06 July, 2008

Category Archives: Hockey Weather

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 II| Permalink| Comments (5)

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, The Winter Classic, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (14)

Punxsutawney Phil, Hockey Fan

By OrderedChaos (Mike Rucki)
Saturday, February 2, 2008

Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow this morning—thus predicting six more weeks of hockey-friendly weather. Note that Phil’s weather-predicting rodent rival, Gen. Beauregard Lee of Lilburn, Georgia, did not see his shadow and thus predicted an early end to the Atlanta Thrashers’ season.

Filed in Atlanta Thrashers, Hockey Weather| Permalink| Comments (4)

“Outdoor Hockey Is Beautiful”

By The OFB Team
Monday, January 28, 2008

That’s the sentiment of a couple of Minnesotans behind the making of the documentary ‘Pond Hockey’, now in final editing and awaiting a distributor. The filmmakers believe it’s mere weeks from showing at a theater near you. Eighty minutes of cinema we can’t wait for; sure looks like we have another OFB night at the movies looming. The trailer suggests that the filmmakers have honed in on the heart of the matter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfTLm6cjCJQ

As you might expect, Minnesota television stations are on this story like black on fresh lake ice. One treatment can be found here. Still another can be found here.   

But it isn’t just in Minnesota where outdoor puck is being pursued these days. Jeff Jackson’s Notre Dame Fighting Irish got swept by no. 1 Michigan last weekend, so on Monday of last week, with his charges’ spirits slumped, he took them outside for practice, where it was a not so balmy 12 degrees. That story is chronicled here. The Irish, incidentally, rebounded and swept Bowling Green this past weekend.    

Update: We heard this afternoon from Andrew Sherburne, ‘Pond Hockey’s’ Producer. The first closed screening for cast and crew will take place in a matter of weeks, while the actual release isn’t quite that close. We’ll keep you informed.

Filed in College Hockey, Hockey Art, Hockey Movies, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Weather, Old Time Hockey, Pond Hockey, Shinny| Permalink| Comments (2)

Let There Be Shinny

By The OFB Team
Wednesday, January 23, 2008

It was at precisely this time a year ago that a very helpful reader in Frederick, Md., alerted us to the availability of a fantastic shinny scene tucked away in Frederick’s Pinecliff Park. As luck would have it, we’ve another cold snap forging rinks each night this week in the region’s northern suburbs. Highs in Frederick Thursday and Friday aren’t expect to top freezing, and plummet well below it at night.

The park is less than an hour’s ride north and west of the District. We could have kept this our little skating secret, but we’re thinking that come Saturday morning it’d be more fun to issue a shinny challenge and take on any comers.

May we ask our readers in Frederick for a conditions update come Friday?

pond hockey
pond hockey
Filed in Hockey Weather, Ice, Old Time Hockey, Pond Hockey, Shinny| Permalink| Comments (3)

Knee-jerks & Notes: New Years Fun Indoors and Out

By The OFB Team
Wednesday, January 2, 2008

We followed two big games on Tuesday.

Outdoors:

  • NBC opened its broadcast with Peter Gabriel’s instrumental “It Is Accomplished” from the Passion soundtrack—an excellent choice on many levels. Then the network returned to predictable form with Foreigner’s “Cold As Ice.” At least the network didn’t play “Ice Ice Baby.”
  • There was an awful lot of smiling players’ faces on the benches in camera close-ups immediately before the game. Of course all of them were going to be diplomatic and supportive of the event in the lead-up, but in the moment, this display of enthusiasm sure seemed authentic and organic and evocative of the heart of the matter.
  • The snowballing of the Pittsburgh team bus arriving at the Ralph — executed by hordes of Sabres’ fans — argued well for continuing this event in the future.
  • Outdoor Game
    Outdoor Game
    It would be easy to pan the event on the basis of the inclimate conditions — visibility was generally poor for players, spectators, and home viewers; trainers and players dealt with a litany of equipment challenges; Zambonis were on the ice as frequently as fourth-liners; and league Ice Tech Dan Craig may as well have been in the game program as often as he was on the ice. But our sense is that the event’s overall atmosphere earned the game’s first star, and that the league scored an overtime game-winner with this idea and its general execution. The overall effect was one of a compelling Season’s Greeting showcasing sports’ most under appreciated athletes in their embrace of winter’s elements.
  • In a very real sense this was a maiden run in terms of the league establishing outdoor ice quality. Buffalo’s football field is pitched at nine degrees! There was never going to be an issue with ice quality in Edmonton for the Heritage Classic in 2003 — Alberta skies were clear that night, and temps were below that of Cryogenics. The league will learn a lot from Tuesday afternoon in Buffalo, and apply lessons learned to any future outdoor engagements.
  • You’re a liar if you thought in the third period, while he skated on a sheet of snow, sleet, and patched-up makeshift ice, Sergei Give-it-away-when-and-where-it-hurts-most Gonchar would escape the tied game unscathed. By Divine Intervention he did, but no sane human being would have predicted it.
  • Some fantastic hitting, in corners and in open ice, and NBC cameras captured it superbly. Hockey played outdoors in snow with hatred and heavy hitting between the teams, in high definition: four unfiltered Marlboros for the OFB team, please.
  • There is something special to Kris Letang and shootouts. He actually lost control of the puck twice while bearing down on Ryan Miller and still managed to beat him.
  • Fitting that Sidney Crosby ended the game. He was its best player.
  • The NHL’s All-Star Game continues to suffer from both an identity crisis and any sense of relevance/importance. What about taking it outdoors, and perhaps even marrying it to a regular season game between a rotation of two teams each year? Make a Winter Weekend of it all.
  • The Commish, afterward: “This obviously is something we’re going to look at doing again. This is the type of event we certainly will be looking at doing in the future.” Think the league might be pleased with the results? A color photo of celebrating Pens appears on A1 of today’s New York Times.

Indoors:

  • Question for the New York Post’s Larry Brooks and the Ottawa Sun’s Bruce Garrioch, both of whom recently have opined that Alexander Ovechkin shouldn’t bother negotiating a new deal with the Caps and instead move on via restricted free agency to a “real” hockey market: one such market can’t be Ottawa, right, seeing as how the Sens are futile in all attempts to defeat the Caps?
  • Ovechkin on the Faceoff - Photo by G. Kriebel
    Ovechkin on the Faceoff - Photo by G. Kriebel
    Speaking of MSM, WUSA’s Brett Haber has the title of Sports Director. He labors in Washington, D.C. It would be charitable to say that he is seldom seen in the press lounge of Verizon Center. It would be understandable by Washington MSM standards were he to have ignored hockey on his New Years Day evening sportscast and instead directed all his energy at the playoff-bound Redskins. That’s par for the course in these parts. Instead he man-loved Sir Sidney to no end, calling him the best player in hockey. We won’t call this an egregious offense but rather one of breathtaking tone deafness; in legitimate sports towns in which there is a lead athlete credibly creating dispute about such a point, the hometown athlete typically earns the decision.
  • Ottawa played a shockingly undisciplined game fueled by out-of-control emotion in the determinative first period. A novice fan making his or her first-ever visit to an NHL game at Verizon Center yesterday, pressed to identify what team had spent the entirety of this decade in the NHL postseason, and winning about 70 percent of its games the past eight years, and what one hung up the gear more or less every April, would have guessed Ottawa the golfers and the Caps the savvy vets.
  • Martin Gerber may not be the Sens’ solution to confidence-inspiring, trustworthy, big-stop-when-you-most-need-it postseason netminding.
  • The Mike Green Express — an Amtrak Acela toward what should be an All Star selection. He’s still remarkably young, still prone to the occasional error borne of limited big-league experience, but he’s a jewel of his draft class and a lynchpin of Caps’ playoff teams for years to come.
  • Little noted but imperative: Ovechkin had to execute some magical footwork to remain onside on Mike Green’s end-to-end virtuoso tally.
  • Serious sigh of relief: the Caps got off the O-fer collar with 5-on-3 man-advantages.
  • Think about how formidable the five-game stretch that began in Pittsburgh on December 27 looked and consider where the Caps are now: 5 of a possible 6 points earned, with beatable Boston up next.
  • It’s frigid outside in Washington, D.C., early in 2008 and the city’s hockey team is hot. Expect your other-sports loving friends this week — even a few donned in burgundy and gold — to begin leaning against AO’s @ss-Kicking Express, eying empty seats within. Welcome their interest. We don’t know yet if the proverbial corner has been turned for this hockey team, but right now it feels very hockey healthy in Washington, and it feels wonderful.

Must reading:

** “Best in Snow,” Ross McKeon, Yahoo!Sports **

** “A Thrilling Snowball Effect,” Kevin Paul Dupont, Boston Globe

** “Ice Bowl Is One for the Ages, with NHL Record Crowd,” John Bonfatti and Gene Warner, Buffalo News

** “Want the ultimate outdoor rink? Dan Craig makes it so,” Scott Burnside, ESPN.com

Filed in Alexander Semin, Brooks Laich, Buffalo Sabres, Gary Bettman, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Weather, Ice, Knee-Jerk, Mike Green, National Hockey League, Old Time Hockey, Ottawa Senators, Pittsburgh Penguins, Pond Hockey, Sidney Crosby, TV, Tom Poti, Viktor Kozlov, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (22)

At Frozen Country Club, for Outdoor Fun

By The OFB Team
Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Want ideal weather for an outdoor skate conceived to thrill hundreds of young hockey fans in lower Montgomery County, Maryland? Try Tuesday night’s 32 degrees at 6:00 p.m. in Chevy Chase, Md., where the Caps — many outfitted in ski caps under their helmets — skated for 45 minutes under the lights at the gorgeous Chevy Chase Country Club’s outdoor ice rink.

This was the second straight year that the Caps traveled to Chevy Chase for such a skate, and being there among the club’s spectators, we left it hoping that it becomes an annual tradition. Coach Boudreau told us afterward, “Every [NHL] team should do something like this . . . [the fans] see the human element of guys laughing and having fun.” He’s right. The practice itself was as easy-going as the holiday mood surrounding it (complete with strings of seasonal lights hung about the plexiglass): basic passing drills, some two-on-ones against goalies at boths ends, and finally a bit of non-checking three-on-three shinny. This was an event mostly about the team connecting with its community, in a novel setting, in perfect conditions.

Initially, fans — especially the younger ones — wondered at Alexander Ovechkin’s absence from the practice. He was at the Club all right — but inside, warm, signing who knows how many autographs. Outside, perhaps two hundred spectators followed the Caps’ light workout, the overwhelming majority of them bantam-aged or younger. Chevy Chase’s west side of the rink affords spectators a slightly elevated view of the ice sheet, and from north goal line to far blue line the plexiglass was hard-pressed with wide-eyed kids.

We noticed a couple of things about this outdoor ice sheet Tuesday night. One, the puck traveled fast and firm and flat throughout; also, light snow built up on it quickly. Atmospheric conditions were perfect for the Caps, but so too was Chevy Chase’s surface. We asked Coach Boudreau and Mike Green to compare it to Verizon’s sheet and received some candid responses. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVTTCXCbK8U

Filed in Area Youth Hockey, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Weather, Shinny, Video Clips, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (7)

In Hockey, It’s All in the Family

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, November 13, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Hockey Rink of Madison County (Va.)

By The OFB Team
Monday, October 15, 2007

It’s exciting for us to receive messages of hockey appreciation from readership up in Hockey’s Home, in Canada, but perhaps more so when we receive it from an unlikely outpost of puck passion. Yesterday we received this outreach from reader Robert in Etlan, Va., a relatively small community in the Shenandoah Valley:

“We live in Madison County which is about 1.5 hrs. SW of the Beltway. We have a population of only about 14k. About 12 years ago a couple of brothers who grew up playing ice hockey in Canada decided to turn an unused public tennis court into a roller hockey rink. They and others built the sideboards from plywood and 2×4’s. It started small but now we have 3 divisions with almost 100 players.I was never a hockey fan, let alone a player; after all it was too warm here and roller blades hadn’t been invented yet. But now my kids are big fans and are counting the days until the season opens although my daughter’s broken arm (from soccer) may prevent her from being goalie until January.The operation is now being partially supported by the Parks and Rec Dept., and while our surface is in pretty rough shape, I think we can get by. Maybe next year, we can raise enough funds to get a really good resurfacing job.As far as I know, we are the only street hockey league in our area. And I think people who participate in such leagues either playing or watching are far more likely to want to become Caps fans and go to the games, buy paraphernalia, listen to the games or order NHL Center Ice from the satellite company, as we did last week. By the way, my 11-year old son has memorized the spelling of all the Russian players in the NHL.

Anyway, I called the Caps the other day and asked a Caps rep if there was anything the Caps could do to develop some sort of relationship between the team and our league. He did say they offered to sell tickets for the mezzanine area for $19 if we could get 50 people who wanted to pay that. That’s nice but I’m not sure we could get 50 people. In previous years a large group of us has attended a Richmond hockey game which costs about half as much. We don’t have Fairfax-type incomes here. (Our web site, incidentally, is http://www.madisonhockey.com/)

In sum, I’m not real sure what I’d like the Caps to do, but I think they have a vested interest in seeing leagues such as ours that have developed such enthusiastic supporters of hockey out of thin air, do well and prosper. I’d also like to see our parents and players develop an identity with the team.

Any ideas?”

Robert:

Firstly, thank you for sharing with us your community’s new-found love affair with hockey. We never tire of hearing such tales. One of the beauties of hockey is that it has many enticing off-ice iterations: floor hockey, commonly played in school gymnasiums across the country; roller; and one of the most underrated of all recreational pastimes, street hockey.

Up north, in the States and Canada, fenced-in tennis courts are commonly flooded in winter and skated upon. This winter, the four of us are gonna keep our fingers crossed for a cold stretch of weather to settle in on Etlan one weekend so that perhaps some of its 100 hockey players can lace up some skates — that rink of yours should be used all year ’round! We also think it’s fantastic that Etlan’s Parks and Recreation Dept. is actively maintaining it in support of hockey.

The Caps are heavily involved in growing hockey in the surrounding community — we receive word of each and every one of their visits to schools and hospitals and civic gatherings, and hardly a week passes without such a visit. We’re not sure if they’ve undertaken a trip out west in your neck of the woods, but based on your description of the game there and the people supporting it, they should.

Obviously, it’d be a big investment in time and resources to get a segment of your community to Washington for a Caps’ game. Still, we hope one weekend it happens. Remember, too, that there’s a terrific experience in taking in say a Saturday morning skate by the team at Kettler Capitals, which is free and open to the public all season long. A bit further up the road, in Hershey, Pa., the pro hockey experience is family budget friendly and among the best in all of hockey. Lastly, the Caps at the end of each season hold a sale of their equipment, and that allows recreational hockey players (and souvenir collectors) access to great gear often at great prices.

We’d like to hear how the season progresses in Etlan, so please stay in touch. And if you do flood that outdoor rink, we know of at least one OFBer who’ll point his Jeep west toward the Shenandoah Valley on a Saturday morning and join in the fun.

Filed in Area Youth Hockey, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Weather, Kettler Capitals Iceplex, Shinny, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (5)

Wide Open Observations of Opening Night (at Home)

By pucksandbooks
Sunday, October 7, 2007

Olie postgame
Olie postgame
An attempt to provide a sense of the atmosphere I encountered in and about Verizon Center beginning late Saturday afternoon:

4:45 p.m.: We do not have anything approaching hockey weather. In fact, walking down 6th St. under a blazing sun, I’m uncomfortable in merely bluejeans and a business shirt. But I’m better off than six fans I pass who are outfitted in new red Reebok Caps’ sweaters; they are collapsed and passed out against Verizon Center walls, sweat pouring off their temples. District Police revive them by removing the new sweaters and replacing them with old CCMs. Almost instantly the fans recover.

Seriously, I saw a fair number of fans in these rib-huggers out in the heat, and none of them seemed to be moving 9 percent faster than me.

The Caps have a number of young, attractive staffers scurrying about 6th and F Streets on Segways distributing pocket schedules.

5:05: The former Modell’s Caps’ and Wizards’ gear store, which nobody seems to know is named what now, easily has 60 or 70 shoppers in it two hours before the game. It’s actually quite difficult to move around in, it’s so congested. There is rack after rack of new color and logo caps, and they are disappearing fast. The lines at the two registers are consistently six or seven people deep. The team’s new look has been manufactured in a massive array of fashion in this shop, and it’s clearly popular with fans on opening night at home.

Back outside en route to the press entrance, I seize upon an amazing sight: a band of about 25 or 30 men and women — mostly men — congregated on 7th St. wearing hot red wigs, red dresses, and red athletic shoes. This is no ordinary opening night of hockey at home, I think.

5:20: Predictably, it’s novelty-night crowded in the press lounge. Comcast among other broadcast outlets is doing a remote outside the rink, drawing a lot of media personnel who’d otherwise be in the lounge. I arrive in the lounge with a mission to survey various media for their respective slottings of the Caps in the East this season. Here’s what I achieve:

Mike Vogel: 3rd (obviously, he has the Caps winning the Southeast)

Ron Weber: 10th (ouch!)

Eric McErlain: 7th

Corey Masisak: 7th

Dmitry Chesnokov: 6th

6:00: In the press box I’m seated between Eric McErlain and Dmitry Chesnokov. Meaning, my hockey education will be advanced tonight, and I’ll also have the immediate company of good friends. To the right of Eric is a Voice of America reporter originally from the Czech Republic. A couple of reporters in our row mention that the Caps have preserved a press box working space — all season long — for the departed Dave Fay. I mention to the VOA guy that my recollection was that Mr. Leonsis established that policy within a day or two Dave’s leaving us. Incidentally, the bottom of page 1 of the Caps’ 2007 Media Guide carries a dedication to Fay.

6:15: I’m in the refreshment area of the press box, which is partially glassed in, and seeking quiet there because Tim Lemke of the Washington Times is interviewing me about blogging and its impact on the Caps. He emailed me a week or so ago and informed me that he’d already spoken with Eric McErlain (good idea, that) and Jon Press.

The interview lasts longer than I thought it would simply because Tim and I have a real interesting and easy exchange, and he asks good questions. Also, because I love talking about this topic. Lemke mentions his impression that the four of us put a lot of work into OFB. I don’t quite know how to respond; objectively you could posit that we devote a healthy number of hours each week to the site, but even when I’m writing at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, knowing I’ll be dragging in the office the next day by early afternoon, I never view the endeavor as labor.

Full disclosure (sort of): three times I ask Lemke to turn off his recorder so that we can chat off the record. I want to provide him as full a sense as possible of what has happened to us over the past year, and various members of the hockey community have shared with me, with a good deal of candor, what they perceive the state of things media in D.C. to be. Mike Vogel once told me that 80 percent of what he hears in his hockey travels necessarily has to end up on the cutting room floor. “It’s a good way to preserve friendships,” he told me. Continue reading ›

Filed in Blogs, Comcast SportsNet, Corey Masisak, Dave Fay, Eastern Conference, Hockey Weather, Internet, Media, National Hockey League, Print, Ron Weber, Sovetsky Sport, Sweaters, Tarik El-Bashir, Washington Capitals, Washington Post, Washington Times| Permalink| Comments (13)

Cooling Thoughts Amid Mercury Madness: The Heritage Classic, a Reminiscence

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Heritage Classic - Jose Theodore - photo by Getty Images
Heritage Classic - Jose Theodore - photo by Getty Images
OFB reader Chris Meza helpfully reminded me this morning of cooler times, and specifically of November 22, 2003 — date of the Heritage Classic outdoor hockey game between Montreal and Edmonton. Chris is a good person to talk to about that event, seeing as he traveled from Washington all the way to Alberta that weekend to take in the game in the upper deck of Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium. I vividly remember him ringing me on his cell phone from those frozen environs. I asked Chris to share with me his recollections of that remarkable Saturday night.

The league of course selected the late November date seeking optimally chilly and dry conditions for the game. It got chilly all right. That Saturday afternoon, temps were in the single digits. Before the evening was done, the Habs and Oilers were skating in air that reached -28 Fahrenheit.

“The night before, it snowed in Edmonton,” Chris recalled. “It snowed enough and it was cold enough that one of the Zambonis needed for the game froze up.”

There were two games for the early winter hearty to take in that day, an Old Timers one featuring ’70s and ’80s Oilers and Canadians greats and then a standing’s counting one between the contemporary teams afterward. Players for both games were able to skate out onto the makeshift ice surface from their locker rooms.

I asked Chris how he outfitted himself for his perch a hundred feet high in the frosty Alberta night. “I was in winter socks, longjohns, Levis, two shirts, a heavy duty ski coat, gloves, a scarf, and a wool cap,” he said. “The thing I remember most about the fashion that night were the locals, men and women, and even their children, armored in winter coveralls that you commonly see construction workers in when they’re working outdoors in extreme winter.”

He had another vivid recollection from his frozen stadium experience. “I didn’t purchase refreshments from the concessions, because trips to restrooms required . . . well, in all those layers all of us were in, it just took too long,” he laughed.

Heritage Classic - Edmonton, Alberta
Heritage Classic - Edmonton, Alberta

It wasn’t just spectators lavishly layered — Montreal netminder Jose Theodore famously added a touque to the top of his goalie mask to try and ward off the tundra chill, and many of the skaters appeared to pull turtlenecks up to their ears.

The league set up two large viewing screens at both ends of Commonwealth for spectators. Chris said that the screens were important for those like him seated up high to follow the play. “So much of the stadium seemed to follow the play on those screens,” Chris said. “Their enthusiasm, with every rush, seemed identical to the passion you associate with a Canadian crowd in a typical arena.”

I asked Chris to identify a lasting image of that November’s frozen feast. “Even in the upper deck where I was, you could see the joy on the faces of the Old-Timer All Stars, their delight in taking shovels and pushing snow off of the playing surface. It just reminded you of hockey’s roots and that the game’s biggest names seemed to relish a return to them.”

Filed in CBC, Edmonton Oilers, Hockey Night in Canada, Hockey Weather, Montreal Canadiens, National Hockey League, Old Time Hockey, Puck Sodas, Satellite Hotstove, Shinny, TV, Zambonis| Permalink| Comments (5)

Memorial Weekend Snowglobe: Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, 2007

By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Cup'pa Joe
Cup'pa Joe
Can there be anything more exhilarating than postponing spring home repairs — sanding, painting, minor roof repairs, all performed on high scaffolding — by virtue of snow and frost that confine one indoors to the leisure of world-class beer and televised postseason hockey? Such was the Memorial week marvel that confronted my buddy Michael up at his vacation getaway in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

Deep into May each year Michael makes a 21-hour pilgrimage from Capitol Hill to Belle Cote, Nova Scotia, population approximately 340, to inventory winter’s wear on his magnificent property there. He reminds me of his mission each March, reiterating his open invitation for me to join him. I had my own arduous roadtrip to navigate this month, but am I sorry I couldn’t have been a sweatered witness to the spectacle that touque-wearing Mother Nature, eh?, treated Michael to all of the past 10 days. In previous springs, he’d always been greeted there by spring. Not this year.

You know how we in D.C. had a soundtrack of revving lawnmowers in our neighborhoods this past holiday weekend? Michael would press his coffee each morning in Cape Breton and listen to the revving of snowmobiles belonging to his neighbors. Lucky b******. Michael and I suffer debilitating bouts of hayfever symptoms from the pollen-saturated Mid-Atlantic, and as I listened on the phone to his chronicle of wood-gathering for home warming fires during broadcasts of the Memorial Cup I thought immediately of all that prescription medicine that never stirred in his travel bag.

The most difficult adjustment for me on my return home from Eastern Europe this month had nothing to do with eight time zones’ disorientation and everything to do with my lungs departing Moscow’s crisp air and being submerged in the height of hayfever mayhem here.

Nothing in the Cape Breton weather of the past few years could have forecast the deep freeze of May 2007. Michael and his wife Marleen and I have on a couple of occasions enjoyed February vacations in Cape Breton characterized by the smell of cords of burning wood in their two fireplaces and single-digit mercury, but recent winters there have been bone-dry in terms of snow. Snowmobiling enthusiasts, we’ve passed on mid-winter visits there the past two winters because the ground has remained brown throughout  Decembers and Januarys. And so on the phone Monday night I sat rapturously as Michael detailed five inches of fresh powder outside his house and the regular chiseling of ice off of his truck’s windshield.

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May 2007, the locals informed Michael, ranks as the coldest in Cape Breton since 1937. In the Cape Breton Highlands, a mere 30-minutes’ ride up a steep ascent from Michael’s house, there’ll apparently be snowmobiling solidly into June.

Many Americans by late May are heartily ready for the opening of swimming pools and the lighting of deck and patio grills, but with the Memorial Cup in full bloom last week, the news of one last blast of winter within which to watch it struck me as refreshingly novel. Michael is returned home this morning, meaning, necessarily, that he’ll know his share of 90-degree days in the three months ahead. Incidentally, he, too, grilled out back of his home last week; he just did it in a turtleneck.

An American arriving in Belle Cote after two full days’ journey is big news in town, and with each arrival Michael is feted with daily deliveries of freshly caught cod, trout, salmon, and lobster from his neighbors. The really thoughtful ones offer up a few bottles of the planet’s finest pale ale, Alexander Keiths. Some hardship, Michael’s missing out on our mosquitos and Bay Bridge gridlock.

Filed in Alexander Keith's, CHL, Hockey Weather, Memorial Cup, Morning cup-a-joe, Puck Sodas| Permalink| Comments (1)

Ice Rink melts in Hot Springs

By Gustafsson
Saturday, November 25, 2006

Sometimes the headlines write themselves.

An outdoor ice rink in Hot Springs, Arkansas, was shut down on the season’s opening day on Friday … because it was melting.

Brian Leonard, ice rink manager for the Hot Springs Convention and Visitors Bureau, said about a half-hour after the rink opened, the ice had started to melt, and the rink was shut down an hour after that.

“You can see that there’s a big old pond where the skating rink is,” Leonard said.

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