24 July, 2008

Category Archives: Ice

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 2009| 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)

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, The Winter Classic, Washington Capitals| 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)

The Capitals’ Top 10 Storylines for 2007-08

By pucksandbooks
Monday, April 28, 2008

10. The Rebuild Is Over. Owner Leonsis uttered this proclamation during the preseason, later claiming that the season’s barometer for success would be qualifying for the postseason. Through the middle of November both seemed delusionally wishful thinking. But when the right guy arrived behind the bench, when the Caps’ skilled young core was encouraged to attack, the team took off, rampaging from last in the league at Thanksgiving to a Southeast Division crown on the regular season’s final Saturday. The right pieces indeed were in place, and the team’s future has never been as promising.

9. Backstrom: the no. 1 Pivot of the Future — and the Present. Really nobody knew what Nicklas Backstrom’s rookie season in the NHL would bring. During last July’s Development Camp, he seemed to struggle a bit with making plays on a smaller sheet. But he looked better at the end of camp than at its start, and by September’s training camp he looked even more adjusted. Like other skilled players in Glen Hanlon’s system, he struggled. Like other skilled players under Bruce Boudreau, he blossomed.

His 69 points on the season represented the second-most prolific rookie season in Caps’ history (behind a certain precocious Russian in 2005-06). Most telling: 60 of his points came in the final 61 games. He adjusted all right. He played his finest hockey of the season when you want a player to — in the postseason. In so doing he defied a long tradition of rookies fading under the rigors of an 82-game season. And he rightfully earned a nomination for the Calder trophy.

8. One Seriously Sorry Sheet. Washington’s never been known to offer a quality sheet of ice for its NHL games, but the matter gained unprecedented urgency when in December team captain Chris Clark spoke with commendable candor to the Washington Post about the indefensible ice at home. This surface wasn’t merely bad aesthetically, it was, suggested Clark, injurious to players. Clark himself lost virtually the entire season to a groin injury. Flyers’ winger Mike Knuble injured his leg when he caught it in a Verizon Center rut in the playoffs. And game 7’s sheet was so ill-prepared that arena workers could be seen repairing it on their hands and knees in the moments before puck-drop — and throughout the game.

Whatever greatly skilled and exciting roster Capitals’ management assembles for the future, it won’t much matter if at home it’s asked to compete on an ability-leveling and integrity-sacrificing surface.

7. Deadline Day Doozies. Trade deadline day was supposed to be quiet for the Caps. It turned out to be anything but. General manager George McPhee engineered a dramatic infusion of postseason experience and skill in areas of weakness on February 26, including securing a no.1 netminder in Cristobal Huet from Montreal for merely a second-round pick in the 2009 Entry Draft. All three players acquired on deadline day played pivotal roles in the season’s final 18 games.

In his Capitals’ debut on February 29, Huet stopped all 18 shots he faced in backstopping the Caps to a 4-0 win in New Jersey. He went 11-2 in his 13 starts for the Caps, winning the final nine games he started. In the biggest game the Caps played in years, Sergei Fedorov, acquired for 2007 second round selection Teddy Ruth, was named the game’s first star in the Caps’ 3-1 win over Florida on April 5, which vaulted the team to the SouthEast title and the postseason for the first time since 2003. He was especially adept in the faceoff circle. Matt Cooke played a less significant part statistically during the stretch run but recaptured his active, pest-like play from years ago in Vancouver night in and night out. All three veterans were credited with providing vital leadership to the young and inexperienced Caps.

6. Mike Green: the no. 1 Gun Arrives. If there was one overarching question confronting the Caps’ blueline heading into the 2007-08 season, it was: is there a no.1 Gun among? If last September you thought there was, you knew something the rest of hockey didn’t. In 2006-07, Mike Green played 70 games for the Caps, tallying just 2 goals and 10 assists. He offered glimpses of high-end promise, but he also seemed years away from becoming consistent and reliable and earning a top pairing assignment. But this past season Green blossomed into a dominant, mature-for-his-years force. He led the entire league in goals by a defenseman during the regular season, and he followed that with a superb playoff series — so much so that Flyers’ head coach John Stevens very publicly made it known that Mike Green was a weapon his team had to strategize to stop. The no.1 Gun on the Caps’ blueline has arrived.

5. AO: The Best Hockey Player on the Planet. Alexander Ovechkin’s hardware-hogging brilliance during 2007-08 earned him broadcasts of “Ovechkin Ovations” on the NHL Network and, more importantly, ascension over the Nova Scotian as the game’s greatest talent. His 65 goals during the regular season were the most scored by a Capital in franchise history, and he became just the 19th player in NHL history to score 60 goals in a season. By the end of the regular season he’d staked unassailable claims to both the Richard and Ross trophies and was a near mortal lock to command both the Hart trophy and the Lester Pearson award for his most valuable performance. At one point no less than the Great One suggested that his seemingly unbreakable record of 92 goals scored in a single season could be within Ovechkin’s visored viewfinder.

4. Canning Glen; Finding the Right Guy Right up the Road. After winning their first three games of the season, the Capitals proceeded to lose 15 of their next 18 and plummet to the very bottom of the NHL standings. While Glen Hanlon may well have been the right coach to preside over the rebuilding Caps beginning not long before the team began its purge of high-priced, under-achieving talent in the 2003-04 season, autumn 2007 seemed to deliver a resoundingly rotten verdict on his ability to advance the team to where management deemed appropriate for 2007-08.

No one would suggest that Hanlon didn’t offer the organization his fullest possible effort. But by late 2007 that effort wasn’t working. “He knew as soon as he saw me this morning,” McPhee told the Washington Post on Thanksgiving day. “He said, ‘I wouldn’t have known what to do today.’ ”

Enter Bruce Boudreau, aka “Gabby.” On Thanksgiving Eve Bruce Boudreau was in his third season behind the Hershey Bears’ bench. He’d enjoyed an auspicious first two seasons there: a Calder Cup title in his first season in Hershey in the spring of 2006 and a return to the finals the following season. He’d won a Kelly Cup title in the East Coast League as well. Still, to many Capitals’ fans, he appeared to be just another “no name” plucked from the farm.

Probably it was with this in mind that Hershey Bears’ Senior Manager for Communications John Walton authored a memorable open letter to Capitals’ fans on the day that Gabby was announced as the new Caps’ coach. “Know this first and foremost,” Walton wrote in his letter. “He’s a winner . . . For what it’s worth, we have seen the magic here. We’re more than willing to share.” Continue reading ›

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, American Hockey League, Bruce Boudreau, Calder Cup, Chris Clark, Cristobal Huet, Development Camp, Eastern Conference, Entry Draft, Front Office, George McPhee, Hershey Bears, Ice, John Walton, Kettler Capitals Iceplex, Matt Cooke, Media, Mike Green, NHL Network, NHL Trades, National Hockey League, Nicklas Backstrom, Philadelphia Flyers, Print, Sergei Fedorov, Stanley Cup Playoffs, TV, Ted Leonsis, The Big Deal, Training Camp, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals, Washington Post| Permalink| Comments (11)

Another Blogger’s Poor-Ice Perspective

By The OFB Team
Thursday, April 24, 2008

Our friend and fav blogger Peerless was at Tuesday night’s game 7, and he shared with us this morning his observations about the conditions inside the Phone Booth:

“In game seven, sitting where I was, the goal crease at the end the Caps shoot at twice was a lake. There was standing water in the crease, and when the goalies came out to scuff the ice at the start of the period, they could have made sno-cones with the results. In the last games of the season, one could see a lattice-work of cracks in the ice. It looked as if someone had dropped a boulder from an overpass onto a windshield.

The Capitals have made a $124-million investment in a player. They have built a team for speed. They employ a coach whose governing philosophy is to press the action. Yet, they play on an ice sheet that jeopardizes the investment and the very nature of the team they have built.

It is past an embarrassment; the word you used — scandal — is precisely correct. It’s like buying a high-definition TV and hooking the thing up to rabbit ears. What was the point in making such an investment or buying in to such a strategic philosophy (speed and pursuit) when the underlying infrastructure is so inadequate?”

Filed in Hockey Rinks, Ice, Media, National Hockey League, Stanley Cup Playoffs, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (9)

An Unfathomable Scandal Sends the Home Team Packing for the Summer

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, April 24, 2008

The great Bob McDonald was singing the national anthem near 7:00 Tuesday night in a darkened Verizon Center when, standing high above the playing surface in the press box, I noticed something most peculiar: two uniformed Verizon Center maintenance workers were, to Bob’s immediate left, on their knees, trying to remain inconspicuous, a bucket stationed between them, doing something of a repair nature to the ice quite near a goal cage.

This was transpiring some 120 seconds before the puck-drop for an Eastern Conference quarterfinal Game 7 in the Stanley Cup playoffs. The maintenance workers performed their labor while the arena lights were dimmed and while most of the arena was patriotically distracted. It was abundantly clear that they didn’t want their work to be noticed.

As odd as this sight was, I didn’t make much note of it at the time. I think I was consumed by the novelty, the spectacle, of taking in my first playoff game 7 from a press box to pay it much notice.

Then I encountered Daniel Briere’s reflection to the Washington Times’ Corey Masisak yesterday afternoon. This is what Briere said:

“Another thing that favored us was the condition of the ice,â€? he said. “It was so bad that it was tough for guys like Semin, Backstrom and Ovechkin to get anything going, the ice was so bad. That was another thing that went our way.”

Twice in the same sentence Briere used the words “so bad” to describe Verizon Center’s ice surface Tuesday. Post-game, Briere was amid a madhouse celebration of Flyers’ teammates. What in the world was he doing flapping his yap to a Washington Times’ reporter about Verizon’s Center’s ice surface . . . unless it really was part of a storyline of the game?

badice.jpgA bit more backfile before I lay my bombshell of a theory on you. I was able to arrive in the Verizon Center press lounge reasonably early in the 5:00 hour Tuesday. It was a zoo in there, as you might imagine. There were a lot of friendly faces and plenty of new arrivals as well. It being a game 7, I wanted to survey the pros — the men and women who get paid to work hockey as a beat, and especially the veteran ones who’ve worked these decisive games before — to try and gain a sense of how they thought this remarkable series would conclude.

I was able to chat up 11 press members before seating myself upstairs at my assigned seat, eight affiliated with Washington media, two with Philly, one with a Canadian outlet. All eleven reporters forecasted a Caps’ victory Tuesday night. That sort of unanimity, imbalanced as the survey sample was, struck me as odd, particularly for a series as closely contested as this one. But it matched forecasts I’d seen on television since late Monday night.

With two of the scribes I pressed the matter. Why so Caps’-certain, I asked? The answers were the same, and interesting. The Caps had matured about midway through the series — learned tough lessons from the series’ first three games. Moreover, they were able to adapt in the series in a way that the one-weapon Flyers weren’t: the big-bodied Caps could go physical, whereas the bruising Flyers couldn’t hope to out-finesse the highly skilled Caps.

These reporters mentioned the word “momentum,” if at all, only at the very end of our dialogue, almost as an afterthought. The one variable of vulnerability for the Caps, a few of them suggested, was if somehow Cristobal Huet turned in a dog of a showing. Unlikely, they suggested, but possible.

The Flyers as we all know prevailed Tuesday night, defying the forecast of all 11 hockey media pros I surveyed and a host of national television commentators. I didn’t really think much about this oddity until late yesterday afternoon.

Over a beer early Wednesday evening, without a game to monitor for the first time in months, I had this thought: couldn’t it be possible that all 11 reporters presumed, subconsciously of course, that the Caps Tuesday night at home would be skating on a sheet of ice comparable in quality to Philly’s from the night before?

Makes sense. The two cities, close as they are to one another, experience basically identical weather, and both are home to multi-purpose venues experiencing virtually identical challenges in terms of attaining hockey ice integrity. And perhaps more to the point: fresh in the minds of these reporters was the nature of the goals the Caps scored in game 6 just the night before: that dazzling exchange between Brooks Laich, Alexander Semin, and Nicklas Backstrom on the first Caps’ goal, the one that led Pierre McGuire to issue a warning to the rest of the Eastern conference for its virtuosity; then, Viktor Kozlov’s near 100-ft. bullet, to the tape, of Alexander Ovechkin’s stick blade up the center of the ice, for a third-period breakaway, game-winning tally. And lastly, the insurance marker — a perfectly flat, cross-ice setup from Laich to Ovechkin for a bullet one-timer Martin Biron never saw.

Those type of plays can only be made on decent ice. Those type of plays weren’t made just one night later — though some of them were attempted. On Tuesday night the Caps, on about a half dozen attempts, tried long-range, middle-of-the-ice passes from various players to Ovechkin and Alexander Semin, seeking to replicate game 6’s success. All of them failed, most of them bouncing over or away from the recipients’ stick blade.

Also conspicuous Tuesday night, in light of the preceding night’s success in breakout passes and offensive zone entry, was the Caps’ reliance on dumping and chasing. Why so dramatic a reversal in tactics just 24 hours removed from stunning success — and before 18,000 lunatic-loud supporters?

The explanation, it seems to me, is both simple and shocking: the Caps had no home-ice advantage very late this spring; indeed, as Daniel Briere noted, they had a distinct disadvantage at home. Worse, it was a wound self-inflicted in nature. A most unnecessary one. At one time not all that long ago the Verizon Center aptly demonstrated its ability to chill out, and get the building feeling like a hockey rink should. Correspondingly, the hockey played on the sheet within was of comparatively high quality. But despite the absence of Verizon Center’s other principal tenant, the Wizards, over the weekend, event staff was unable to deliver a competent playing surface for a game 7 in the playoffs — for perhaps the most anticipated and important hockey game Washington, D.C., has hosted in a decade.

It was — is — a scandal. Continue reading ›

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, Alexander Semin, Boyd Gordon, Brooks Laich, Cristobal Huet, Eastern Conference, Hockey Rinks, Ice, Mike Green, National Hockey League, Nicklas Backstrom, Philadelphia Flyers, Stanley Cup Playoffs, Viktor Kozlov, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (43)

Ice Sheet Capades Continued

By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Corey on his blog has this grotesquely troubling quote from Flyers’ center Daniel Briere:

“Another thing that favored us was the condition of the ice,” he said. “It was so bad that it was tough for guys like Semin, Backstrom and Ovechkin to get anything going, the ice was so bad. That was another thing that went our way.”

I’m so sick and tired of hearing and reading about how unprofessionally crappy Verizon Center’s ice is — months and months after it’s been pilloried by players in the press. And even the home team. The purpose of having home ice advantage, it seems to me, is to afford your players an advantage, not aid the slower opponent, undermine the advantages your world-class players possess, or, in a worst-case scenario, actually increase the likelihood of your best skaters incurring injury by skating in slop.

It was mild and muggy in Washington yesterday, and so external conditions made for a modest challenge for the arena’s ice techs. But whereas in February and March it was actually chilly inside Verizon Center for hockey games, yesterday most in the press box were dressed comfortably, in light and loose clothing, for balmy spring. I’d actually seen improvements in the ice in late winter as the building was made colder; passes remained flatter on those nights, for instance, and at times you could see a heavy volume of snow accumulate on the sheet at periods’ end. Not last night. Not when it mattered most.

The Wizards had been off in Cleveland for the better part of a week, a big circus was weeks behind us, and Verizon Center actually replaced its ice sheet just prior to the start of the playoffs. There simply is no excuse whatsoever for there not having been in place merely an adequate surface upon which to contest the most important hockey game for the Caps in perhaps a decade. Instead, world-class skaters Mike Green and Alexander Semin were falling down — often not from contact.

A few hours after Briere offered up his assessment Caps’ GM George McPhee informed local media of his heightened concern about captain Chris Clark’s ongoing groin woes. Woes that he never knew before this season on this sheet of slop. Now we can add Boyd Gordon to the list of the leg-injured (with, like Clark, a torn groin).

We’ve been told that the problem was elaborately studied during the season, and recommendations for improvements made and implemented, only to have one of the few world-class Flyer skaters say playing on the road in game 7 was most inhospitable for the skilled members of the home team. Swell.

Right now I’m far less concerned about restricted and unrestricted free agents getting inked this summer and worrying who’s groin is next to rupture. What good is it having a young and skilled and quick team when at home they can’t move and make plays?

Filed in Hockey Rinks, Ice, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (22)

When the Best Ice in Chinatown Is in Clyde’s Cocktails

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Morning Cup-A-JoeOur heroes’ home playing surface is back in the news. Of Saturday night’s Phone Booth sheet, our good friend JP put it this way: “One could pour 4,000 Slurpees across an elementary school blacktop and it would probably provide as good a playing surface as the one at Verizon Center last night thanks to an afternoon Hoyas game.” The home team’s owner placed the Slurpee pump on idle on Monday, claiming on his blog that not only was his team’s ice nice but that those raising objections about it were X-Files exiles: we who discuss this serious issue are, in his view, the perpetrators of a “mass hysteria.”

Here’s what seems certain: given the rotation of events at the Phone Booth, from one night to the next no one can tell what caliber of ice quality the NHL games there will get. More on that in a moment.

But just so we’re clear: it wasn’t Washington hockey bloggers with too much time on their hands ginning up poor ice as a writing topic that started this subject; it was actual Capitals’ players voicing outrage in post-game candor, with cameras and microphones recording. No less than the team captain complained. This he told the Washington Post:

“I could see a lot of injuries coming from the ice there. It could cost [players] their jobs.”

There’s savage irony there.

At one point Tom Poti termed Verizon’s surface “embarrassing.” Saturday night a disgusted and Slurpee-logged Olie Kolzig threw up his arms in the post-game locker room.

Neither Jeff Friesen nor Chris Clark — both renowned power skaters while in their prime — suffered lengthy and debilitating groin injuries before (or even, in Friesen’s case, after) calling Verizon Center home. Might be pure coincidence. Might not. Friesen the then-Cap ultimately needed surgery. Last season, repaired and skating in Calgary, he played 72 games for the Flames.

I made the case earlier this season that there was something peculiarly pernicious about this season’s home sheet of ice. Clark, slightly younger than Friesen, of course posted 20- and 30-goal seasons in his first two seasons on it. In Friesen’s case, I personally find it noteworthy that the old Continental Airlines Arena he skated in as a Devil was, like Verizon Center, a very multi-use venue: the Nets bounced balls there, and so, too, did Seton Hall. It was only when the 29-year-old — not quite the age we associate with being washed up in the groin — arrived at the Phone Booth that he lost his stride. Now the vital cog that is the Caps’ captain is on the shelf, in perpetuity.

To their credit, Caps’ management hasn’t slogged through the season in blissful defiance of the complaints. Mr. Leonsis promised an inquiry, got it, and acted upon recommendations. I personally noticed a dramatic change in the temperature of Verizon Center way up high in the press box in January. That’s a good start. (Of course, this begs the question: why wasn’t it cold there to begin with?)

The owner on his blog yesterday noted that recent improvements apparently had earned the venue a ranking of 12th in the league in ice quality. But his having recently made a $124 million investment in a very serious skater, now only 22 and therefore physically immortal, is that Verizon Center in its present state, I’d suggest, at best an inadequate gamble. Or put another way: with the likes of Mike Green and Alexander Ovechkin likely to lead the puck rush up the slush in D.C. the next decade, just what caliber of sheet does management demand that its charges skate on?

To the rejoinder that Leonsis’ owning all of Verizon Center and its assets will ultimately improve things ice, I wonder. First of all, who knows when that will be. But more basically, hockey, generally, needs to be played in the evening. Here and in other towns, recreational and youth hockey, consuming families, is played on autumn and winter weekend mornings and afternoons. The winter weekend afternoon hardwood and its consequences, for better or worse, is here to stay.

But does that mean that evening ice sheets must always Slurpee? I wonder. I’m no engineer, but advancements in insulating materials are such that here in the home of NASA, is it delusional to imagine that some day soon some hockey lover in Greenbelt might devise a covering for arena ice that would preserve its integrity no matter the time of year, no matter the duration of hoops overtime?

I wonder. And it is in this vein I would have all of us who are concerned about this issue direct our thoughts. Capitals’ management wants a quality surface, of that I’m convinced. But at present, it can’t happen with consistency.

That needs to be addressed, somehow. It’s the right thing to do, for players and fans. And if that isn’t reason enough, I have one hundred and twenty four million others.

Filed in Chris Clark, Hockey Rinks, Ice, Morning cup-a-joe, National Hockey League, New Jersey Devils, Ted Leonsis, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (1)

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
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 GameIt 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. KriebelSpeaking 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)

‘Tis the Season for Unsanctioned Skating

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Rink ice is rarely rented during the holiday week. The principal payoff for a year’s worth of surrendered Sundays making ice there is this week: the evening sheets are mine for endless recreating. If Christmas makes children of us all, Christmas week makes me l’enfant de shinny.

My beer league teammates always answer the call. Richard and Andrew, hideously youthful, supremely skilled, and great friends, I ring first. Brian from Buffalo — a slick stickhandler — I dial next. Ted and Tree I sound out, too — even a small game of shinny needs muckers! Our beer league team, with conspicuously little roster upheaval, has been together more than 15 years.

Together we six form a hardcore set of shinny skaters: willing to pack the gear bags and leave behind out-of-town family and friends, on multiple nights, for rink  travel near and not so near, to skate in age- and rules-ignoring splendor. To sweat, smile, and rib one another for hours. To be together playing the game we love. To be boys again.   

Necessarily, we have no goalie; for impromptu games of mere recreation they are harder to come by than shopping mall parking spaces this week. We’ll play for pipes.

picture-676-no-hockey-playi.jpg

Our dressing room is half its normal game volume of bodies, but it feels full because of the sacrifices made to be here and the spirit of our endeavor: we few, we happy few, we band of unsanctioned shinny brothers.

I am middle-aged, and while keeping up with the room’s rancor I dress with the apprehension of an out-of-shape, quasi retired, let’s-see-if-can-trick-my-body-into-one-more-night-of-magic wish-maker. The odds, I know, are long. The desire, however, during this week, never wavers.  

Near 8:00 and otherwise armored, I announce myself ice-bound, helmetless, “in honor of Rocket.” I never play shinny in a helmet, especially in small games among friends. It’s my individual act of civil disobediance, and I don’t give a damn what anybody thinks of it. Sometimes, after shinny, I’ll ride home late in my Jeep sans seatbelt, blaring loud rock music, too. Somehow I seem to survive this razor’s edge of living.

We position the two cages perpendicular to their normal perches in the creases, and skate across the Olympic-sized sheet’s offensive zones. That’s space enough, and after we chew it up a bit we’ll move down to the pristine end and chew that up too.

We skate furiously for ninety seconds or so, then settle in to more upright, carefully timed bursts of forechecking and attack. The beer-leaguer’s aerobics. Often, puck carriers are afforded conspicuously easy entrace to the scoring zones. But then they confront a minefield of cage-defending checkers. The pace deadens at times, but we fail to break for water and breath for fully twenty-plus minutes. That’s something.

It’s a small game, the scoreboard is dark, the stands are entirely empty, but the competition among us is as fierce as if we were contesting the finals for our league’s Stanley Bucket. When a player alleges a tally from the feintest of nicked posts or crossbar, he’s instantly shouted down, sometimes even by his teammates. Goals in our games are awarded only to the irrefutable cracks and clanks of heavy, well-targeted wristers. 

When we do break I collapse in a corner, crumpled to the ice, my chest pounding, exertion vapor forming a halo about my head. For a few seconds I am melancholy from middle age mediocrity, reflecting on AWOL speed and reaction time, on newly arrived joint stiffness I knew about previously only from my father’s post-skating complaints. But I am in my gear, soaked with sweat, skating (at times hard) with my ‘mates deep into an evening before holiday mornings without an office to report to. This form of fatigue will ensure a motionless sleep under blankets tonight, and in the morning I’ll happily shuffle in ache through the well-earned stiffness to the kitchen coffee maker.    

We made a rule: no goal counts unless it was assisted — at least one pass from a teammate. Once I made a fancy rush up through all three foes, dangling and pivoting, elliciting cries of praise from my linemates, and thundered a rocket smack in the middle of the crossbar. As the puck angle-launched high up over the netting behind the cage I hot-dogged swawn-dived onto my belly and skidded out to center ice, to exclamation point my feat.

“No pass!” the three defenders gaveled in unison.

“But I own your jocks and socks,” I protested.

“No pass,” my linemates, a bit quieter, confirmed.   

Here is how I know I am an old hockey player: when caromed pucks elude and race down the Olympic-sized sheet I look for others to retrieve. Once, not all that long ago, I did the retrieving, and took pride in it. Retrieving that small black disc down at the other end now seems an Olympian task, as if I’m skating on a Great Lake. Now I watch Richard and Andrew make like jack rabbits and galloping stallions after the puck.

Bastards.  

Here is how I know I am a lucky hockey player: our next skate is Thursday.

Filed in Hockey Rinks, Ice, Old Time Hockey, Shinny, Zambonis| Permalink| Comments (3)

Chit Chat on Choppy Ice

By pucksandbooks
Friday, December 7, 2007

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Winter Wonderland Outdoors, Continued Nightmare In

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, December 6, 2007

Team captain Chris Clark, quoted in today’s Washington Post, claims that Verizon Center is home to the NHL’s worst ice, that it may be contributing to the injuries the Caps are incurring, and that he’s been complaining about it more or less since he arrived in town three seasons ago.

“I could see a lot of injuries coming from the ice there. It could cost [players] their jobs . . .

It’s tough to play on. Even guys on other teams say the same thing. When we’re facing off, they say, ‘How do you guys play on this?’”

The situation is so bad that Ted Leonsis addressed it on his blog earlier today:

“As to the conditions of the ice at [Verizon], we are working with all parties to improve the quality and the consistency. We deserve great ice. We have a great facility. We will do our best to work with building management to make it right.”  

Filed in Chris Clark, Hockey Rinks, Ice, Ted Leonsis, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals, Washington Post| Permalink| Comments (0)

Slow Motion Struggles on a Sheet of Slop

By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Cup'pa JoeLet’s stipulate that by virtue of being a distinctly busy, multi-use venue — home to the Hoyas, Wizards, Mystics, Caps, an annual horse show, various figure skating events, scores of concerts — the Verizon Center is metaphysically prohibited from achieving a sheet of ice quality enough to rank in the NHL’s top third. Due merely to schedule duress it simply cannot aspire to the uniform smoothness, to the black-ice-in-Banff quality of surface commonly found in comparatively quiet venues such as those in Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, or the Joe in Detroit.

Let’s stipulate further that climate change wreaking the havoc it is believed to have by its proponents, that Washington winters aren’t assuredly cold for three straight months, as they once were (in this blogger’s youth, in fact), making for an additional ice maintenance challenge.

And let’s also stipulate that the Midatlantic region is plagued by distinctive humidity, in all four seasons, and that that’s not the case in NHL towns like Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Jose, among others. That’s not to say that those places don’t know their share of heatwaves, and even moderate-to-oppressive mugginess in patches, but nothing on the scale of the Midatlantic’s mid-summer misery. Humidity, along with exposure to sunlight, looms as an ice sheet’s most potent enemy. It’s why rinks in the region spend lavishly on air circulation systems.

So the challenge ever confronting the Verizon Center maintenance staff is formidible. And yet, in other sections of the American Southeast, and West — Atlanta, Tampa, Nashville, most especially Dallas — we hear none of the outrage directed at the ice sheets that we have here this season. It gets quite hot and muggy in Florida, you know. But is it so daunting a challenge that the Caps’ ice should be lodged not only 30th in quality out of 30 teams but in fact worse than those played on by most of the region’s scholastic teams? It is quite literally the case that the Caps practice on a sheet of ice appreciably superior in quality to the one they contest their games on. That’s outlandish and intolerable.

Can you imagine Daniel Snyder being informed that the DeMatha Stags junior varsity footballers labored on turf superior to that of FedEx Field? Well DeMatha’s JV and varsity hockey teams skate on better ice than the Caps.

Washington’s surface, whether in Landover or downtown, has never been regarded as moderately good or better than mediocre, even in the peak of winter. But there’s something particularly pernicious about the ice here this season. It’s being referenced with disgust by players and visiting coaches on a nightly basis. Tom Poti on Monday night called Verizon’s ice “embarassing.”

With assets the likes of the Alexes — whose skills can only improve in proportion to the quality of the surface they compete on — how can Capitals’ management allow the team to compete on a surface inferior to Tampa’s?

In Moscow last spring I shared a cab with an entrepreneur working behind the scenes with the NHL on its outdoor hockey games. He told me that today the technology exists to carry off an outdoor NHL game contested on a quality surface . . . in Florida . . . in October. In the years ahead, it’s highly likely that we’ll see outdoor regular season games played in some surprising locales.

Today in D.C. conditions for a hockey game downtown tonight really couldn’t be much better for this time in the calendar. The air outside is dry and crisp, the temps brisk. In any other big-league city, 45 or so NHLers tonight would compete on a reasonably decent if not good sheet of ice. The Caps and the Panthers, however, will not.

Why?

Filed in Area Youth Hockey, Hockey, Ice, Morning cup-a-joe, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (11)