On Frozen Blog » Matt Cooke

Bye-Bye Matt Cooke, Embarrassment To Hockey

Mike Rucki (OrderedChaos) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 20:14:41 +0000

Matt Cooke’s dangerous and inexcusable antics continued today with a brutal WWE-style flying elbow to the New York Rangers’ Ryan McDonagh’s head.

The officials, to their credit, immediately escorted Cooke off the ice—there was no doubt that he’d played his last shift of that game. The only question remaining is not whether the NHL will suspend Cooke for the fifth time in his thuggish career, but for how long.

Don’t believe it? Perhaps another example of a player’s reputation making things seem worse than they are? Let me allay your doubts with Prosecution’s Exhibit A:

I have several DC-area friends who support the Penguins, and know several more Pens’ fans living in Pittsburgh. Every one I’ve spoken to is embarrassed that Cooke wears the black-and-gold. Mind you, the Penguins aren’t saints without Cooke… of course, what NHL team doesn’t have a few players skating on the edge of the rules from time to time?

Hockey’s a rough game, as it should be. But no other player in the NHL so egregiously and consistently attempts to injure opponents. Cooke’s actions demonstrate a lack of respect for the game, his opponents, and himself.

You may recall Mario Lemieux’s statement last month: “The NHL had a chance to send a clear and strong message that those kinds of actions are unacceptable and embarrassing to the sport. It failed.”

Was Lemieux talking about suspending Cooke for a knee-on-knee hit against Alexander Ovechkin? Or Cooke’s elbow to Evander Kane? A forearm to Keith Yandle’s head? (I’d get hand cramps trying to list Cooke’s incidents from this season alone.)

No: Lemiuex was upset about the admittedly crazy fight-night in Long Island on February 11. I suggest, however, that SuperMario reconsider employing the dirtiest player in the league if he wishes to remain seated comfortably on that high horse.

This is your opportunity to send a message, Mr. Lemieux: Suspend Cooke. Don’t wait for the NHL.

(Better yet, waive him.)

On a final note, it is a rare thing for me to agree with Don Cherry. It’s just as rare for Cherry to call out a dirty player instead of glorifying Slap Shot-style hockey. But almost exactly one year ago, Cherry went off on the Penguins’ cheap-shot artist… so, for the first and probably last time, I’ll leave it to Don Cherry to sum up.

[21 March Update ] The NHL suspended Matt Cooke for the remainder of the regular season (10 games) plus the first round of the playoffs (4 – 7 games).

Hard Hat-Wearing Brads Turns the Tide

The OFB Team — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 04:07:28 +0000

In a rivalry game like Pens-Caps, especially this season, often you can toss out the stats sheet and point to one or two key moments as turning point. Such was the case Monday night in the Caps’ 1-0 triumph.

In Monday night’s second period, with the game scoreless and the Pens holding a decisive edge in shots and scoring chances, Matt Bradley did what many in the NHL have wanted to do for years and in the process reversed the game’s momentum: he punished filthy Matt Cooke. Cooke, you’ll recall, did his level best to take out Alexander Ovechkin with an extended knee the last time these teams met. He kept up his dirty play and soon thereafter and was suspended. Matt Bradley carried a long memory into tonight’s game and waited to extract frontier justice in defense of his teammate. And despite the penalty he incurred on the hit, it was a clean hit.

Seasons of meager achievements gain meaning from such moments. And moments after Brads left the penalty box, he was forced to own up to his largely clean hit: Ryan Craig came calling, and Brads answered — in resounding fashion.

Let’s keep a close eye on what this hockey team achieves hereafter. Monday night we may have witnessed a turning point in a largely undistinguished season, and if so, Matt Bradley deserves credit.

More Caps-Pens: Backstrom on Coming to Ovie’s Defense: “I Was Just Trying to Back Up My Boy There”

Elisabeth Meinecke — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 17:23:10 +0000

In addition to Andrew’s excellent game write-up of the Caps 3-0 shutout of Pittsburgh yesterday (in the first of the city’s doubleheader of losses) , I wanted to add a few quick notes from talking to Nicklas Backstrom and Matt Bradley after the win.

Backstrom was the first guy to make it to Matt Cooke right after the Ovechkin hit, and aimed a left punch at Cooke before the refs stepped in.

“I was just trying to back up my boy there,” Backstrom said. “It wasn’t a nice thing he [Cooke] was doing there…I was just trying to let him know that he can’t do that.”

As we saw yesterday, hockey, even in its current incarnation, is still the Wild West of sports — when a dirty hit only gets you two minutes in the box (like it did for Cooke), you have to police it yourself. Backstrom’s name doesn’t even register in the HockeyFights.com orbit, but several people around the team have observed that Backstrom is a guy who has your back and makes it his business to be there for you. How’s that for top line chemistry ?

Another guy who usually has your back, Matt Bradley, was the one who said something to Cooke after he came out of the box. With the media, however, Bradley was diplomatic enough for the U.N.

“He made his choice, he went to the bench, and that’s fine, but he would have done the same thing the other way around,” Bradley said.

One final note — Backstrom agreed that this was probably the most physical tilt they’ve had with the Pens yet (there was no shortage of blood gushing, though most of it seemed to be coming from the Caps’ bench) but noted that may have partially been a side effect of Pittsburgh having to play without Malkin and Crosby in the lineup, since it forced them to play the puck differently.

We Could Use a Few Signings, Couldn't We?

pucksandbooks — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:04:33 +0000

These are salad days for salaries in the NHL. Yesterday came word that the salary cap for 2008-09 would rise to $56.7 million, with a salary floor ($40.7 million) higher than the league’s cap just back three seasons ago, in the first post-lockout regular season. ¬†Stunning. As the salary cap is directly linked to the league’s revenues, which are directly linked to its gate receipts, it’s seems clear that¬†a few folks other than Tiger Woods and Tony Kornheiser are interested in hockey. ¬†
Meanwhile, there remain outstanding — unsigned — some necessarily expensive parts to 2008-09 for the Washington Capitals. The tally: Christobal Huet, Brooks Laich, Shaone Morrisonn, and Mike Green. Boyd Gordon and Eric Fehr need new deals, too, but I don’t imagine those will be that expensive. Right now both Matt Cooke and Sergei Fedorov look like salary cap casualties, luxuries likely unaffordable in ’08. Since I last wrote about matters financial Capitals’ GM George McPhee has managed to sheer off about $2 million in payroll for next season by dealing Steve Eminger to Philadelphia and buying out Ben Clymer. (Ray Shero’s fruitless negotiations with Marian Hossa this month apparently have sheared off $7-8 million from the Penguins’ payroll for next season.)
However, it’s beginning to look like¬†McPhee will¬†need that $2 million¬†to pay Mike Green just in the autumn portion of the calandar next season.
Ah yes, Mike Green. For the congenitally white-knuckled of Caps’ fans, his breakout season in 2007-08, combined with apparently every name New York Ranger leaving Broadway, portends his departure and the swift end of hockey’s renaissance in Washington. But count me among those who think it far from a certainty that Green’s gonna attract a bevy of offer sheets next Tuesday.
For one thing, as great as his game looks, Green’s had only one big-number season, and¬†the price in first-round draft picks for signing him would be exorbitant (as many as five). Additionally, both the owner and the general manager are on record¬†stating that the club will match whatever offer comes Green’s way. For another, offer sheets for restricted free agents (see Tomas Vanek) are in a very real sense¬†one GM’s¬†performing¬†labor for a colleague.¬†Lastly, Green, though a young and inexperienced great talent just as Dustin Penner was last summer, is a primary building block for a contending Caps’ club. Penner wasn’t last summer, nor is he today, one of the 50 best forwards in the NHL. Penner’s was a stupid contract conceived by a stupid GM. Brian Burke allowed stupidity to reign supreme for a moment, but his Ducks won’t soon be looking up at the Oil in the standings.
In Green the Caps know what they’ve got –¬†an already impressive no. 1 rearguard whom they were awfully lucky to nab with a 29th pick in the ’04 draft, one who has¬†a great deal of progression and maturity ahead of him. Likely, too, Mike Green also knows what he’s got in D.C., and specifically in Bruce Boudreau’s system: the green light to pile up points for a really big deal around the time he’s in his prime.¬†
Mike Green will get signed alright. But it won’t come cheap. In fact, Team Green may be pointing to Alexander Semin’s 2009-10 salary ($5 million) and understandably if myopically bargaining that Green’s of greater value to the team than Semin. In an ideal world,¬†Team Green¬†would acknowledge the client’s¬†youth and inexperience and appreciable development still ahead and ask to be made the team’s highest paid defenseman . . . but not like say¬†Anaheim’s best defenseman.
Few however imagine ideal worlds with attorneys and player agents in them. ¬†
Speaking of interesting contracts, remember that “home team discount” deal Sidney Crosby signed? It will pay him $7.5 million in 2013. The thinking here is that Sidney will be a pretty good hockey player in 2013, when he’s still not yet 30 years old. Do you know how many NHLers will be earning more than¬†$7.5 million¬†then? (Mike Green might well be one.) One of them will be Vinny Lecavalier, according to ESPN. Indeed, as early as 2009-10, Crosby may not even be the highest paid Penguin. The intrigue with the Penguins never ends.¬†¬†
Given the number and prominence of Capitals’ restricted free agents, this wasn’t supposed to be an easy summer of negotiating for GMGM. It was made tougher by the breakout seasons by Laich and Green, as well as Morrisonn’s¬†emergence as a top-pairing performer. And while last weekend was filled with the promise of securing hockey’s future, this one is about placating the present. It’s messy but necessary business.
It’s a time to be anxious but not a time to be pessimistic.¬†

The Capitals' Top 10 Storylines for 2007-08

pucksandbooks — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:05:58 +0000

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.”

3. Winning 11 of 12, 7 Straight to Close Out the Season and Qualify for the Playoffs. No Capitals team ever performed the way the 2007-08 team did when it mattered most. For the better part of three weeks the team faced a virtually lose-and-you’re eliminated scenario each night. On the road and at home they would simply win and win again and have to keep winning, seemingly unable to better the Carolina Hurricanes for first place in the Southeast.
But through perhaps a sheer force of winning will, they found themselves in a stunning situation late on Friday night, April 4. Carolina that night, leading the Caps by a single standings point, hosted the Florida Panthers, and with a victory would ensure themselves the Southeast Division title and a postseason berth. Instead, Florida pulled the upset, and the following night, at home against Florida, the Caps at last held their playoff fate in their own hands. They defeated the Panthers 3-1.
2. The Ovechkin Contract. An otherwise ordinary day on Thursday, January 10 became anything but when word broke that Alexander Ovechkin was going to remain in a Washington Capitals’ sweater until at least . . . 2021! Ovechkin’s 13-year, $124 million contract represented the richest deal a hockey player had ever signed — indeed, the richest deal for an athlete in Washington sports history.
Perhaps second in importance to securing the once-in-a-generation talent’s services through the prime of his career, the signing also signaled that Washington was no longer a hockey market that a superstar would consider inferior. Washington, already madly in love with its young Russian star, would with this deal have its affection requited.
One other noteworthy item about the signing: Ovechkin did it without an agent.
1. Washington, the Hockey Town. The Caps played to capacity crowds at home for virtually all of the final three months of the season. Washington’s media made the team a front-page, front-of-the-broadcast story — for months. Columnists — plural — in town began attending hockey games and writing about them.
A ticket to a Caps’ game suddenly became a hot commodity: for the team’s last game of the regular season, Saturday night, April 5 against Florida, with a Southeast Division title and a playoff berth on the line, a pair of tickets to the game fetched over $1,000 on Craigslist. Not for Sidney Crosby, for the Florida Panthers.
Better still, when it came time to host a playoff game for the first time in 5 years, Washington hockey supporters gobbled up 99 percent of the tickets, no matter what Pierre McGuire alleged. For three weeks in spring the Verizon Center became a cacophonous sea of red — the loudest that building’s ever been, the 1998 Stanley Cup finals included. No one in their right mind (save perhaps Ted Leonsis) could have imagined the scene just three months earlier.
“It’s Tomorrow,” Mike Vogel poignantly observed on April 6.
A Red Nation has been formed.

At Kettler the Day After

pucksandbooks — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:54:27 +0000

You can cross one name off your list of free agent concerns for the Capitals this offseason — Head Coach Bruce Boudreau. Speaking with reporters at Kettler-Capitals Iceplex just moments after wrapping up a season-concluding meeting with the team this afternoon, the coach confirmed that he’d had discussions with General Manager George McPhee about a new deal. He didn’t want to speak in specifics, and he wanted to defer to the GM for a more formal acknowledgment, but he did say, “I’m gonna be coaching the Caps a little while.” He was smiling.
The coach also confirmed that Alexander Ovechkin played hurt in his first playoff series. He suggested that some struggles the left winger experienced at times in the series were related to the injury. After the game last night Ovechkin did tell Sovetsky Sport’s Dmitry Chesnokov that he had played games 6 and 7 on painkillers. When Chesnokov pressed him for more details about the injury, AO replied, “I cannot tell you that.”
The coach remains in awe of his star. Alluding to Ovechkin’s extended stay in D.C. that was secured earlier this season, he said, “Thirteen years for that guy — maybe it should be 18!”
Nicklas Backstrom, it was announced while we were gathered at Kettler, has been named a finalist for the Calder Trophy.
The coach is going up to Hershey tonight to take in game 4 of the Bears’ opening series with Wilkes Barre-Scranton. The Caps’ affiliate is in a 3-0 hole in that one. When asked how he thought he’d spend his first offseason as an NHL coach Boudreau said that he didn’t quite know but added, “This is the environment I feel comfortable in.”
Both the coach and the superstar were effusive in their praise for Washington’s hockey fans. Ovechkin wants the city’s fans to pick up next season where they left off this. “I hope the fans support us the same way [next year]. The atmosphere was unbelievable.”
Boudreau pointed to a pronounced difference in the arena from fall to spring. “I’ve really seen it pick up since I came here,” he said. “[There were] an amazing amount of jerseys in the crowd last night.”
Matt Cooke, on Tom Poti’s overtime tripping call: “You’d like to see them call something that wasn’t a marginal call, something that takes away a scoring chance.”
Lastly, the coach acknowledged that he’d had a private and very personal conversation with Olie Kolzig. He didn’t offer much about its substance, but he did say, “[Kolzig's] one of the classiest men I’ve ever met in this game.”
The goaltender’s Kettler locker, for what it’s worth, still had his nameplate in place.

Reflections from a First-Place Locker Room

The OFB Team — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 05:30:01 +0000

“It’s probably the best crowd I ever seen in my life.” – Alexander Ovechkin

Minimal Rest for the Surging, Now Led by an Emerging Legend

The OFB Team — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 10:45:31 +0000

Of Alexander Ovechkin’s Friday night performance, Bruce Boudreau on Saturday morning said, “He made the strongest case you can possibly make for MVP.” He also said that the 22-year-old¬†”hasn’t reached his potential” yet.
Imagine.
You may have heard that just last week none other than the Great One himself claimed that 90 goals could be in one of Ovechkin’s future seasons.

“Ovechkin has the release and hands that Bossy had. He’s got the quickness that Kurri had. And he’s got the toughness that Messier had. He’s the whole package,” Gretzky¬†told Canadian media while his Coyotes were up North.¬†¬†
“He just loves to score. The thing about scoring goals is some guys enjoy it more than others. That’s Ovechkin.¬†It’s like he wants to keep the puck for every one of them.”
“I think he could score 90 in a season.”

But what may be more impressive than Ovechkin’s offensive prowess, which will shatter team and league records, and what may ultimately prove more important to the welfare of his hockey team, is his arrival in the second half of the 2007-08 season as a Messier-like leader.¬†It’s the broadcast stuff of Ovechkin Ovations.
So much attention Friday was focused on his scoring a 60th goal, and yet¬†the¬†goal proved less the turning point in reversing Friday’s 3-1 deficit to Atlanta than Ovie telling his teammates on the bench, “Just get on my back and we’re going to go.” Moments after¬†that sentiment was expressed¬†the Caps unleashed¬†a 23-2 shot barrage the rest of the way.¬†
Saturday morning Brooks Laich said of Friday’s triumph, “it could be a season-changer.” Would the season have been changed if AO was merely a super sniper?
Like many of our readers who left us comments Friday and Saturday about the endearingly jubilant,¬†third-period Caps,¬†the head coach¬†Saturday morning was¬†impressed by the camaraderie he saw in Atlanta.
“I talked to Mike Green and Brooks [Laich] after the game, and I said it was like a Hershey win. Everybody was for each other, everybody was jumping up and down, and that’s how we were when we were winning series [in Hershey] and winning the [Calder] Cup.
“It was a really close feeling as a team,” he added. ¬†¬†¬†¬†
Likely the team didn’t feel quite so close¬†at the end of the second period¬†Friday. Asked if he’d delivered a message of motivation of any sort during the intermission, with his team’s season hanging in its competitive balance by a worn skate lace, Boudreau yesterday said, “I said a word or two.”
Care to share that word, or two, coach?
“No,” he replied with a smile.¬†¬†¬†
The surging Caps are 7-3 in their last 10 games, and 9-4 since the deadline day deals that delivered Sergei Fedorov, Cristobal Huet, and Matt Cooke.¬†They appreciate the three-day break they’re immersed in now, as they’ve bumps and bruises and travel fatigue aplenty, but they also can’t wait to get down to Raleigh for Tuesday night’s next “biggest game of the year.”
Saturday’s was an optional skate, and coming off three tough road games, and with Sunday being declared a day off, a good many Capitals could have enjoyed a pleasant two full days off. Instead, 19 dressed for the 11:00 a.m. session, including all three goalies. Alexander Ovechkin (nearly 26 minutes of ice time Friday) and Sergei Fedorov took the morning off, as did the injured Donald Brashear, Dave Steckel,¬†and John Erskine. Chris Clark skated by himself prior to the practice session and then went in for treatment.
Out on the ice there were smiling skaters but also some hard drills and a general seriousness of purpose. Even with three days off before resuming the second of Boudreau’s “two road trips,” it was all business. Afterward in the dressing room, Matt Bradley and Brooks Laich and Shaone Morrisonn were quick to shift the focus of their comments away from the feats of 14 hours earlier and toward next Tuesday in Raleigh.¬†The team has had the game “circled” on its calendar for quite some while. Their last visit to Carolina¬†included four power play goals surrendered¬†in a 6-3 wipeout — a loss that moreso than any other in 2008 may have motivated management to make the moves it made three days later.¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†¬†
A small band of reporters Saturday asked Boudreau if he was satisfied with the points results from road trip no. 1. He was, and he intimated that, while the Caps certainly want to win all three road games ahead,¬†a comparable performance in the week ahead would be dandy. Success this past week was assured in large part because the Caps won the opening toughie in Nashville.¬†
“Tuesday is huge in the standings, but it’s also huge for momentum” for the rest of the trip,¬†Brooks Laich said, speaking in a unified voice for a surging hockey team.¬†¬†

Have Bauers Will Travel: Trans-Border Labor Trials

The OFB Team — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 08:25:43 +0000

The NHL’s borderlessness is an unassailable virtue — the long-standing reality that a single NHL roster can be comprised of five or seven differing nationalities, all united in a common competitive cause. And yet as players move in significant volume as they did with last week’s trade deadline, big-time bureaucratic challenges set in as the complex immigration policies of sovereign nations mandate elaborate and well scrutinized process, formal inspection, and adjudication for players’ work eligibility. Media accounts briefly and generally allude to individual player’s visa challenges, but always without in-depth explanation. Fans are left to wonder: after a player in Canada is acquired via trade, just when will he arrive and dress and help out his new team? And why the delays?
The Capitals with their deadline frenzy last week had to navigate the protocols put in place by Congress, the U.S. State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security. Sergei Fedorov, a Russian national, was already in possession of a work visa while skating for the Columbus Blue Jackets, but Matt Cooke and Cristobal Huet, both laboring in Canada, necessarily had to navigate America’s immigration bureaucracy; that both were dressed in their new sweaters and helping out their new teammates by last weekend is a testament to the timely and detail-oriented work of the Capitals, the respective players’ agents, and likely some semblance of accommodation on the part of the U.S. government.
I had a chance this week to chat with Jessica Vaughan, senior policy analyst at the Center for Immigration Studies here in D.C., and find out a little about the basics involved with such player movement. If you’re really intrigued by the mechanics of the international hockey player (and fan) movement process, the bible for it is Siskind’s site for immigration and visa law review. (Warning: as with the U.S. immigration code generally, it’s not for the feint of law degree.)
From my conversation with Vaughan I learned that there are three basic principles guiding the process of border crossing for puck movers. First, while it’s true that most hockey-breeding nations such as Canada are part of the U.S. government’s Visa Waiver Program, (Russia however is not), it’s one thing to enter and visit the United States and quite another to work here. Labor here requires a specialized, well-documented, and well scrutinized category of admission, whereas entry for tourism, for instance, for nationals from Visa Waiver nations requires only a passport.
The second principle of admission is that foreign athletes — like foreign entertainers — ultimately will return to their home countries, and so they enter in America’s non-immigrant categories. For all practical purposes this means that international hockey players enter the U.S. most commonly under the ‘P’ visa — “Ordinary athlete or entertainer” — but also can avail themselves of the ‘O’ visa — “Extraordinary worker.” Individual players, typically represented by their agents, initiate petitions for these visas, but teams can as well.
“The State Department would expedite paperwork to the extent it can,” Vaughan told me, “however, DHS must approve the petitions, and they are not nearly as efficient as State.”
“Delays can occur for a variety of reasons — the [player] agent or athlete didn’t fill out all the paperwork correctly or completely; if the athlete has had any brush with the law, he/she might have to apply for a waiver, which can take a couple of weeks to process. If they have any criminal record, usually they don’t want that to be public, so the agent/press person will blame it on bureaucracy.
“I believe many of the ‘hassles’ reported by artists, entertainers, etc., are more due to incompetency on the part of agents or lawyers messing up applications than government inefficiency. The rules are pretty clear, and if these agents are worth their fees, they should know how to get it done right,” she claimed. That brings up principle three: have your papers in order; after all, players in hockey and other professional sports can be traded at a moment’s notice.
More evidence that the U.S. government is at times unnecessarily scapegoated: occasionally State will admit an athlete such as a French national like Huet on good faith, recognizing that his acquiring team has a need for his services in a timely manner while authorizing government paperwork will lag behind.
“Thousands of people get through every month without hassle, which doesn’t get reported,” Vaughan pointed out.
It’s not uncommon for P visas to be granted to athletes and good for 10 years.
Who would qualify for an ‘O’ visa? Maria Sharapova. Who most assuredly would not? Kris Beech.
To qualify for a non-immigrant visa, the applicant must prove to a U.S. consular officer and DHS inspector that he is likely to return home. A typical consulate will also require or encourage all applicants to submit a letter from their employer stating their position and salary [arch blogger observation: by this criteria Jaromir Jagr should still be held up in visa adjudications] — commonly known as the “job letter.” They’d typically also need a letter from their bank stating how much money is in their account (the “bank letter”), or other evidence of ties to their country.
Siskind’s site noted that the ‘O’ visa is a temporary work visa “available to those foreign nationals who have ‘extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business, or athletics’ which ‘have been demonstrated by sustained national or international acclaim.’ Again, Sharapova in, Beech out (good riddance). More: “It is also available to those in motion pictures and television who can demonstrate a record of extraordinary achievement.”
Like, these guys?

The Southeast Field Thins, and Some Starting To Dream Large

The OFB Team — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:55:01 +0000

Through the middle of the first week of March, we’re gaining, at long last, a firm sense of identities in the Southeast division. To state the most obvious, Tampa and Atlanta have forks in them: It’s a three-team race through the final 15 games, and Florida could be the next casualty. Their no. 2 goalie is their best and hottest goalie.
Speaking of hot no. 2 goalies, we learned Wednesday night in upstate New York that there’s a lot of fight left in Olaf Kolzig. ‘Clutch’ is the only way to describe no. 37′s stellar effort against a Buffalo club that had prevailed in almost all of the previous 15 games against the Caps. Since the 2003-04 season, Buffalo had vexed the Caps more than any team in the East; in 15 games, including three this year, the Caps had earned only four points out of a possible 30 against the Sabres. Dispassionate or partisan, you can’t look at Wednesday night’s outcome — hard on the heels of Monday’s Massacre — and not think something special might be brewing.
In this the springtime of our increasing content, none of the bad karma of the past much seems to matter. This is a hockey team that’s absorbed two-and-a-half seasons’ worth of rough blows, appears today to have profitted from them, is guided by an upstart and Adams-candidate coach, a Hart-and-a-few-other-pieces-of-hardware leading left wing, and perhaps most of all is skating in a hockey sunrise’s aura.
Take a look at the way this weekend sets up: Huet — white-hot in his career against the Bs (who responded to Monday’s massacre by failing to score a single goal at home against Florida the very next night) — a likely starter Saturday, and Kolzig, seeking victory no. 300 of his career, at a sold-out Verizon Center Sunday afternoon, against the black and gold and poorly coiffed. Think Coach Boudreau might reference what’s at stake for Olie in his pre-game comments Sunday? Think the home partisans might be behind no. 37 to prevail in that one? Think Kolzig himself could ever want to win a game as much as that one, on national TV?
I know the Hollywood writer’s strike is over, but is elite script-writing suddenly stationed in a D.C. hockey rink? Some weeks back, the Caps were rather commonly identified as the season’s “feel-good” story. It’s suddenly starting to feel a lot better, and more significant, now.
Wednesday morning here had the feeling of anticipation of a playoff game in the evening, and the game in Buffalo was contested very much like a postseason showdown: the scoring was low, the checking tight, the goaltending superb. There was even a grotesque and incongruous imbalance of power plays tilted against the Caps. And for good measure, a lengthy ‘was-it-a-goal?’ replay that outlasted the Caps’ flight to Buffalo. Somehow, just like in springtime 10 years ago, the visitors prevailed. This team has won four of its last five, against formidable foes, and imagine if they can add their captain to the mix in the next few weeks.
But here’s what’s beginning to distinguish the 2008 Caps from their counterparts of 10 years ago: the every-shift presence of a go-to guy who can come through in the clutch en route to a Hart Trophy (among others). Seriously, it’s necessarily the case that if the Caps qualify for the potseason the league’s finest performer will be wearing a Caps’ sweater. How marvelous would it be to have Kolzig partially backstop another memorable run in hockey’s spring, but with the franchise’s greatest-ever talent also helping out? Not Todd Krygier as hero, but rather the planet’s best hockey player. That ’98 Caps’ team finished the regular season 10 games above .500 — kinda about what this team just might.
We began hearing the first whispers of “That Caps club could be dangerous in the postseason” a few weeks ago — before the arrivals of Huet, Fedorov, and Cooke.
All of us in D.C. are understandably focused on the night-in, night-out scores of March 2008, but it’s worth noting that a durable changing of the guard in the Southeast is likely taking place as well this spring. Atlanta won the Southeast last year, was unceremoniously swept in round one by the Rags, and has made little news since save for the sell-off of Marian Hossa. Tampa was able to resign Dan Boyle last week, and at long last acquire a good netminder (Mike Smith), but it parted with another key piece of the 2004 Cup champions, Brad Richards, and will again miss the postseason. The battered Hurricanes’ are playing fabulously this stretch run, but there’s an awful lot of age in that organization. Among the rest of the Southeast there is precious little in the way of prized prospects to bolster the present mediocrity.
The Caps’ owner on Tuesday told television viewers of Washington Post Live that his team absolutely had to win two of its next three games. Wednesday night, it won the toughest of those — the first, on the road, against a club it rarely had beaten the past three seasons.
Times are a ‘changin. But is some respects, they’re also looking ~~like~~ better than our favorite spring.