals Iceplex is limited there is a maximum of two tickets per person, and tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. A ticket will gain fans admission to the game, but because of seating limitations it does not necessarily guarantee a seat.

“Fans can begin to RSVP online on Thursday, Sept. 4, and will need to bring their printed confirmation with them to gain admission to the game. Fans will need to enter through the main entrance of Kettler Capitals Iceplex, which is on the eighth floor of the Ballston Common Mall parking garage. No copies or duplicate confirmation sheets will be permitted.

This will be a first-of-its-kind event at the facility, and given the opponent, not one to be missed.

Filed in Hockey Rinks, Kettler Capitals Iceplex, Philadelphia Flyers, The Great Old Patrick Division, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (1)

No More Black Jerseys (A Plea)

By OrderedChaos (Mike Rucki)
Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Now I’m not saying the Washington Capitals necessarily should choose our third jersey design — granted, I’m partial to it, but I’m clearly biased as the one who Photoshopped it. But as Jibblescribbits (via Puck Daddy) points out, 12 black jerseys in the NHL is too damned many already, so hopefully the Caps will at least go with a blue one in 2009-10. So please, NHL: No more black jerseys. It’s as dated as the early 90s’ teal. Thank you.

Filed in Hockey Rinks, Philadelphia Flyers, Phoenix Coyotes, Sweaters| Permalink| Comments (5)

Windy City Winter Classic Confirmed

By The OFB Team
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The NHL today confirmed what had long been suspected: that its next outdoor game would take place at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, on January 1, 2009.

The Original Six matchup between the Blackhawks and the Detroit Red Wings will be the 701st between the clubs – the most of any NHL clubs.

Back in May, when we wondered about the next iteration of the Winter classic, we actually suggested Chicago and a game between the Hawks and Wings. We just got the venue wrong.

The date means that hockey fans planning on attending have the opportunity to spend New Years Eve in Chicago. Not a bad party town. But bring your longjohns.

Filed in Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Gary Bettman, Hockey, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Towns, Hockey Weather, Ice, National Hockey League, Winter Classic| Permalink| Comments (1)

Deep Frozen Thoughts at the Start of July

By The OFB Team
Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Recently we found out about the existence of Lee Twombly Pond in Falmouth, Maine. It’s claim to fame — aside from being astoundingly gorgeous — is its existence as “Northern New Engalnd’s only refrigerated outdoor skating surface.”

They actually Zamboni this outdoor sheet numerous times each winter day, weather permitting. The Pond House at the Pond is available for rent for parties and such and features both indoor and outdoor fireplaces.

Imagine perhaps 20 of your buddies renting out a late Saturday afternoon sheet for shinny there and taking refuge from the Maine winter in such a backwoods setting. Um, pass along the signup sheet, please.

In the dead of winter a lot of Americans make plans for following summer vacations in sun-baked recreational settings. Guess what we’re doing with our vacation plans right about now for six months’ hence?

Filed in American Hockey, Hockey, Hockey Rinks, Old Time Hockey, Pond Hockey, Zambonis| Permalink| Comments (1)

Ice Can Be Nice in June

By The OFB Team
Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Last night’s game 5 was easily the best game of these Stanley Cup Finals, and perhaps the best finals game in years. Near the top of NBC’s broadcast, did you catch play-by-play pro Mike Emerick’s referencing the temperature of Joe Louis Arena’s ice sheet? 

A frosty eight degrees.

That’s about 12 degrees colder than is standard for an NHL sheet. It was warm outside in Detroit yestersday, and Joe Louis staff knew they’d be working with a full house. So they over-refrigerated the sheet to ensure quality as long as possible.

The play for much of last night’s game was fast and crisp, with passes remaining rather flat on the ice for nearly all of regulation play. In fact, Detroit’s best period was the third, when the puck seemed afixed to red Wing stick blades in the Pittsburgh zone. As the temperature in the rink over the course of the multi-overtime game rose, the ice sheet’s quality deteriorated, as it should have. But Joe Louis staff and the Red Wings organization offered the entire hockey world a powerful exhibition of what can be done with ice hockey in summer and a rink heated high by packed-in bodies.  

Filed in Detroit Red Wings, Hockey Rinks, Ice, Stanley Cup Playoffs| Permalink| Comments (2)

On Outdoor Puck, the NHL Says Chicago Is Its Kind of Town

By The OFB Team
Thursday, May 29, 2008

TSN is reporting today that the NHL has decided that its next outdoor, regular season game will take place in Chicago, between the ‘Hawks and Red Wings, next season:

“TSN has confirmed that the Chicago Blackhawks will take on the Detroit Red Wings next January in what has become the league’s annual outdoor game.”

Could the game be on any day but New Years next January?

It’s the very city — and the identical two Original Six teams — we suggested just a couple of weeks ago.

Interestingly, Soldier Field is only one possible site in the Windy City for Winter Classic II. The other is Wrigley Field.

Filed in Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Towns, Hockey Weather, Old Time Hockey, Pond Hockey, Winter Classic| Permalink| Comments (5)

Hypocrisy Has a Home in Pittsburgh

By OrderedChaos (Mike Rucki)
Thursday, May 29, 2008

Eric McErlain recently highlighted a bit of Penguin hypocrisy. After Penguins fans raised holy hell in 2001 when Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis restricted playoff ticket sales to the local DC fan base, the Penguins are now doing the same thing as per the Ticketmaster fine print:

Orders by residents outside of PA, OH, WV, MD, NY, NJ, DE, VA and the District of Columbia will be canceled without notice and refunds given.

Leonsis remembers the reaction to his strategy in 2001, and the irony of the most vocal complainers doing the same thing seven years later:

We were raked over the coals in the Pittsburgh media for our efforts. Furthermore, a Department of Justice attorney called me. He hailed from Pittsburgh and threatened a lawsuit against us for discriminatory business practices. We, of course, heeded the warnings and stopped this practice. This is situational ethics at is finest.”

The tactic is not inherently bad — though a local-area “pre-sale” would be better than an outright restriction on out-of-town purchasers. But the Penguins’ front office using the same tactic that they gnashed their teeth about in 2001 . . . well, that smacks of hypocrisy. They complained and threaten legal action back then, and now take the very same objectionable approach when it suits them.

This situation is reminiscent of Penguins head coach Michel Therrien blaming poor officiating for his team’s 0-2 deficit. Therrien apparently does not not see the irony of accusing Detroit’s netminder Chris Osgood of diving while defending Sidney Crosby from the same accusations in prior rounds and the regular season. “Situational ethics” seem part and parcel of the Penguins’ plan of late, though it isn’t serving them particularly well on the ice.

Filed in Detroit Red Wings, Hockey Rinks, NHL Rules, Pittsburgh Penguins, Sidney Crosby, Stanley Cup Playoffs, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (6)

Bettman’s State of the Hockey Union

By The OFB Team
Sunday, May 25, 2008

As is tradition, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman addressed the media late yesterday afternoon in  the lead-up to Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals. The commissioner has used this forum in the past to offer a quasi state of the game assessment, and yesterday was no different. James Mirtle has the entire transcript of the session up on his blog, but we thought we’d highlight some standout aspects and quote in full eyebrow-raising realms that are staple thinking of this commissioner.

The commish, from his vantage, identified highlights of the 2007-08 season:

  • The Kings and Ducks opening the regular season in Europe. (To yawns, from our vatange.)
  • The Winter Classic, between the Pens and Sabres, from Buffalo. Without committing to a followup game outdoors yesterday, he did say that the league will make a decision “shortly” on Winter Classic II “in terms of venue and the teams involved.” (He, far moreso than we, would like to see a Pens-Flyers matchup outdoors, “in Happy Valley,” and hinted that such a matchup is on the short list of likelys.) 
  • The U.S. debut of the NHL Network.
  • The opening of the NHL Store in New York City, “powered by Reebok,” he quipped. (No mention of Reebok’s powering a high-tailed race away from its uniform system, by all 30 teams, and a return to the good old fabric of the past.
  • 21 million in attendance for the past regular season for the first time ever. Revenues exceeded $2.5 billion — also a first.

We particularly enjoyed this opening to the Q&A portion of the session:

Q. At this point in time, often times television ratings come up in this session. I understand they’re positive this year. But how does the League measure kind of the unprecedented access that hockey fans have across the world through all the new technology?

COMMISSIONER GARY BETTMAN: That’s an interesting and intriguing question. Obviously with respect to ratings we look for continued growth in traditional media. I think all sports, particularly us, tend to get measured too much solely by that metric and not the other things, including access to new media . . . What it means is our fans, and probably the fans of all sports, are seeking to get content of what they want on their own terms. And, therefore, we need to make sure that there’s access to our game the way our fans want it when they want it, how they want it.

On the league’s newly instituted intolerance for flying octopi:

COMMISSIONER BETTMAN: . . .The issue is the swinging of it. And Colin Campbell has had numerous conversations. The problem is the ice. I don’t know what the technical name is for stuff that comes off an octopus. I assume it’s some sort of gunk. When it sticks on the ice it’s a problem, and when it gets on things - it’s actually in one game got on a goaltender as it was being swung. They were going out the Zamboni entrance. It’s really more about making sure that no player hits something on the ice and blows out his knee.

[OFB note: octopi gunk impairing ice quality is an issue for the league, but just regular old rotten ice -- like for a Game 7 of the playoff series -- isn't.]

It’s about the conditions that we’re playing under. So I have no illusions. The octupi will fly, but they just can’t be swung because we’ve got to limit the gunk. Not a very artful way of describing it, but I think you get the point.”

Q. I just noticed that the League kind of missed a chance to end this, by this, I mean the playoffs, they had a shot at ending it before June. And I just wondered if there was any effort being made to squeeze the playoff schedule a bit so it’s a little less interminable.

COMMISSIONER GARY BETTMAN: I don’t think it’s interminable. And I’m sorry if you do. I like being here. I like going to games. And I feel a void in my life when the season is over. And I don’t even get to go on vacation.

Q. You need a hobby.

COMMISSIONER GARY BETTMAN: That may be. Squeezing it is an issue. It is the most grueling march to the championship of any sport. We’re very mindful of the wear and tear on our players.

[OFB note: For a specific instance illustrative of the league's concern with wear and tear on its players, look back on Anaheim's opening seven days of the 2007-08 regular season, with five games contested all on the road, two in the United Kingdom and three in fast succession back in North America.] 

Filed in Gary Bettman, Hockey, Hockey Rinks, Ice, National Hockey League, Stanley Cup Playoffs, Washington Capitals, Winter Classic| Permalink| Comments (3)

How About Some More Pro Hockey in Washington, the Hockeytown?

By pucksandbooks
Friday, May 23, 2008

Could suburban Washington, D.C., become home to a minor pro hockey team in the not-too-distant future? Such a team would first need a home here, and in Montgomery County, Maryland, intrigue is swirling around a new arena feasibility study and county officials’ publicly stated support for construction of an 8,000-10,000-seat arena, likely located in Germantown.

Last July, the Maryland Stadium Authority commissioned the feasibility study at the behest of Montgomery County and determined that a new arena in Germantown could bring “an estimated $7.5 million in net revenue a year” to the county. The reporting on this has been carried by the Gazette Community Newspaper chain. You can find the paper’s most recent coverage of this story here and here.

Addressing the rosy economic forecast for a new arena, the feasibility study noted:

“Based on our analysis of the economic underpinnings of the proposed arena, its likely operating revenues and costs, its competitive environment, and the performance of similarly situated arenas throughout the U.S., there is little doubt that the forces required for financially successful arena operations have been in place for quite some time.”

The study further noted that the arena, which would need anchor tenants such as minor pro basketball (the Maryland Nighthawks currently play in county high school gyms) and hockey, could become “a treasured community asset.”

The pricetag for such a building could go as high as $60 million.

Here’s where things get even more interesting. HOK Sports of Kansas City, the builders of Camden Yards, were hired by the county last year to conduct preliminary site evaluations. Among the sites under consideration: Montgomery College’s Germantown campus and the current Montgomery County Fairgrounds.

Montgomery County is home to more than 1,000,000 residents, and among the driving forces for a new multipurpose arena there is high school graduations. The county’s swollen high school student enrollments force commencement ceremonies out of the county, where no suitably large host facilities exist, often inconveniently and in a costly manner downtown.

A study, community need, and community interest in such a project still needs also a political champion, and this idea appears to have that as well, in the person of County Councilman Michael Knapp.

“I’m going to push for the county to pursue this,” he told the Gazette last summer.

East Coast League teams have had stints on the outer periphery of Washington — the Chesapeake Ice Breakers played in the modest Show Place Arena in Upper Marlboro, Md., in 1997 and ‘98, while the Richmond Renegades had a healthy stint in the E of 1990-2003. Neither made much an impression on the region’s hockey fans. Richmond’s Renegades today compete in the Southern Professional Hockey League — an even lower rung in hockey’s pro hierarchy. What’s being talked about and seriously studied today in Montgomery County represents, potentially, the most significant inroad to minor pro hockey taking root as a supplement to the Capitals in the region really for the first time.

And these are different times. If hockey is experiencing an Ovechkin-led renaissance-revolution in the region, it’s hard to imagine a county as affluent and heavily populated as Montgomery not supporting its first-ever minor pro team. And likely, with the Nighthawks, two of them.

Or put another way: if not now, when?

Interestingly, the feasibility study claimed that the new arena wouldn’t cannibalize business from other venues. Still, it’s not certain where the Capitals stand on the matter. It’s early in the process, and any new arena is still years away from its opening night puck drop, but the next generation of Hanson brothers could be coming to a new rink near you at the height of Washington’s embrace of hockey.

Filed in ECHL, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Towns, Ice, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (4)

Does Hockey Really Need TV?

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, May 20, 2008

By now, you’ve probably read accounts of hockey enjoying a significant spike in the sport’s television ratings recently. No doubt you also know of (and admire) hockey’s embrace of alternative media. That union has been a fusion of opportunism, technology, and desperation. Generally, it seems to be working.

Still, we’re three years into the Crosby-Ovechkin Era, and even with the promise of hockey benefitting dramatically — perhaps moreso than any other sport — from high definition television, there are durable limitations posing a serious ceiling on Television America’s embrace of our frozen game.

One is geography. Climate, while not metaphysically determinative in the matter, nonetheless plays a lead role in forging many puckheads’ attachments to the game. The other is the physical parameters and pacing at play. Football with its rectangular field, allowing many varying camera angles, and regular stops in the action, doesn’t merely allow television a foothold in its event but actually, in its modern incarnation, is determined by it. Or perhaps you’ve missed the past twenty Super Bowls.

But think about the hockey rink, which necessarily with its dasher boards shields three-and-a-half feet of action from the camera eye and many spectators seated low-in-the-bowl. Its oval, walled- and netted-in configuration just isn’t super fan friendly, relative to the playing fields and surfaces of other sports. It ever has to be so.

This week, freshly considering this reality, aware of a new and fabulous North American fascination with the untelevised World Championships, and aware of film increasingly relying on viral marketing, I wondered: just how much does hockey really need TV?

Can hockey go Cloverfield?

Something fantastically viral transpired with these Worlds. True, North American hockey hearts could welcome them into their lives as not before because of their arrival in Canada, and their being contested in North American time zones. But in Washington at least, it seemed to me that many, many more followed this tournament than in recent years past.

They were able to because of the arrival of the World Championship Sports Network. You plunked down $5 and you got about 50 world-class hockey games broadcast on your computer. On demand, too. Folks like me on regular business travel could carry our laptops along on trips and catch the Worlds in our world of airport terminals, bars Wi-Fi, or hotel rooms.

We in D.C. didn’t want to surrender high-level hockey when we were forced to last month, and when in prelude exhibition play for the Worlds word filtered out (virally) that Russia’s top line was comprised entirely of Washington Capitals, a fair number of folks in this region found a storyline they wanted to follow a bit.

In years past, I don’t recall hockey fans clogging my in-box with reactions to the Worlds they were unable to view. They couldn’t. Also in years past, if I wanted some reaction forum on the tournament I was pretty much confined to the tournament message board at hockeysfuture. This spring there was vibrant commentary on the Worlds on the Caps’ official message boards; in comments left here and on other Washington hockey blogs; and perhaps most tellingly, on the media blogs of the Caps’ beat reporters in town.

Now consider, too, the behemoth ESPN’s role in hockey’s rather robust return from its labor stoppage of a few years back. Which is: nothing. People still snicker at the agreement the NHL has with Versus, but the league’s revenues keep on growing. Somehow word is getting out about great hockey being played these days.

Moreover, hockey’s roots in the broadcast medium are with iconic, culture-defining radio personalities (Foster Hewitt) as opposed to John Madden- or Howard Cosell-type mega personalities on TV. I find that charming. And telling.

I’m still fascinated by the X-Files-like thought of Comcast one day rising up and challenging ESPN’s dominance. But if that never happens, if hockey is never accorded a seat at the broadcast dining room table by the usual suspects, is that so bad? It will always have regionalized television coverage. The league’s dedicated channel is a hit with its fans. Its universe of supporters on line grows by the week — and it appears to be broadening internationally, too — and they’re distinctly engaged. And I’m sure the league and its visionary, new media marketers like Leonsis are by no means exhausted of their ideas for broadening further sports’ fans interest in hockey.

Still, what a lovely virus we have at the moment.

Filed in ESPN, Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey Night in Canada, Hockey Rinks, IIHF, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, National Hockey League, Radio, TV, World Championships| Permalink| Comments (3)

Searching for the Next Great Outdoor Game

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, May 15, 2008

Yankee Stadium may be out as the site for an outdoor NHL game next New Year’s Day, according to today’s USA Today. Both New York baseball teams are building new stadiums, and there’s an enormous amount of construction associated with those sites as well as others in the respective burroughs of Queens and the Bronx.

An alternative site? Potentially Beaver Stadium on the campus of Penn State.

“Bettman said he received a letter from Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell asking the league to look into playing a Penguins-Philadelphia Flyers game at Penn State’s football stadium. An announcement could come by early next month, Bettman said.”

If you’ve been to State College, you know it’s a level or seven down from the media market of the Big Apple. It’s also (basically) without an airport. Should that be the followup to this past New Year’s Day snowy stunner in Buffalo, convenient to both Toronto and New York media?

And if the league needs to wait a month before determining the site of this new and highly appealing event on hockey’s calendar, why not wait off another week and add it to the league’s Entry Draft weekend of fun, and give that event some more pizzaz?

The dismantling of Yankee Stadium should begin in February or March. The wrecking ball bludgeons Shea not long after the Mets’ final game this season. Losing out on Yankee would be particularly disappointing for the NHL, as the event necessarily would garner extraordinary interest again in the media capital of the world and as Yankee’s final significant event, joining that venue’s legion of memorable dates (Muhammed Ali fights; the Beatles; Notre Dame-Army football).

If need be, how about this instead: the Hawks and Wings on New Years from a recently renovated Soldier Field?

Filed in Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Weather, Media, National Hockey League, Old Time Hockey, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Washington Capitals, Winter Classic| Permalink| Comments (16)
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