07 September, 2008

Category Archives: Hockey Towns

In the State of Hockey, There Is No Offseason

By pucksandbooks
Friday, September 5, 2008

I had objectives to meet on business in Minneapolis-St. Paul this week, but the one I coveted most was meeting a local who could happy hour chat me through a bit of the State of Hockey’s passion for puck. I’d read a lot about it over the years, but I wanted a real live, first-hand testimonial of it, unhurried, over a couple of beers. Minneapolis native Paul Wallerius, in his youth an accomplished local scholastic hockey player, and today a successful businessman and the youth hockey coach to a team that includes his 10-year-old son (”been in skates for seven of his ten years,” he told me), gave me just that this week.

The first important Minnesota hockey history lesson Wallerius imparted to me was an appreciation for the rivalry that Minneapolis has with twin town St. Paul. St. Paul, he told me, has purposely and strategically used hockey to better its prestige in the rivalry. Minneapolis is home to the Twins, Vikings, and Timberwolves. It’s fairly horded the pro sports teams over the years. But the North Stars, Wallerius pointed out, left the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, and since 2000, St. Paul has been home to the Wild, where every game they’ve ever played has been sold out at the Xcel Energy Center. St. Paul and Xcel are also home to the state’s famous high school hockey tournament. St. Paul made an aggressive attempt to lure the Twins out of Minneapolis and into a new outdoor baseball stadium slated to open in 2010, but ultimately Minneapolis won the siting.

Minnesota I learned is home to some fifteen thousand lakes. Glaciers which visited the upper Midwest region tens of thousand of years ago are responsible for many of them. It seems fitting that an Ice Age would prove to be the wellspring of the terrain for the State of Hockey.

Wallerius wanted me to make a stop at Tom Reid’s Hockey City Pub, also in St. Paul. Just two blocks from the Xcel Center, it’s a modest museum for Minnesota hockey. On the day I walked over to it from the arena the high temperature in the two cities was 67 degrees, under an indigo blue sky. Very hockey weather for early September. Tom Reid was a defenseman for the North Stars back in the day. He also works radio broadcasts for Wild games. His hockey pub is home to fairly forgettable pub food but worth the visit just to admire the breadth of memorabilia smartly scattered over the pub’s brick walls.

About Xcel Center: it’s a world-class hockey venue, but it’s also home to its own museum celebrating Minnesota hockey. Its most distinctive feature for me was the Jersey Wall: the sweaters of nearly 200 Minnesota high school teams showcased on a club level. They are like individual flags forming a very United Hockey Nation. They are beautiful to behold — the moreso as no Reebok uniform systems are found among them. The arena also showcases exhibits from the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame, and high-profile hockey headlines published decades ago in the St. Paul Pioneer Press are plastered on arena pillars.

A fairly significant moment occurred late last year when Sports Illustrated conferred the title of ‘Hockeytown’ on St. Paul, in response to Detroit’s tepid attendance at games for a great Wings’ team. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, in covering the development, noted that while St. Paul’s claims to the title are impressive, it may only be the second-best Minnesota community for the designation. Warroad, Minnesota, 400 miles to the north, is another well-credentialed claimant. Still, the major magazine’s designation of St. Paul is no trivial matter in the State of Hockey. Hockeytown, State of Hockey, would be a very cool postal address to have. I could retire there.

I pointed out to my new hockey friend that I was greatly anticipating the screening of ‘Pond Hockey,’ the new documentary crafted by Minnesotans Tommy Haines and Andrew Sherbrune. He hadn’t seen it, but he wasn’t surprised by its production by two Hockey Staters.

‘Pond Hockey’ chronicles the formation of the first annual U.S. Pond Hockey Championships, and while set in Minneapolis, it has fast become a state-wide source of enormous pride, Wallerius told me. “It’s only a couple of years old,” he noted, “but it draws teams literally from around the world.”

My new hockey friend asked me what likelihood there was that I could make a return visit to his city for the big party on the big frozen lake.

“Strong,” I replied.

He smiled. He wants to host me for it. I can’t wait for the season’s ice age to return.

Filed in American Hockey, Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey, Hockey Towns, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, Old Time Hockey, Pond Hockey, Print, Shinny, Sports Illustrated| Permalink| Comments (2)

An End of Summer Letter to Comcast SportsNet

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, August 28, 2008

My Friends at Comcast SportsNet:

On behalf of the entire OFB team, I want to express appreciation for your enthusiastic support of OFB and Washington’s hockey blogs, and convey my team’s anticipation for your coverage of the Caps in 2008-09. It’s our view that on a number of fronts SportsNet markedly upgraded the breadth and caliber of broadcast coverage of the Caps and hockey for the region last season, and we anticipate bigger and better things from you this season, during what may well be the most anticipated Caps’ season in team history.

Today, however, I’d like to share my concern with the thorough dropoff in hockey coverage on Comcast this summer. Please regard my reflections as aiming at strengthening an already strong broadcast product; Comcast SportsNet is home to knowledgeable and devoted hockey experts, and the outlet’s in-season coverage of the Caps is something the area’s hockey fans ought to take pride in. Your Caps’ page is terrific looking and deserves more credit for the quality of its content as well.

Around the time that SportsNet signed off from the NHL Entry Draft in Ottawa in June it more or less seemed to sign off on covering hockey for the summer, save for a brief blip (Day 1) from Capitals’ Development Camp in mid-July. Of course it’s not that there’s a frenzy of activity in hockey in July and August generally (the region’s hockey blogs slow considerably then as well); I guess my hope was to see, amid the predictable and necessary local media Redskin frenzy, very brief, very modest remembrances of last hockey season wedded with high-octane marketing messages for the new one. A few mere broadcast morsels might have gone a long way to carrying over the feel-good vibe for hockey that SportsNet so successfully cultivated last spring.

Specifically, I wonder if something more might not have been achieved with the novelty of Anton Gustafsson’s selection by the Caps at the June Entry Draft. We in Washington following the draft on TV caught one or two engaging interviews with father and son in Ottawa, but nothing substantive followed. The Gustafsson family charm — to make no mention of the novelty of the moment — seemed to beg for more broadcast product.

The younger Gustafsson’s selection really is an amazing moment in Capitals’ hisory, when you think about it. His father Bengt of course ranks among the most accomplished players in team history. He’s also one of the most accomplished coaches in international hockey, having won gold at both the Olympics and World Championships — in the same year (2006)! In June he watched his son become a first-round NHL draft pick — picked by the same club with which he fashioned a distinguished NHL career.

This very special hockey family easily could have been the subject of a special, in-depth Comcast feature. I’m imagining something like a 30-minute program — much like the one you guys produced for the Capitals’ 2006 Entry Draft — Capitals Under Construction. This time, however, the feature’s focus could have been on one draft pick and his family’s distinctive link to Washington’s hockey team.

How remarkable such a feature could have been had it melded footage of father dangling and dazzling in his classic old Caps’ sweater in the NHL’s ’80s brand of firewagon hockey with contemporary footage of son Anton just emerging as a world-class talent in Sweden’s professional ranks. The feature might also have offered the reflections of one or two or three long-time NHL scouts (European ones, perhaps) offering their comparative assessments of the games of father and son. It might not have been a bad idea, either, to solicit the views of long-standing Caps’ season ticket holders, who could have shared their reflections on father while also expressing their eagerness to see the son in action in a Caps’ sweater.

Now imagine if you’d produced such a program and aired it the night before the start of training camp next month, immediately followed by a broadcast of father Gustafsson’s 5-goal game (on five shots!) against the Flyers in 1984. What a welcome to Washington to the Gustafsson family that would have been. The feature program could have aired at least a handful of times during hockey’s quiet months of July and August, and served as a novel bit of nourishment for the region’s hungry hockey fans.

You may realize that beginning this summer many of those fans began tuning in to the NHL Network, now offered on select cable systems about the region, to satisfy their puck-lust. I think it should be Comcast’s aim to retain them all 12 months on the calendar.

Another idea for a fan-friendly feature in summer might have been to sit down with Head Coach Bruce Boudreau not long after his Jack Adams win and explore in depth — again in feature-length fashion — his extraordinary run in Washington last season. You already know how accomplished a story-teller he is; so why not roll the cameras and allow him, removed from the soundbite setting of the in-season arena, to tell his insider’s tale? My prediction is that the editing on your end would have been distinctly minimal. Washington this summer is home to the greatest coach in hockey — but who visiting our city this summer would have learned that while here?

Washington this summer is also home to the greatest player in all of hockey. Beyond Comcast’s producing something substantive such as a feature-length profiles, I also wonder at the absence this summer of quick-hitting broadcast blurbs related to Alexander Ovechkin’s remarkable rise to the very top of his sport. When he had all that hardware surrounding him in his stylish tuxedo up in Toronto in June, you guys asked us for some photos we published of it. Those stills in some fashion should have been aired on Comcast every day this summer, just for mere seconds, so that the tens of thousands of tourists in our town could have been reminded that they were visiting a city home to hockey royalty.

Filed in Anton Gustafsson, Bengt Gustafsson, Bruce Boudreau, Comcast SportsNet, Entry Draft, Hockey Towns, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, National Hockey League, TV, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (9)

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)

Street Crime in Canada

By pucksandbooks
Friday, July 4, 2008

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“This is the lazy generation.”

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

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

A Facelift for Hockey in Portland, Maine

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, June 10, 2008

The Buffalo Sabres today announced a brand new American League affiliation, in Portland, Maine, with the Pirates. Such news generally doesn’t catch the OFB eye, but in this instance, the affiliate happens to be in one of our favorite towns, one we’ve blogged from before.

Portland of course was recently the affiliate for the Caps; in fact, the Caps’ American League affiliation in Portland began when the Baltimore Skipjacks departed Charm City for Portland in 1993, carrying with them the Caps’ affiliation. And it’s where Kevin Kaminski’s sweater is retired. It’s also the home of the best breakfast in all of New England, Becky’s. It ain’t a bad bar town, either: the motto at Bull Feeney’s is “Thirst is a shameless disease, so here’s to a shameful cure.”

After the Caps severed ties with the Pirates following the 2004-05 season, the Anaheim Ducks shipped their prospects all the way across the country to the quaint Maine metropolis. That was obviously impractical, and Anaheim will affiliate with the Iowa Stars beginning next season.

Earlier this year there was serious concern that pro hockey would depart Portland, as the Pirates’ arena ain’t exactly contemporary or state of the art. (But it has a lot of relic charm.) Last year the city authorized a $175,000 study to renovate Cumberland County Civic Center, the Pirates’ home.

“Modern multi-purpose venues dwarf the building in both capacity and amenities,” a Portland Press Herald story on renovation plans understates. Political support appears to exist for a substantial renovation of the building; one wouldn’t imagine the Sabres entering into a long-term affiliation with the city otherwise.

The Sabres’ agreement with the Pirates ensures that there will be an American League presence there through 2010-11, and the Sabres have an option to extend the affiliation two years beyond that.  

Filed in Anaheim Ducks, Buffalo Sabres, Former Coaches & Players, Hockey Towns, Kevin Kaminski, Minor Pro Hockey, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (0)

The NHL in Kansas City This Autumn

By OrderedChaos (Mike Rucki)
Friday, May 30, 2008

A pre-sale is occurring right now (through 10:00 p.m. Central) for the first NHL game at Kansas City’s Sprint Center arena.

Of course, it’s a pre-season game on September 22 between the Los Angeles Kings and the St. Louis Blues, so it’s not like KC is getting its own hockey team . . . yet.

Whether via relocation or expansion, Kansas City, Missouri, remains near the top of the NHL’s short list for franchise consideration. Back in October we discussed the feasibility of an NHL team in Kansas City, in the context of a possible new home for the Predators. This exhibition game seems to be the NHL’s way of dipping their big toe in the KC water once again, to see if the temperature is right for hockey there.

Filed in Gary Bettman, Hockey Towns, Nashville Predators, National Hockey League| Permalink| Comments (8)

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)

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)

They’re Making a Hockeytown in Chi-town, Too

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Business that brings me to Original Six cities is my favorite kind (save trips to Detroit), and I’m in Chicago this week. Weather is very much a weather vane in my life; among the 40 colleagues here with whom I met last week to discuss this trip, I was the only one who smiled at word that spring hadn’t yet arrived on the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan. It actually snowed here a bit last Monday night, if you can imagine. Many trees here are without leaves still, and so I won’t lift allergy medicine from my travel bag during my stay. I arrived Saturday, and the mercury hardly moved above 50, along with 20 mph gusts and strong at times rain. It was a nice backdrop from which to huddle in Miller’s Pub on Wabash St. and watch some NHL playoffs on a large flatscreen with a few puck sodas.

I’ll enjoy a warm, sunny spring day like the rest, and we had that here on Sunday, but there’s something about a novel re-immersion in hockey weather, at odds with the calendar, that warms my hockey heart. Even in May. Besides, we really didn’t have winter this winter in D.C.

I’m one of those hockey fans who believes it’s good for hockey to have all of the NHL’s Original Six franchises, save perhaps Toronto, healthy and vibrant and competitive. (Actually, as part of a realignment scheme that would largely reconstitute the Patrick Division, I’d like to see an Original Six division. A file for another day.) And the Chicago Blackhawks had been lagging behind on this front for a good solid decade. Had been. But Dollar Bill Wirtz is deceased, the Hawks started winning hockey games this past season — they took Detroit to the woodshed a number of times — Patrick Kane and Co. have this town talking hockey again, the big rink — sadly, tragically located well away from this great city’s heartbeat — was filled to the ceiling for a lot of winter, the home team’s games are back on TV, and perhaps like in Washington, hockey in a sports-competitive town may be set to take off in the hearts of the locals for a durable future.

On my very first trip to Chicago, many years ago, while strolling the shopping strip of Michigan Avenue, I happened upon a quaint boutique-sized shop called Hawk Quarters — an outlet whose merchandise was devoted exclusively to the Blackhawks. It was distinctive for its largesse of authentic team equipment and uniform wear. You wanted a pair of Denis Savard’s shin guards, or skates, Hawk Quarters had ‘em. The store had dozens of hangers of multi-colored, authentic practice sweaters, all of them with endearing stress markings about them. On Sunday I visited Hawk Quarters again, and I enjoyed the stop every bit as as much as my first.

For one thing, a full hour before the store opened at noon, there was a middle-aged, silver-haired Chicagoan standing before the store window, within which a large flat-screen TV was replaying, perfectly audibly, a months-old game from the regular season. He was following it intently, even conspicuously and loudly exhorting on his Hawks to prevail. Standing not quite near enough to him to be associated with his eccentricity, I thought to myself, you wouldn’t see this in Atlanta or Nashville or Raleigh. I also didn’t think I’d have seen it for preceding renditions of the Hawks.

Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part, but I thought the old geezer was where he was Sunday morning because he missed his fun-to-watch hockey team again. Offseasons do that to the devoted.

Inside, I was drawn to the authentics section, as before. But on this visit it seemed expanded. Scores of sticks. Rows of skates. Bins teeming with well-worn protective gear. And that fabulous array of practice sweaters. There were some new Reeboks, but I noticed many, many more of the old school Centre Ice set, cut and formed the way hockey sweaters were supposed to be: beautifully bulky. Leave it to an Original Six franchise, I thought, to still skate a contemporary hockey season in a hockey sweater that looks like a hockey sweater. At least during practice.

They looked so good, in fact, that I very nearly plunked down $100 for one. I took a real hard look at a selection of green practice sweaters bearing that distinctive Hawks’ logo and thought how well I’d fit in this town were I sipping St. Patty’s beers here in one next March 17. But I reasoned that while I love Chicago, I just don’t love the Hawks.

Another reason for my attachment to this little store in this sorta hockeytown is its exclusivity of product. During all of those very lean years of losing Hawk Quarters remained open and faithful to its team, never once jumping on MJ’s formidible marketing bandwagon. Or the always marketable, lovable Cubs. Or the rebuilt Bears. That’s a monogamy I admire.

After an indulgent visit I left Hawk Quarters Sunday afternoon for a sun-splashed walk along Lake Shore Drive, and I thought about the chances of the Capitals needing/supporting a devoted store of their own in their downtown. A heck of a lot of gear today is moved on line, making stores like Hawk Quarters perhaps archaic or antiquated. The Caps of course have never had one. There’s a devoted store to the team at Kettler, but that’s different from announcing one’s presence to the residents and tourists of a downtown. There’s something commendably civic-minded about such a site, I think — a sort of meeting place for the like of heart. I hope we see one one day soon.

Filed in Chicago Blackhawks, Hockey Towns, Morning cup-a-joe, Puck Sodas, Stanley Cup Playoffs, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (8)