On Frozen Blog

Maybe I’m in the minority, but I’ve savored these past five hockey-less days in D.C., immersing myself in a million metric tons of media, much of it local, pegged on themes like “the hottest team in hockey,” “a team of destiny,” “George McPhee, master architect,” the sum total of which is: Washington Capitals, media hogs in the nation’s capital. The Pope arrives here in town next week, and his Holiness can only hope to enjoy a media contingent comparable in size to that of the Caps these days.

Perhaps he will celebrate mass at Nats’ Stadium in red vestments. The Pontiff, Rockin the Red!

Last night I arrived home in time to catch the top-of-the-hour broadcast of Capitals’ TV, er, Comcast’s ‘Sportsnight,’ and immediately saw the mug of SovetskySports‘ Dmitry Chesnokov, out at Kettler interviewing AO. Jill Sorenson’s 5-minute feature highlighted “the Russian invasion” of the Capitals. Earlier in the week I read a Corey Masisak feature on the Capitals’ fourth line. Both big papers’ beat reporters traveled to Philadelphia early this week to capture the flavor of the Flyers for Washington readers.

Even riding a full route on a Metro car — single-tracked — isn’t time enough to canvass all the print coverage of the Caps this week. Who needs TSN or the National Post when the Washington press corps is Redded-Out? I haven’t had time to survey what might be downloadable on iTunes.

In the here and now I’m savoring this week of Washington as a very hockey hockey town. We’ll get to the battle of I-95 soon enough; for now I’m grateful that the culmination of a historic performance by the Capitals this spring — Saturday night’s division-title-securing victory and the appropriate perspective it invites — didn’t have to get shouldered aside 48 or 72 hours later by a postseason game 1. For their perseverance and passion Washington’s hockey fans deserved their week in the media spotlight.

Standing in the bowels of Verizon Center Saturday night awaiting the locker room arrival of a sweater-off-their-backs-busy Caps’ team, I heard and felt the Sea of Red’s sonic shakings fully 20 minutes after the game’s conclusion. Which occasioned this thought: irrespective of the Capitals’ postseason performance, the team this offseason should strongly consider producing a DVD documentary of the dramatic (to put it mildly) alteration in performance by and outlook for the team. Pro sports teams accomplishing comparatively little do so annually, but the metamorphosis of hockey here, I believe, ought to be chronicled as both a keepsake for fans and a powerful marketing tool for the as-yet-not-converted.

This product should be chock full of clips of AO’s historic season; the feel-good story of the acsent from the American League by Gabby; the deadline day dealings by GMGM that today are lauded all across the hockey commentariat; and of course the breath-stealing run of victory after victory over the season’s final few weeks.

This would-be DVD ought to amalgamate some of the many, many fresh and informative broadcast segments that have formed a glorious glut of puck on local TV this spring. This would help chronicle the arrival of Washington as a hockey town. That of course is a relative term, but it’s unassailable that the massive increase in local television viewership for the Caps, the love affair local media is having with our sport, the mere hours it took to sell out games 1 and 2 of the playoffs here this weekend, and the Sea of Rockin Red are emblematic of an unprecedented prominence for hockey here. This ought to be celebrated.

I’ll enjoy tomorrow night’s puck-drop and that altogether new atmosphere in our rink as much as anyone. But there’s a dream-like, 4th of July night on the Mall quality to the coverage of hockey in my hometown right now, and until about 5:00 tomorrow night I want to remain fixed within its glow.