The Capitals are rightly credited for extending — before all others in sports — a welcome mat of access to bloggers. But Nate Ewell has been singularly responsible for the architecture and maintenance of that access. I have so many wonderful Nate Ewell stories to tell, but what’s most important about them I think is how in every instance his media policies broadened and bettered hockey’s storytelling here. Over the past five years I’ve used this blog to try and tell some of the stories about hockey I didn’t think were being told by traditional media, or approach them from differing angles. Nate Ewell wanted precisely that, and to the extent that I had any success in the endeavor, I have to give credit where credit is due.

Without Nate Ewell here for me the past five years I’m probably a proverbial blogger in pajamas prattling on about power plays and puck sodas. Instead, OFB has an archive of diaries from pro hockey players, photo slideshows requested by players’ mothers, chronicles of weekends with in-kind access to the parent club’s American League farm club, and perhaps my favorite OFB product, a snazzy Christmas card or two. But best of all we have new and lifelong-lasting friends in pucks. There is no greater reward from immersion in a passion-hobby than that.

Nate did so much more than merely open doors for bloggers here. He had, it seemed to me, a vision that was made manifest by the attributes of cutting edge technology, and nobody in hockey knew how to leverage that like Nate. It’s no accident that Nate’s media team was a mortal lock each year to win his industry’s top performance award, and it’s no accident that the Capitals’ stable of new media personalities is regarded as the most accomplished around the league. You reap what you sew.

One of the things I’m most proud about in being a Capitals’ blogger is that over the past five years I’ve made a minimum of 500 requests for inordinate access to Capitals players, coaches, and scouts, and Nate Ewell and his team have said yes to the requests about 98 percent of the time.

Once I made a request of Nate that the team couldn’t oblige, but rather than merely saying no Nate shared with me the email of denial that came from very high up in the organization, because it included some flattering words of reflection for OFB, and he wanted me to see that.

Last April the press contingent for the Montreal Canadiens, numbering nearer 100 than 50 in individuals, famously overtook the Verizon Center press box for the Caps-Habs playoff series. Live radio calls back to Quebec were carried off not in enclosed broadcast booths up there but from ordinary, open seats typically used by the print and digital press. I remember this because I, a silly blogger, was seated next to many of them. Ted Leonsis famously promised that when the day arrived and media interest in his hockey team swelled he wouldn’t forget about the commitment by his bloggers. They’d always have a seat of access, he said. Nate Ewell made sure of that.

Last year I approached Nate and suggested we work together to organize a bloggers’ summit of sorts at the Capitals’ training facility, in the offseason, when things were slightly less hectic in his workday, because while I knew that the Capitals appreciated the commitment and quality of local bloggers’ work generally, I personally wanted to try and get better, learn more, and most especially afford us a forum for dialogue. We carried off that summit last July, and we filled a Kettler conference room with bloggers and Caps’ communications pros. It was in that forum that Nate shared with us startling data about the breadth of reader reach we in our Washington hockey bloggers’ collective have; you better believe this techy team knows about that. It was a detailed data run that Nate didn’t have to do for us, but he wanted us to have a tangible appreciation for our commitment from the team. I will always remember that.

At Kettler the Capitals have an archive of print media coverage for the team that actually dates back prior to the very first puck being dropped for Capitals hockey in D.C., and on a whim one day a few years back I asked Nate if I could access it.  Of course he said yes. That access helped me immensely; I was able, for instance, to write about the Capitals’ first-ever training camp, back in 1974, in all of its disorganized and resources-challenged glory. For a greybeard like me, it’s actually quite an emotional experience being in that archive, paging through hockey’s history in my hometown. I’ve got a time- and energy-consuming real-life job, and so getting over to Kettler and immersed in that archive for research didn’t always occur in times convenient to Nate and his staff. That of course didn’t matter.

If I had to identify a lone defining association of my very fun run with Nate from the past five years it would be with the team’s midsummer Development Camp and our interest in live blogging the camp’s concluding scrimmage. Annually Nate fairly commandeered the team’s kitchen and break room above the Capitals’ practice ice sheet to get us set up with tables and extension cords for the live blog, but there was one summer when media interest was such that we couldn’t set up there. So Nate simply took us down to his office, which also overlooks the Capitals’ practice sheet of ice, and set us up there. We literally booted him out of his office for three hours. But he wanted us to tell you a story.

After his tenure at Michigan State was complete, Ewell moved into the sport and league he had always wanted to be a part of, the NHL. Vice President of Communications for the Washington Capitals, called Ewell and offered him a position in the Capitals’ Public Relations department. Despite finally making it to league he had always wanted to be a part of, Ewell’s experience was not what someone might call perfect for his new position. Not only was the team one of the older ones in the league, but there were some guys Ewell thought were very tough to work with. While he was very young. Of every experience over his year and a half with the team, Ewell remembers one incident that encapsulated his whole time there.

“Training camp in 2001 started on 9/11,” Ewell said after a long pause. He took a deep breath before continuing, with a blank stare. “The first day of training camp is a big deal, you have to take all of these picture and video head shots and I ended up getting in a fight with one of our veterans, or an argument. He refused to use my name and only called me ‘idiot.’ That was really demoralizing, it was just kind of like ‘I don’t know why I have to take this, you have been in the league for 18 years, you know what happens on this day. Meanwhile we have burning buildings on the TV in the players lounge and you can’t take another 20 minutes to get your picture taken.’”

Ewell’s experience on 9/11 largely embodied what his first stint with the Washington Capitals organization was like. That experience with the veteran player was the worst of his career, he says. It helped Ewell discover he was unhappy with the Caps and left the organization only a year and a half after joining them, taking a job working at the Salt Lake City Olympics. From there, he moved into something completely new and largely uncharted: the Internet.

“I figured I wanted to work in the NHL, I didn’t like it and maybe I [was] ready to get out of sports,” Ewell said. “Four months later a buddy and I started Inside College Hockey because we were out of sports and miserable.”

Recovering from a bad experience in sports, Ewell created something new and exciting with Inside College Hockey, or INCH. The website, created in the fall of 2002, is a haven for all college hockey fanatics. Filled with statistics and stories from around the world of NCAA hockey, Inside College Hockey has become a go-to references for journalists, coaches and fans alike. Despite his success with the new startup, Ewell could not resist the call of the National Hockey League.

“I called [the Caps] to recommend somebody else for a job and they said, ‘Seriously what do we have to do to get you back here?’ I knew I missed sports and I certainly wasn’t making a living with INCH and I talked to [then Capital captain] Jeff Halpern a little bit, who I kept in touch with from Princeton and Caps connections, and just asked him about the team and league,” Ewell said with a warm smile at the mention of his long time friend and former comrade. It was clear the two were close. “He kind of assured me it would be different, and I knew it would be a very young team, a much different atmosphere than I had seen before and it turned out to be even better than I could have even imagined.”

It was 2005, Washington was in the basement of the league, had just drafted one of the sport’s most promising prospects in Alexander Ovechkin, and the NHL was coming out of a lockout. American hockey was emergent, the Washington Capitals were new and emergent, and Ewell decided the time was right for him to return to the organization. Just a few years after he left the NHL team in utter disappointment, Ewell never thought he would be working with one of the best players in the world.

“I had seen him in the World Junior [Championships], and like many Americans thought he was brash and kind of a jerk and I didn’t know what to expect,” Ewell said amid a ping of Blackberry emails and updates for the night’s game. “I met him at the Hotel Monaco for the first time and he had his press conference there and immediately you could sense the charm that he had. He and I, even in the course of that first week two weeks, got a little bit of a relationship forged. So it was pretty smooth sailing all along.”

Suddenly Ewell’s revived career was off and flying just like the new NHL was off and running. The experience was different for him, the players were different, and he was happy. Despite his success and love for the job, Ewell’s position does demand a great deal from him, especially when it comes to time commitment.

“It’s tough, a week like this. I was in Bristol, Connecticut, last night, I am here tonight, fly to Boston tomorrow, Boston Thursday night, I guess I am home Friday night, but then a game Saturday night, so that’s tough,” Ewell said. You can see the strain travel and time away from family has had on him in such reflective moments. It is clear he wishes he could be home to help out more often.

Even with all the travel and the time his job demands, Ewell is still able to find the time to bring his own unique spin to the PR world, in the form of Twitter. With his Twitter handle, @nateewell, he is able to interact with fans and media members before, during and after games. To many on his staff, what Ewell does on Twitter is outside the proverbial box of public relations and shows it is okay to be innovative.

“He’s got an open mind. I remember when we came to him at first about what Twitter was,” said Brett Leonhardt, the Caps’ Website Producer, of Ewell’s contributions to the organization. “We all had accounts and he drew up a social media guidelines for everyone in the office. To have someone in touch with the latest technology and the changing face of media, it just, is so fun for us.”

The true rewards Ewell gets from his job go beyond he innovation he has brought to the Capitals media department. Ultimately, he gains the most satisfaction from the relationships he builds with the players. Ewell holds them very close and cherishes the trust they have in him. He admits it can be tough, though, especially with players he has to ask a lot of.

“You develop relationships with everybody, it doesn’t matter if it is Ovi or Stecks [Dave Steckel], you get along with them. If you’re doing the job right you develop that relationship so you feel comfortable with them,” Ewell noted. “It shouldn’t matter whether you are needing [a player] for media purposes. The tougher one is developing that relationship with a guy like Brooks [Laich], who I love to death. Every time you see Brooks you have to ask him for something because everyone wants something from him and that’s tough.”

As the team’s playoff runs become longer and they play more high profile postseason series, Ewell’s job becomes a bit more hectic. No matter what though, Ewell finds a thrill in managing the media for the team he has built a deep relationship with, it is the relationships that keep him around.

Ewell takes a quick glance around the now half full Verizon Center as he looks down toward the team he helps interact with the media — they are his friends warming up for the night’s game. It is clear he has a special bond with the players on the team, inside and outside of the locker room.

“We don’t have a bad guy in the room right now,” Ewell said with a clear sense of pride. “That is the biggest reason I have stuck around, the guys are so good.”

Despite the feeling of camaraderie on the Caps, on January 14, 2011, Ewell announced his tenure with the Washington Capitals organization would be coming to an end. On February 9 he will leave the NHL and join College Hockey Inc. as its Director of Communications. While Ewell will be leaving the Caps and the NHL, he will by no means be leaving the world of hockey.

“The opportunity to not only work in college hockey, but hopefully help make a positive impact on the game is very appealing to me,” Ewell said in an email. “The chance to work with Paul Kelly, who by all accounts is one of the smartest people in hockey, is another thing I’m very excited about.”

His position may still be in the communications world, but it will be much different than bridging the gap between the Caps and the hockey media. With College Hockey Inc., Ewell will be working to promote the game and help show elite young hockey players the benefits of going to college. He admitted it will be a difficult endeavor, but said his heart is also fully in it.

Even though the job in college hockey is something Ewell is excited about, he also admitted the position alone would not have pulled him away from the Caps. Not only does Ewell get to move into a new challenging job, but he also gets to move to a place he always wanted to return to.

“Moving back to [New England] has always been a long-term goal as well,” Ewell said. “My family is from [there] and we have a house on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. I’ve always found it a shame to only spend a week there each year.”

Despite Ewell’s excitement towards his new endeavor, he admitted it was a tough decision to leave the Caps. After all, he developed many relationships through the organization and really left his mark on the hockey media world. He said it was the right combination of circumstances that convinced him to leave Washington.

“On their own, I don’t think a job in college hockey or a job in Boston would have lured me from the Caps, because this has truly been a wonderful place,” Ewell said of his time with the Caps.

While many in the Washington media, most particularly us at OFB, are excited for Ewell and his new opportunity, we would lying if we didn’t admit we will miss him. He helped pioneer a social media revolution in Washington and helped put many area hockey blogs on the map. For that, we say thanks and wish him well, hoping to one day cross paths with him again, whether it be on the ice for a media skate or in the locker room for interviews.

High up in Verizon Center, leaning forward in his tailored brown striped suit, Capitals’ Vice President of Communications Nate Ewell runs through a final check of his Blackberry. His end seat in the press box is still surrounded by vacant folding chairs as the Verizon Center press box has yet to fill with members of print, radio, television, and new media. While he gets to travel with some of the biggest names in hockey and certainly enjoys what he does, it doesn’t mean his job is not stressful. Often times, he can be so busy he forgets to do some of the menial tasks in life, including one time forgetting to eat.

“When Alex [Ovechkin] won his first Hart Trophy in 2008, we flew back with [Capitals Majority Owner] Ted,” says Ewell, 36, glancing at the pristine sheet of ice below. “We pretty much knew he was going to win the MVP, thankfully, so we could plan out in advance. He was the city’s first MVP in 25 years, so we planned the key to the city award. I remember getting on the plane after the awards . . .  they brought around a fruit tray and I grabbed some food and was shoveling food in my mouth and I was like, ‘I didn’t eat yesterday did I?’ I realized that all day preparing for the awards and getting Ovi on the red carpet and doing interviews everywhere and preparing the next day, I hadn’t eaten all day.”

Despite the stress and the time commitment and the nutritional sacrifices, Ewell loves his job and has been inordinately successful in his chosen career path. Whether it is being on a media team that has captured the NHL’s Dick Dillman award for the best media relations outfit in the league the last four years, forging media relations into the era of new media, or simply interacting and working with one of the world’s premiere athletes, Ewell has been on the front line of hockey public relations. His success has been shaped by both good experiences and some life’s trials. Whether it was dealing with a training camp clouded by the 9/11 attacks or simply dealing with a rejection from the college of his choice, Ewell has been shaped by his successes and struggles.

Nate Ewell

Despite having a family actively involved in sports and constantly being surrounded by the whirl of different games, Ewell was not the best athlete. While Ewell understood the games, his father noted, he did not always have the same athletic skills as others. Even though he never excelled in the sports themselves, it never stopped Ewell from staying involved.

“He played lacrosse, he was a little slow of foot but he understood the game,” Bob Ewell noted. Nate’s love and knowledge of sports allowed him to become involved in other parts of athletics, dad added. “He was always around sports and really got involved in the sports information end of things early.”

While his father was at Colby, Nate was in charge of perhaps one of the most important parts of the game — keeping score. His father said he remembers when Ewell was either 8 or 10, and he would keep track of the Colby men’s lacrosse score. As he grew older, he transitioned into other roles with more responsibility.

“We had a manual scoreboard — this was a long time ago — and he would be up on the hill and was scorekeeper,” Bob Ewell said of his son’s participation in sports information. The family moved to Princeton, N.J., when Ewell was in sixth grade. When he got to high school, he took on more important roles in sports information at Princeton. “I think his sophomore, junior and senior year [of high school] he was our public address announcer for the women’s hockey games and the lacrosse games.”

One thing Bob Ewell could not stress enough was his son’s intelligence. It showed in his grades too, as he was shooting to go to Dartmouth College for his secondary education. While Ewell did not get into his school of choice, he was able to attend another one of the nation’s top universities. It was the school he had known so well from his childhood, Princeton.

“Princeton was a place I was familiar with,” Ewell said. His messy brown hair fell over his forehead as he continued. “I had grown up around the school so the transition wasn’t too difficult.”

After graduating from college, Ewell wasted no time and immediately went into the workforce. He took a job at Michigan State University in their Sports Information Department. Despite being so willing to take the job, Ewell realized he did not know anything about East Lansing, Mich., or the state itself for that matter.

“I flew out there the morning after graduating and I had been bawling all day because it was the first time it hit [me] that [I] had to leave,” Ewell said with a slight smile on his face. “I was exhausted and I got on a plane and remember landing in Lansing and turning my clock back and the pilot saying it was whatever time. It is still Eastern time in Michigan, I had no idea. I was like, wow I flew that far it has to be an hour back.”

Flustered, Ewell had to stop at a gas station and get directions to the Michigan State campus. Despite the new world and new experiences, Ewell took the challenge head on and came out on top, quickly ascending through the sports information ranks. He started at Michigan State as the school’s main hockey contact, but in a matter of a few years, Ewell became the second football contact for the team. It wouldn’t be long before his interest would turn to hockey.

[Admin update: Part 2 can be found here.]

For nearly 90 minutes yesterday media of all hockey backgrounds — from first-time skaters to under-practiced beer-leaguers — laced ‘em up and earned a good sweat. There were lots of goal celebrations and even more smiles. Last night on Facebook I saw updates from at least a half dozen of yesterday’s shinny skaters, all united in one sentiment: the outing made them feel like 12-year-olds at play again. That’s the recreational version of our sport at its best. WUSA-TV’s Brett Haber and I met at center ice to get the showdown started:

Bruce Boudreau stopped by to take a look at the proceedings, but like the literature professor who dreads the crude prose of stacked freshman composition essays, recoiled at the spectacle and quickly sought refuge in the coach’s film room.

And Comcast Sportsnet’s Michelle Scalise was on hand to capture our collective, underwhelming efforts at securing 10-day Amateur Tryout Contracts:

RIT started its impressive run by upending Denver in a nail-biter, then dominating New Hampshire this past weekend, becoming just the fourth 4-seed to make it to the Frozen Four. Guess how students and supporters celebrated at a Rochester watering hole while watching the upsets? By eating free chicken wings.

So which D-I newcomer is the bigger Frozen Four surprise? On Monday we asked the local resident college hockey expert, the Capitals’ Nate Ewell, who is a founding member of the Inside College Hockey team.

“I think RIT’s a bigger surprise. The thing that struck me was that they hadn’t beaten a team outside their conference all year. I think their conference combined only had seven wins outside of the conference.

“Bemidji had at least played with some of the big boys — or at least big conferences. They had beaten St. Cloud State and UMass, lost to North Dakota in OT. RIT is much more out of nowhere,” Ewell noted.

“But one thing that’s consistent between the two is that they are both proud hockey schools, at Division II or III levels, that have tremendous support on campus.”

RIT announced its decision to go D-I in December of 2004 and joined the fledgling American Hockey Association. They won national titles at both the D-II and III levels, and so brought a rich hockey tradition to the transition, as Ewell noted. The school first became eligible for the AHA postseason — and the NCAAs — in the 2007-08 season. Just two seasons later the Tigers are in the Frozen Four.

Bemidji transitioned to D-I little more than a decade ago and is a mover and shaker among D-I programs today. They’ll christen a brand new, 4,000-seat rink on Lake Bemidji next season — and also join what many believe is college hockey’s best conference, the WCHA. The Beavers qualified for the NCAAs again this year and lost to Michigan in the first round over the weekend. Still, that’s a remarkable two-year run for the relative newcomer to D-I.

For schools like the Naval Academy and Penn State, who’ve toyed and flirted with the idea of  moving up to D-I, the stories of Bemidji and RIT ought to be powerful inducements to getting on with it at long last, and at last giving the Mid-Atlantic region some opportunity to witness college hockey at its highest level. It’s expensive as heck making that jump, but the experiences of these two Cinderella schools the past two Frozen Fours proves that there can be big payoffs for making it.

Our DC Sports Chick had a brother who went to RIT in the early ’90s and has lived in Rochester ever since.  We asked him for his thoughts on RIT making it to the Frozen Four:

“Well, let’s hope Cinderella gets back to Tigersville before midnight.

Ranked #15 in the 16-team field and yet made it this far!!! First AHA league team to make it to the Frozen Four. Win or lose, they’ve already done an incredible job and turned quite a few heads outside the area.  Their magical march through March sure got hotter thanks to their 12-game winning streak, peaking at the precisely right time. I’m just hoping their peak keeps up another two games. The goalie has been hot, standing on his head lately. I just hope the long wait between last and next game doesn’t get to them; mind games can be bad.

ESPN put it so well: “RIT? Yes, and thanks to these Tigers, it also stands for Really Interesting Tournament.”  Right on! Well, we’ll see . . . they’re up against some respectable opponents. Win or lose, the Tigers have exceeded already-high expectations and done a great job.

P.S. A funny joke around here, even if on the puerile side, is that since RIT is technically in the south part of Henrietta (the town) and is an institute of technology, shouldn’t they be South Henrietta Institute of Technology?  But I think that joke is taking a backseat for now; Tiger mania has definitely taken hold, biiiiiig time. The newspaper said this is the only Division I program at any of Rochester area’s colleges/universities.  RIT’s known for being a hockey school with a strong fan base. I’ve seen it up close since 1992, so I concur.”