Éramos afortunados haber hecho que Washington anterior Yvon capital Labre y voz de radio anterior Ron Weber del juego-por-juego no sólo atienda a la visión de OFB “del cohete”, pero graciosamente tomaron el micrófono a disposición en el frente del teatro a las preguntas de la respuesta y proporcionan una poca penetración también.
Aquí está un vídeo corto con la parte de sus observaciones.
OFB está satisfecho anunciar la participación de la voz de radio local legendaria Ron Weber y de los casquillos anteriores' gran Yvon Labre esta noche de martes para nuestra investigación del `el cohete' en el teatro de Avalon. Leyendas de estos casquillos las' nos ofrecerán sus penetraciones en la película y la carrera del cohete Richard durante una poste-película Q y A.
Eric McErlain de OffWingOpinion publicó a revisión fabulosa del `el cohete' esta última semana para Las noticias que se divierten. Eric escribe:
” . . . la película consigue abajo de frío. . . la capacidad de transportarle detrás a tiempo a la Montreal de los años 40 y de los años 50, en las calles de la ciudad y del interior el foro legendario que se cerró para la buena parte posteriora en 1996.
“Uno de los desafíos más grandes para cualquier película de los deportes está calculando hacia fuera una manera de representar la acción viva de una manera believable, y El cohete se absuelve bien en ese sentido. Para el momento en que la película terminara esperaba sinceramente que había una liga de los hombres en alguna parte en Norteamérica que dejaría a gente jugar al hockey que pone los uniformes y el equipo de la vendimia. La poder allí sea posiblemente una liga dondequiera que le dejará jugar sin un casco más?”
Los asientos todavía están disponibles para martes - ensámblenos por una noche memorable en las películas en la compañía de los derechos del hockey de Washington.
An attempt to provide a sense of the atmosphere I encountered in and about Verizon Center beginning late Saturday afternoon:
4:45 p.m.: We do not have anything approaching hockey weather. In fact, walking down 6th St. under a blazing sun, I’m uncomfortable in merely bluejeans and a business shirt. But I’m better off than six fans I pass who are outfitted in new red Reebok Caps’ sweaters; they are collapsed and passed out against Verizon Center walls, sweat pouring off their temples. District Police revive them by removing the new sweaters and replacing them with old CCMs. Almost instantly the fans recover.
Seriously, I saw a fair number of fans in these rib-huggers out in the heat, and none of them seemed to be moving 9 percent faster than me.
The Caps have a number of young, attractive staffers scurrying about 6th and F Streets on Segways distributing pocket schedules.
5:05: The former Modell’s Caps’ and Wizards’ gear store, which nobody seems to know is named what now, easily has 60 or 70 shoppers in it two hours before the game. It’s actually quite difficult to move around in, it’s so congested. There is rack after rack of new color and logo caps, and they are disappearing fast. The lines at the two registers are consistently six or seven people deep. The team’s new look has been manufactured in a massive array of fashion in this shop, and it’s clearly popular with fans on opening night at home.
Back outside en route to the press entrance, I seize upon an amazing sight: a band of about 25 or 30 men and women — mostly men — congregated on 7th St. wearing hot red wigs, red dresses, and red athletic shoes. This is no ordinary opening night of hockey at home, I think.
5:20: Predictably, it’s novelty-night crowded in the press lounge. Comcast among other broadcast outlets is doing a remote outside the rink, drawing a lot of media personnel who’d otherwise be in the lounge. I arrive in the lounge with a mission to survey various media for their respective slottings of the Caps in the East this season. Here’s what I achieve:
Mike Vogel: 3rd (obviously, he has the Caps winning the Southeast)
Ron Weber: 10th (ouch!)
Eric McErlain: 7th
Corey Masisak: 7th
Dmitry Chesnokov: 6th
6:00: In the press box I’m seated between Eric McErlain and Dmitry Chesnokov. Meaning, my hockey education will be advanced tonight, and I’ll also have the immediate company of good friends. To the right of Eric is a Voice of America reporter originally from the Czech Republic. A couple of reporters in our row mention that the Caps have preserved a press box working space — all season long — for the departed Dave Fay. I mention to the VOA guy that my recollection was that Mr. Leonsis established that policy within a day or two Dave’s leaving us. Incidentally, the bottom of page 1 of the Caps’ 2007 Media Guide carries a dedication to Fay.
6:15: I’m in the refreshment area of the press box, which is partially glassed in, and seeking quiet there because Tim Lemke of the Washington Times is interviewing me about blogging and its impact on the Caps. He emailed me a week or so ago and informed me that he’d already spoken with Eric McErlain (good idea, that) and Jon Press.
The interview lasts longer than I thought it would simply because Tim and I have a real interesting and easy exchange, and he asks good questions. Also, because I love talking about this topic. Lemke mentions his impression that the four of us put a lot of work into OFB. I don’t quite know how to respond; objectively you could posit that we devote a healthy number of hours each week to the site, but even when I’m writing at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning, knowing I’ll be dragging in the office the next day by early afternoon, I never view the endeavor as labor.
Full disclosure (sort of): three times I ask Lemke to turn off his recorder so that we can chat off the record. I want to provide him as full a sense as possible of what has happened to us over the past year, and various members of the hockey community have shared with me, with a good deal of candor, what they perceive the state of things media in D.C. to be. Mike Vogel once told me that 80 percent of what he hears in his hockey travels necessarily has to end up on the cutting room floor. “It’s a good way to preserve friendships,” he told me. Continue reading ›
Gustafsson and I attended Tuesday’s 2007 Capitals Media Day at the Verizon Center. After opening remarks by owner Ted Leonsis, an open session followed. Here are a few highlights:
Pearls of Wisdom from Ron Weber
I struck up a conversation with Capitals radio great Ron Weber. We were both gazing out at the empty ice surface as chatted about hockey history for a bit, such as the fact that only one team, the Montreal Canadiens, used to have blue lines along the bottom of the boards rather than the standard yellow. He also (without my prompting) commented on the lack of out-of-town scoreboards and real-time clock; we were both hopeful that the cloth-draped ends of the lower ribbon displays will be unveiled as scoreboards on opening night.
The most interesting tidbit he shared with me was in the form of a question. “See the red line?” he asked. “Do you know why it’s not a solid line, but has those white spaces along the line?” I confessed that I did not. “Well,” he explained, “back when they started broadcasting hockey games, they couldn’t tell on close-up camera shots whether the player was skating over the blue line or the red line . . . because on black-and-white televisions they looked the same. So the NHL made a rule that the red line had to have those white marks, so viewers could tell the difference between the lines. Not that anyone is watching on a black-and-white TV today, but they’ve still kept it that way.”
Breathe Deep the DC Air
Among the many media folks at the event was Comcast SportsNet’s wonderfully friendly Lisa Hillary. Ted Leonsis, Hillary, Gustafsson and I were chatting about the upcoming season after Leonsis and Hillary taped an interview for Comcast. Leonsis apologized for his rough voice. “It’s the mold,” he explained  and I sympathized, as a few days ago I awoke with what I thought was a bad cold but was in fact a sore throat caused by the incredibly high count of mold allergens in the air. Hillary remarked on the clean Northern air, “We never had to worry about mold in Ottawa!” Welcome to DC, Ms. Hillary, and good luck in the humid, pollen-ridden, exhaust-fume-choked DC air this spring. Bring Claritin!
At right, a photo of Lisa Hillary and Dave Steckel. Steckel’s impressive camp and preseason have earned him a spot on the Capitals’ opening night roster.
Q & A with Tomas Fleischmann
OFB: You had a shorter season than most of the Caps with your Calder Cup playoff run last year. Looking back, could you imagine then that four months later you’d not only make the team, but be skating with Alex Ovechkin?
Fleischmann: You never know, this is hockey! I didn’t think about it, I just went to summer workouts and worked hard in training camp to make the top two lines . . . You have to work every day, be better every day. I’m just excited and can’t wait for our first game.
OFB: How were those Calder Cup runs, and how do you think that will prepare you for an 82-game schedule in the NHL, and hopefully the playoffs?
Fleischmann: That was a great experience . . . the first thing you have to do in the playoffs is have a good group of guys who want to win, and play for the Cup. Everyone has to do his job, and that’s what it takes. And if everything works like that, it works every time on the ice.
OFB: And you feel that’s what the Capitals have this year?
Fleischmann: Oh, exactly, that’s the way I feel.
As do we, Tomas, as do we.
The news that the Islanders have lured Hall of Fame Coach Al Arbour out of retirement to come back and coach a single game behind their bench on November 3 has the smell of misguided gimmick to it. (He’ll sign a one-day contract the previous day, which the league apparently will honor.) Certainly the move doesn’t bolster the credibility of the long ridiculed length and alleged meaninglessness of NHL regular season games. And if the Penguins and Islanders are entwined in a tight affair late that night, does Ted Nolan really want a man removed from NHL bench leadership by more than a decade making the vital line calls? Perhaps Arbour won’t, in which case this is a genuine gimmick of credibility demeaning nostalgia. A long disorganized and unserious organization has this week freshly reminded us of the merits of its laughingstock status.
Nolan, apparently, is particularly disturbed that Arbour’s games-coached tally has been stuck on 1,499:
“Every day last season I would walk by that big board outside our locker room at the Coliseum that lists the franchise’s award winners and milestones,” said Nolan. “And every day it would kill me when I’d see Coach Arbour made it to 1,499 games.”
Aren’t players and coaches supposed to leave the game when their genuine and general effectiveness is finished, irrespective off well-rounded-off participation numbers? Isn’t that at the heart of credibility in our games?
To some extent hockey is prone to these showmanship stages of stupidity. Remember Gordie Howe’s appearance in a Detroit Vipers’ uniform at the age of 69 in 1997? It was an outlandish attempt by Howe to obtain credit for “skating professionally” in his sixth or ninth decade. Mr. Hockey has no greater admirer than yours truly, but there were forays in his later years that invited universal criticism for irrefutable unseemliness. And of course there’s the ubiquitously negative association, explanation altogether unnecessary, with Gary Bettman’s “Glo-puck.”     ÂÂ
I’d be interested to know what Don Cherry’s take on this Isles’ prank is this morning.
But here’s a big “but” to my critique of hockey’s looking to the past and attempting to honor it. Such attempts, when appropriately conceived, can be enriching events. Not long after my early visits to Kettler Capitals this past season I had a few discussions with various members’ of the team’s communications staffers about the general appeal and terrific possibilities associated with the Caps’ annual Alumni game. In this shinny new showcase home the game, I told them, could be must-see affair for Caps’ fans of all ages and patronage periods. We all agreed that sooner rather than later the stands would be teeming with puckheads embracing a glimpse of the team’s past.
That alumni game has drawn largely middling participation from Caps past, most commonly of those who’ve remained reasonably near D.C. after their careers ended. But with the team’s uniform unveiling and Entry Draft party last month, we saw the dawning I think of a refreshing embrace of that past, by the team and its alumni, with the likes of Langway, Sylvan Cote, and especially Mike Gartner returning home. I would expect all three to skate in next spring’s Alumni Game, schedules permitting.
Now then, I have this idea for expanding the production values and overall quality of that game. There should be an audio call of it, broadcast in Kettler and on the team’s web site, by a broadcaster lured, for one night, out of his retirement. That same night, this broadcaster should be honored with his own banner raised in the rink. His name is Ron Weber.    ÂÂ
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It was out with the old (forever) to make room for the new Saturday at Kettler Capitals Iceplex, as the Caps hosted a sale of pretty much everything having to do with the uniforms and gear and other branded wear they’ve worn the past 10 years. Hundreds of fans turned out and clogged check-out aisles from 1:30-4:00. Dozens of Caps’ staffers were on duty to make the fan frenzy as efficient as possible — and they were all needed. There were locker room nameplates available for $5 and $10, seemingly hundreds of player sticks lined on a wall, at really good bargains relative to their common quotes at online outlets, and game-worn sweaters that in certain Russian instances fetched $1,000 each.
I used the occasion as a excuse to drive down sun-splashed George Washington Parkway with my Wrangler’s top down, and without much in the way of a shopping agenda. Still, I tucked a few hundred dollars in my billfold; I’m not what you’d call a disciplined or restrained (or discriminating, for that matter) shopper in a room stuffed with genuine NHL merchandise.
I did have one merchandise target in mind, knowing that the team was offloading gear dating back all the way to 1996: the old and, in my judgment, vastly under-appreciated road blue sweaters. In those rare instances when footage of the ‘98 Stanley Cup finals is shown, with the Caps skating in Detroit, those blues look beautiful, stark and stylish and unlike any other sweater. I never understood why they were ditched as decisively as they were, and when I see them I think back not only to the finals that year but especially to Dale Hunter holding the Prince of Wales trophy in Buffalo in it in the preceding round. For me, they’re the glory threads, and I wanted to see if any authentically worn ones were available at Saturday’s sale.
To their credit, the Caps invited season ticket holders to get first access to the gear Saturday before the general public sale. That’s positively appropriate. By 1:30, however, there didn’t appear to be much damage done. Nearly a half dozen racks were teeming with practice and game sweaters, whites and blacks, all in terrific shape. Oh, and there were a few Glory Blues. I was swept up enough in nostalgia upon happening upon the blues that I seized a J.F. Fortin (that’s nostalgia . . . or amnesia!). J.F. had a habit of wowing the spectator at the odd Piney Orchard scrimmage in September and then making everyone wonder why he was ever drafted a month later. Fashioning an allegiance to him to the tune of $150 would be difficult to explain to my family, friends, and readers, but in my initial pass-through of the blue portion of the sweater racks J.F. managed to loom large (size 58).
I had one final rack to peruse, and within it I found an astounding relic: a Yogi Svejkovsky, in blue! I returned J.F. and seized Yogi. Now, Yogi’s star as an NHLer was as brief and forgettable at Fortin’s, except in two regards: he scored 4 goals in the final game of the 1996-97 season, at Buffalo, and that game happened to be the last in the broadcast career of Ron Weber. Talk about nostalgia.
I was surprised at the generally modest interest fans Saturday seemed to have in securing the sweaters of the past 10 years. I thought $150 for a pristine conditioned game-worn a solid buy. And while I number among those who won’t miss the black garb, again, these logos and their colors ushered in some of our team’s finest moments. More than an hour into the public sale Saturday, though, the racks remained filled with the game-worns and practice threads. Perhaps for many there remains too much association with the Czech Fraud who wore #68, and the years of missed playoffs. How could you fault them for that discrimination? And of course this month there is the hockey fan’s zealous anticipation of the replacement look arriving in mere days.
OrderedChaos snagged a few game-worn jerseys (sans nameplate), a game-used Alexander Semin stick, Chris Clark’s equipment bag, and a practice jersey worn by just-signed Caps’ goalie prospect Michal Neuvirth. Let’s hope Neuvirth is indeed a Caps’ starter some day  the Jakub Cutta Czech Juniors jersey he purchased a few years back hasn’t seen much wear.
One thing you definitely notice at the Caps’ annual equipment sale: products belonging to names from a middling, mediocre recent past blended seamlessly with those of the fresh-start and optimistic present. But that’s hockey.
Confession: I picked up more than just the Svejkovsky sweater Saturday (has a nice alliterative ring to it, no?) I don’t play much organized hockey these days, but my gear bag is always packed and ready for action. For two years now I’ve been badly in need of replacement pants, and at Kettler Saturday, amid an embarrassment of riches of un-nicked, mega-padded pants-wear, I replaced my existing pair-in-tatters. I tossed in a new helmet, too. As my arms filled I looked across at the Kettler sheets of ice to see if pickup puck was readying, cause I was near dressed for it.
This gear sale event has grown into an event remarkable in terms of Caps’ staff logistics and sheer volume of merchandise. True story: my father and I were buying gear from the Caps back before there was any public sale. Back in the ’80s we used to drive the family station wagon out to Cap Centre in spring about a week after the season concluded, met up with Sluggo at the old building’s service elevator, and filled the family car up with hockey goodies my father would re-sell (at cost) to players in the fledgling Montgomery Men’s hockey league he founded.
The Caps may well make a boatload of bucks with this affair, but what seems more important to me is the availability of the armor. Sunday of course is Father’s Day. I wager a few in this region will be unwrapping some vestiges of the past decade of puck in D.C. then. They just won’t have any reminders of the 4-goal flash-in-the-pan of the past.
Likely we agree that the NHL has a pretty compelling product to pitch . . . particularly when relative to say, celebrity poker or the Professional Bowler’s Association or Pro Bass Fishing. It boasts world-class athletes who virtually to a man are an unrivaled blend of brawn, bravado, and sublime skill. Additionally, they commonly comport themselves as upstanding members of their communities; which is to say, their All Star Games, for instance, are seldom associated with spawning terrorism in large cities. In action, NHLers are showcased in perhaps sports’ most novel setting, walled and glassed in with no out of bounds escape. To quote the illustrious Ron Weber, “Welcome to the world’s fastest team sport!”
And yet, with so much greatness indigenous to its game, the NHL can be counted upon to come up Marty Turco short when it comes to Madison Avenue marketing.
It could fairly be said that the NHL does a terrible job of illustrating and mainstreaming its core product to the American public, if such a charge weren’t so serious a slander to “terrible.”
But why is the league so amateur and so ham-fisted in its marketing endeavors across the board? The answer may be in analogy: in the quest for a healthy share of the mighty purse offered by the American sports revenue landscape, the NHL ever steps into the ring with a twentysomething Mike Tyson physique and his stonebreaking fists and proceeds to try and sway the judges with intermittent scoring jabs. Season to season, it never seems to know if it’s a puncher or a jabber. And decades of split decisions ultimately land you on Versus.
My favorite bumper stickers are irreverent and clever, such as “My kid can beat up your honor roll student.” The NHL needs to be the revving Mustang with the non-working muffler grinding its gears down quiet Main Street bearing that bumper sticker. Not because it’s cool or hip or trendy to do so but because that’s its authentic ride. Once upon an Original Six time, the league was like this. Sadly, today, chauffeur Bettman and seemingly all his colleagues in the New York and Toronto offices prefer a Taurus.
To be fair, the NHL is confronted by a cultural quandary in North America that no other professional sport  including even NASCAR now  does: Canadians get it while 80-percent-plus of Americans do not. And yet, ironically enough, some of the most durable relationships between hockey and the American community occur south of the Mason Dixon, at the minor pro level. Texas, for instance, once had a minor pro league all of its own and today fields seven of the CHL’s 17 teams.
Understand, too, that the aim here isn’t to dislodge the NCAA hoops tournament from its Swiss Bank account perch; rather, contemporary professional hockey that features the young virtuosos that it does ought to be able to better the cooking channel numbers on Monday and Tuesday evenings. Even if the chefs are playing poker while the lasagna bakes.
[Timing in life is everything, and this morning The Onion has a riotously humorous mockery of the NHL's television plight up on its site, featuring the Commissioner announcing a new broadcast agreement with the Food Network.]
Last year Reebok promoted its new wonderkid, Sidney Crosby, with a 30-second television advertisement striking in its sparse production values but so compelling in its cumulative subtleties that it fairly ran on a loop on Versus and regional networks the entire season. I saw the spot perhaps 425 times last season, enjoying it as much in April as I did in October. It’s worth, I think, a reminding look:
Maybe the spot moves you like it did me, maybe it doesn’t. But is there any denying that Reebok unearthed an ageless essence of our grand game in a way the NHL seldom ever has? A few years ago, Mastercard gave us a similar “reverence of spirit” treatment in an ad that featured a boy and his father stomping through prairie snow toward a frozen playground, their sticks and skates hauled over their shoulders. These “postcard” impressions of hockey’s roots, searing in their splendor, have few rivals in sports; they ought to be fixtures in marketing campaigns.
Why is it that corporate America can at times magnificently honor hockey while the NHL most often profanes it? Remember the NHL ’s multi-million “Re-launch” ads of last season, proudly debuted by the Commissioner at some swanky New York restaurant for the press last autumn? Bare-chested, scar-free, shiny-and-authentic-toothed actors (as opposed to authentic hockey players), introduced by indecipherable Asian poetry and billed as warriors of some sort, were pre-game massaged to loud music by pinup tramps in unintentionally satirical excess. Good breeding and taste prevent me from YouTubing a sample for you here, but Bettman should have been impeached for authorizing those.
Shakespeare told us “To Thine Own Self Be True.” Hockey’s return to the sporting mainstream has its own salvation within, if only its leaders would recognize it.
Fresh proof that there are slices of Heaven on Earth: if you’re an Ontario resident and hockey fan, you have access to LeafsTV, a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week, 365-days-a-year broadcast outlet covering the local NHL team and its sport. No Argonauts. No Blue Jays. No Raptors. All Leafs, All the Time. Imagine. Don’t take my word for it; check out the station’s weekly broadcast schedule, which is rife with morning skates, pre-game fare, player profiles from the past, the AHL affiliate Marlies, and just about anything you can imagine having to do with pro hockey in a hockey-mad metropolis.
In Washington, we have five such outlets devoted to the Redskins, but on a mid-week morning in the middle of a winter-less winter, I think it might be fun to imagine a Washington world with its sports media hierarchy turned upside down, say five years from now, with media savvy owner Leonsis the ascendant entertainment leader in town (the Redskins still having failed to qualify for the postseason, with billion-dollar payrolls). To showcase better his Hart Trophy winnings Russians (all three of them), and his sublime Swede, and generally to improve Washington’s laughingstock MSM coverage of hockey, Mr. Leonsis partners with Comcast and purchases a startup cable channel to take Capitals’ coverage into his own hands.
As his first order of business he wisely appoints a Caps’ blogger the new outlet’s Director of Programming.
What might this channel be called? And what might a day’s worth of programming on it include? Let’s make these questions the subject of ongoing OFB reader input. Share with us your suggested name for the new outlet, and assume we’re looking for a moniker somewhat distinctive from “LeafsTV,” with flair and 21st-century multi-media pizzaz. And with your comments share as well suggestions for specific programming to help fill 24 hours. Be creative, imaginative, and presume that the owner and the station’s general manager have appropriated a generous budget to include the development and production of original programming. Let’s see if we can come up with a day’s worth of Caps’ and hockey programming on the new channel that repeats only a thrice-daily, 30-minute, SportsCenter-like roundup show, airing early morning, early evening, and lastly at 11:00, that’s all things pucks.
I’ll save my suggested channel name for later, but here are some programming ideas I have:
The Hockey Reporters [a roundtable of impassioned hockey erudition, featuring Mike Vogel, JoeB and Craig, your cordial host, and the region's Queen of Sports]”
Gr8TV: All AO, in motion, on and off the ice
ClassicCaps [the most memorable games, with Ron Weber audio provided from WTOP archives]
Morning skate and post-game pressers with Coach Hanlon, in full
Chit-Chat from Chocolatetown [A weekly Bears' progress report with John Walton]
The outdoor skate at Chevy Chase Country Club
The games themselves
The CapsReport [the weekly studio program is broadcast on TV as well]
And last but by far not least, for after-hours insomniacs, Youngblood.
Part of what we want to do at OFB is remind people that there is a rich legacy to the Capitals’ organization and a sizable spirit for hockey in this region, and if you want to chronicle this you have to reach out to the people who laid the groundwork for it and ask them to share their stories. And today we begin our chronicle by sitting down with the Dean of D.C. Hockey, Ron Weber, a Washington Hall of Fame broadcast talent who for many veteran Caps’ fans was no less than their access point to pro hockey in D.C.
OFB was granted a great privilege this past Monday evening when, an hour before the Caps-Senators’ game at Verizon Center, we were invited to sit down with Mr. Weber and address any and all questions about his remarkable radio career and his general thoughts on pucks in D.C.
Today Mr. Weber and his wife, Mary Jane, reside in Montgomery County, Maryland, and attend every Caps’ home game. In the course of this memorable visit it became clear to us that while Mr. Weber is removed from a career in hockey by nearly 10 years, his love affair with both the Caps and hockey is as vibrant as ever. It’s virtually certain that we won’t again see the likes of his run behind a microphone at any rink or home field for a Washington professional sports team. Continue reading ›
Mr. Smith went to Washington to reform politics. Lodged in greater Washington, D.C., a barren outpost of hockey media silence thanks to the malicious disinterest of The Washington Post (henceforth referred to as The Compost), among others, I am venturing into cyberspace to broaden my hometown’s coverage of the planet’s greatest game, and especially of my mistress since my seventh birthday, the Washington Capitals. Thus the birth of On Frozen Blog. Welcome.
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