Joe Beninati, Rob Weber, & Steve Kolbe - via DCRTV.com

Last night the originating voice of the Washington Capitals, Ron Weber, was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as the 2010 Foster Hewitt Memorial Award recipient. If any individual affiliated with the Caps belongs in Hockey’s Hall, it’s Weber. Beginning with the Caps’ inaugural season in 1974, Weber over the course of the following 23 years never missed a single game, regular season or playoffs. Baltimore has its Iron Man, Washington Ron Weber.

It’s impossible to overstate the impact Weber had in forging a durable hockey community here. He was a singular access point for those Washingtonians unable to attend Caps’ games in Landover, Md. For most of the Caps’ first 10 seasons, there simply was no television coverage of the team’s games, certainly nothing approaching today’s October through spring blanketing of the regular season. And Weber seemed to take that special responsibility of being a pool reporter’s eyes on the action for us and make it his broadcast manifesto. He believed in his heart that hockey was the greatest game on the planet, and his role in the broadcast booth was to bring it alive for a community with precious little experience with it.

Did he ever.

His calls were iconoclastic in their detail, illuminated by his trademark fluency with all manner of statistical analysis. He voice also bore a familial warmth; indeed, it wasn’t unusual, Weber told us, among the thousands of appreciative letters he received over the course of his career to read of a displaced Washingtonian detailing a night in which clear skies brought his Caps’ calls far up the Eastern seaboard on WTOP’s powerful signal. Weber was the very first Washington hockey figure interviewed by OFB just weeks into our startup, and during a memorable stroll down Memory Lane with him he told our pucksandbooks that if he could be given three games with which to introduce a Washingtonian to hockey — seated next to a newcomer to our game in Verizon Center over just a week’s worth of action — he was convinced he could make a lifelong hockey fan out of his companion. If your life was enriched by his broadcasts as ours were, you have no doubt about that.

Admin Update: Be sure to read Mike Vogel’s sit down with Ron Weber at the Caps’ site.

(25) Not one, not two, but three blizzards buried Washington in the heart of hockey season. Blizzard no. 2 took out my home’s power for fully three days, but my beer was kept cold out on the patio in nature’s natural refrigerator. Undaunted — indeed, happy as a fatted bear in hibernation — I blogged by battery, in a Columbia snowmobile suit. This same blizzard coincided with a Sunday matinee between the Capitals and Penguins, and much-maligned-in-winter Washingtonians redded out all the white and celebrated with happy snowball fights afterward when the Caps erased a 4-1, third period deficit to stun the Pens 5-4 in overtime.

*I was invited to pinch-hit for the Patriot News’ Tim Leone and moderate a panel discussion on Hershey hockey at the Capitals’ first-ever fan convention. When I asked panelists Alex Giroux, Karl Alzner, and Michal Neuvirth for their reflections about the distinctive relationship Hershey’s players have with their fans, Giroux informed the ballroom of instances in which female Bears’ fans left undergarments fastened to his car in the Giant Center parking lot.

*I received email from a Californian identifying himself as a one-time co-chairman of the Save the Caps campaign of the early 1980s. I email back: would you be willing to to be interviewed? Yes, he said. I also received email from John Carlson’s family just days after his gold-medal winning goal at the World Juniors, with celebration images attached.

*I meet the New York Times’ Chuck McGrath up in the Verizon Center press box, recognizing him from his infectiously enthusiastic performance in the documentary ‘Pond Hockey.’ I quickly come to realize that McGrath needs to be ranked with Doc Emerick among the nicest in all of hockey humanity. McGrath spends months researching a sprawling piece on Alexander Ovechkin, and for it he directs questions to Eric McErlain and me at the rink and via email.

*Visiting Hershey for the Bears’ annual outdoor skate, I’m handed a microphone by John Walton and told to interview players and coaches as they exit the ice at the skate’s end. I learned that Mathieu Perreault skated Quebec ponds when it was minus-30, and that Andrew Gordon played shinny in Nova Scotia with Sidney Crosby. Later that day Walton emailed me videos of the interviews for use on OFB. And eventually he used footage of our shoot for in-game material at a Bears’ game in Giant Center.

(20) Listening to Mathieu Perreault acknowledge that he YouTubed, over and over, his game-winning overtime goal in an exhibition game in Chicago, and watching his eyes get wide as he related the exhilaration he felt on the team’s charter home that night. I was hardly surprised that he enjoyed the success he did wearing a Washington sweater in 2009-10.

*A Canadian member of the hockey media emailed me word of her potential ability to land me backstage to meet Rush at a gig of theirs in summer. Whoa Nellie Geddy Lee!

*Jenn Sterger.

*The C&O Canal froze hard this past winter, and it delivered virtually perfect ice one January Saturday morning for my buddy Eric McErlain’s first-ever shinny skate. I loved sharing that with him.

*It was love at first sight for me with Andrew Sherburne and Tommy Haines’ latest hockey documentary, ‘Forgotten Miracle.’ I wrote a review of the film and my filmmaker friends linked to it on the film’s web site. I get pretty emotional about the subject of American hockey in general, and having a few of my words associated with that project about American hockey history shook me up pretty good.

(15) Tara Wheeler, bald for St. Baldrick’s, steps out onto Verizon Center’s ice before a Capitals’ preseason game and makes that evening’s national anthem anything but routine.

The Hershey hockey communications duo of Mikula and Walton

*Quite impulsively a Washington hockey bloggers’ caravan formed for trips up to postseason Hershey this spring, and the puck banter I enjoyed in the company of the very puck-erudite Ed Frankovic and Ted Starkey came to serve as a much-needed salve for the disappointment of the Capitals’ early playoff exit.

*And speaking of blossoming friendships forged at the rink, two newcomers to the Capitals’ bloggers beat this season, Elisabeth Meinecke of DCist and Michelle Scalise of Comcast Sportsnet, enriched my rink experience greatly. There simply are no friends like friends in hockey.

*I was editing an interview file of Big Joe Finley an hour before a Development Camp skate, all alone in the media workroom at Kettler, my head buried in my laptop, when I was nearly jolted out of my chair by a thunderous slam of fists on the workroom glass that looks out on the rink. I look up, and there’s Big Joe, smiling down at me.

*Pancaking and coffee-ing it at a Hershey Bob Evans one January Sunday morning I was perusing the Patriot News sports section when I encountered Tim Leone’s magnificent four-page feature on Washington’s hockey bloggers, ‘Going deep: Washington Capitals out in front of media revolution‘. Tim nailed it, as you’d expect he would.

(10) Readers email OFB scores of their own stunning images from shinny skates during Washington’s abnormally frosty winter. I publish every one of them that makes me envious and smile.

*I never tire of participating in Federal News Radio’s ‘Saturday Night Caps’ program and its twice-a-season bloggers’ roundtable, hosted by Jonathon Warner. Blizzard no. 1 kept the bloggers out of Jonathon’s Northwest Washington studio, but still we had a great program. Jonathon always brings the bloggers back for a second show every season, and right before the playoffs started we had a Chamber of Commerce Saturday night in spring, another great show, and afterward pitcher after pitcher of patio margaritas amid a soothing breeze, all on the radio host’s dime.

*A producer from Versus contacted us and asked if we’d generate five questions for Mike Green to be asked as part of a bloggers’ interview session with Greener. We had great fun with that. Among our questions: Can we go for a ride in your new Lamborghini?

* I got invited to board Bear Force One and accompany the Hershey Bears to Texas, and help generate new media coverage for games three through five of the Calder Cup finals. It didn’t work out this season, but maybe next. What an honor to be asked, though.

* Video-recording a short-haired Tara Wheeler step out onto the ice at Giant Center before Calder finals Game 6 to sing the national anthem, and catching her give Bears’ players standing on the blueline a big thumbs-up right as she finishes. She’s a good luck charm, I tell you.

(5) Ed Frankovic and I interview Ottawa Senators’ general manager, and former Capitals’ bench boss, Bryan Murray after a Caps-Sens game here. We stroll down Memory Lane with Murray, and he patiently gives us detail-rich accounts of the good old days in the old barn in Landover. Ed and I decide to inaugurate a co-authored project going forward titled ‘Classic Caps,’ in which we’ll try and bring alive Washington’s rich professional hockey legacy.

*Tim Leone’s deft word-smithing, joined by Bruce Boudreau’s endearing self-effacing wit, makes Gabby a great read. We were thrilled and delighted to be able to contribute photographs to the book.

*In this lifetime I will never know the feeling of being associated with a pro hockey title team. But one night last autumn Hershey’s John Walton did his best to make feel as if I had been.

* This didn’t suck: being included among media accorded access to the Giant Center ice sheet as the clock wound down to zero after game 6 of the Calder Cup finals. Images and associations of joy I’ll carry with me the rest of my days. And best of all, I got to share the experience with my D.C. blogger buddies, Frankovic and Starkey.

(1) Mere hours before the arrival of blizzard no. 1 this past winter I carried off a photo shoot with my three favorite Comcast cutiepies, at the Sculpture Gardens Ice Rink, for OFB’s 2009 Christmas card. A fella could do a lot worse than get snowed in with these Hanson sisters.

So, we crafted and submitted, then wondered, as some days passed without hearing back from the TV outlet, if we’d had a little too much fun with the crafting. But earlier today we learned that three of our five questions made their way to Jenn, and she answered all right — well, three of them anyway.

To satisfy your curiosity, we submitted these five queries:

(1) What first date would you more enjoy — attending a Moscow discotheque with Alexander Ovechkin or playing miniature golf with Carmilo Villegas?
 
(2) You’re in D.C. next June covering the U.S. Open at Congressional, and it’s late in the day and you’re grabbing a drink at the 19th hole. You see Tiger Woods approach you. Do you finish your drink (it was expensive) or run for cover?
 
(3) ‘Kissing Suzy Kolber‘ is one of our favorite blog names, and it’s a great site, too. What gerund ought to procede your name for a butt-kicking cool site?   
 
(4) Jenn, this is a direct quote from Washington Capitals’ goalie Semyon Varlamov: “You know, I’m extremely fortunate that I met a Russian girl in America. It’s difficult to look at a lot of the local women. You get the feeling that just don’t take care of themselves! There are an awful lot of heavyset ones. But Russian girls have nice trim figures. I couldn’t imagine myself being with an American girl.” Care to rebut?
 
(5) Movie-in date night — ‘Pretty Woman’ with popcorn or ‘Slapshot’ with a six-pack?  

‘The Daily Line’ will air tonight after game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals. We can only hope for similarly arduous interview assignments in the future.

When the Washington Capitals joined the NHL as an expansion team in 1974, Weber, then the Baltimore Clippers’ play-by-play announcer, was hired to be the voice of the NHL’s newest franchise. Over the next 23 years Weber never missed a regular season or playoff broadcast, talking Capitals fans through 1,936 consecutive games.  On a most personal level, Weber’s was the voice that brought alive hockey in Washington for this Washingtonian, and he graciously accepted my request to be the very first pro hockey figure I interviewed for OFB.

“Ron has been a key contributor to the growth of NHL hockey interest in the D.C. area over his two-plus decades as the original voice of the Capitals,” said Chuck Kaiton, President, NHL Broadcasters’ Association. “He is very worthy of this honour.”

This year’s Hockey Hall of Fame Induction Weekend will take place November 5-8, culminating with the Induction Ceremony on Monday, November 8. The Foster Hewitt Memorial Award is named in honour of the late “Voice of Hockey” in Canada. It was first presented in 1984 by the NHL Broadcasters’ Association in recognition of members of the radio and television industry who have made outstanding contributions to their profession and to the game of hockey.

Postscript: Dan Steinberg has offers a compelling look at the dedication of Weber’s broadcast career with the Capitals in Wednesday’s WaPost.  The online file includes a terrific photo of Weber seated next to a youthful Joe Beninati from 1997.

I was more than a little nervous meeting the congressman on Tuesday. Standing next to the world’s greatest hockey player 40 or 50 nights each winter with a digital recorder is old hat; being in the Rayburn House Office Building awaiting a one-on-one interview with a member of Congress most definitely is not. Washington is home to the no. 1 power play in all the NHL, but that’s a power play that’s no match for the power played up on Capitol Hill.

I was expecting to sit across from the congressman in his office for a few minutes Tuesday and pepper him with questions pertaining to his formation, just last week, of the first-ever Congressional Hockey Caucus, when suddenly and most unexpectedly I learned I’d be taking my interview mobile. And I had no idea where we were going. You can be a power lobbyist in D.C. and not earn more than a few minutes’ time with a Capitol Hill lawmaker, especially at arm-twisting times like these, and I certainly wasn’t one of those. I was a hockey blogger — and one who didn’t even contribute to the congressman’s most recent re-election campaign. Or any of his campaigns for that matter.

But apparently there was charm enough in my appeal to his press secretary last week to make such a meeting happen. More likely, there was a late cancellation in his 5:00 Tuesday timeslot. Anyway, I felt incredibly lucky to be able to make the trip up to Capitol Hill to talk the all important ‘H’ word in public policy this week with Representative Terry.

Hockey.

It’s kind of busy up on the Hill these days, you may have noticed, and sure enough, the premise of the congressman’s question to me was his need to move toward the House floor for a vote early Tuesday evening. He invited me to accompany him on the journey, meaning, I got to ride an elevator for representatives in the Rayburn building, move through an underground parking garage, and access the basement of the Capitol, chatting puck with the lawmaker all the while.

Take that, hockey bloggers in San Jose!

Is this really the first-ever Congressional Hockey Caucus, I asked the congressman as we stepped into the Rayburn elevator.

“Yes!” he affirmed with enthusiasm and emphasis.

“They never heard of one before — when we asked they were just stunned. A lot of these [caucuses] are just recreated every year. So they had not had a hockey caucus before.”

We were making a hasty journey to the House floor, and I knew I didn’t have time for a lot of followup with the congressman. Somebody — the House Sergeant at Arms? — vets proposals for new caucuses, apparently. In this instance, perhaps the Sergeant played hockey himself. Anyway, today puckheads have a powerful set of friends in a high place. And last week a group of hockey playing lawmakers laced up their skates and took to the ice at the Ft. Dupont Ice Arena to skate against lobbyists, in a game to raise money for the cash-beleaguered rink. The game raised more than $50,000 for Ft. Dupont! It was from his involvement that evening that Rep. Terry, joined by New York Congressman Brian Higgins and Illinois Congressman Mike Quigley, decided to form the Congressional Hockey Caucus. Congressman Terry told Roll Call earlier this month that participation in hockey promotes discipline, teamwork, and fitness.

The congressman wasn’t positive of the exact number of members in the puck caucus, but he pegged it at about 10. Not bad for a week’s work. The congressman welcomes membership from colleagues with no background in hockey whatsoever.

“It’s about getting kids active and doing youth sports programs through hockey,” he told me. “My kids, my youngest right now, is doing inline [skating], and he’ll switch over to ice in the fall.”

“I never played organized hockey,” the congressman confessed. “But my youth was spent at the Tomahawk Park, in Omaha, Nebraska, and they’d flood the basketball court in winter, and every kid met there, with your skates, and played hockey every day.”

“I’m just a big hockey fan.”

A Capitals’ fan?

“Yea! A little bit. I haven’t been to a game this year, though.”

Neither has President Obama, I informed the Republican lawmaker. I detailed a bit the other new hockey initiative in town — the Facebook campaign to get POTUS seated at Verizon Center for a hockey game, instead of just basketball.

“He’s a basketball fan,” Rep. Terry noted with diplomacy.

If you could give the President one message in an attempt to entice him to attend a hockey game, what would it be? I asked.

“It’s a fast-paced sport, Mr. President, and you’re gonna get hooked.”

The Nebraska congressman once went on the Colbert Report, but didn't talk hockey then

“I’ve got three boys, ages 15, 12 and 9,” he added. “We sit and watch hockey, the NHL, on TV, we watch the Capitals, we watched the Chicago game on Sunday. It’s very much a family activity.”

The very bipartisan hockey caucus, Rep. Terry admitted, is largely symbolic.

“Some caucuses will get involved in pieces of legislation, but we don’t see a necessity for a lot of hockey legislation,” he said with a laugh.

“But when we start talking about youth programs, exercise programs, that’s when we’ll inject ourselves and say, ‘Hey, there’s indoor activities too that need to be included, even in the coldest months, and it’s not all basketball.”

“We want hockey included in the discussions of youth participation in sports programs.”

As our walk toward a fresh roll call came to its conclusion I asked the congressman if I could share with him three hypothetical policy priorities for pursuit by the caucus. I asked him to give me a ‘Yea’ or ‘Nay’ on each. He obliged.

• Policy objective number one: some manner of formal commemoration in our culture for the Miracle on Ice.

“We should look at that!” the congressman exclaimed.

• Policy objective number two: Special Order speeches on the House floor that simply champion the sport of hockey.

“Yes, that would be part of [the caucus' cause].”

• Policy objective number three: coming to the defense of Washington’s much-under-attack-these-days hockey hero, Alexander Ovechkin.

Rep. Terry, chuckling: “I don’t think we want to get in on that, but I saw that [hit], he shouldn’t have been suspended.”

Washington the new hockey town now has a big hockey-hearted advocate for its sport up on Capitol Hill. There may not be much in the way of federal legislation coming out of the deliberations of the first-ever Congressional Hockey Caucus, but I’m still going to press the producers of C-SPAN to cover its meetings.

Wyshynski attended his first NHL game since the Vancouver Games ended this past Monday night, for the visit to Verizon Center by the Dallas Stars. Vancouver was his first Olympics experience. It made quite an impression on him.

Wyshynski and more than 50 of his Yahoo colleagues made the trip across the continent to cover the Vancouver Games, in their entirety, an extraordinary allotment of personnel and resources in this resource-constrained era. Even a few of the mightiest and most prestigious of news organizations couldn’t match that.

“There was enormous pressure in the beginning to make sure [the investment] was warranted, but that’s what I do every day. I get to do this for a living. I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself and the blog to do well because of that,” Puck Daddy told me before the Capitals-Stars game on Monday.

“I was proud of the work we did. The numbers were great. Then there was encouraging comments by [our] peers. And then there was the totality of the work you do when you’re on site — we did some really great stuff. Some of the angles for the stories we did were different, and were not things that necessarily would have been written about had we not been there.”

Was he affected at all by the enormity of the sporting stage, aware perhaps of watchful, suspicious eyes of the IOC’s media flacks upon new media?

“I think it was just going to Vancouver and doing my own thing,” he said. “I don’t know if the blog necessarily did anything different than we would have normally done.”

Puck Daddy, Greg Wyshynski

Wyshynski never experienced any sense of being out of place among world-recognized media in Vancouver. Perhaps that’s because Yahoo today is very much a world-recognized media outlet, particularly for sports, particularly because of Wyshynski’s success there.

“The fact that you’re on site [covering the Games] is enough — there’s never a feeling of ‘Why are you here?, why are you asking that question?’ he told me.

When I expressed skepticism that any media outlet, even the most esteemed over the longest period of time, could possibly harbor suspicion that a writer for Yahoo would be credentialed for the Olympics, Wyshynski detailed a stratified credentialing process.

“For certain events, you had to get a special ticket in order to get in the press box for it. Like [for] the Canada-Russia game, the U.S.-Canada [hockey] games. You couldn’t just show up with your credential, you had to go through USOC and get a special ticket.”

For almost the entirety of his coverage time in Vancouver Wyshynski had reliable access to an Ethernet jack and could work without fear of wonky WiFi service. But for one hockey game — a semi-final one at that — Wyshynski and his Yahoo colleague weren’t seated at a media table. He was supposed to live blog and had no Internet access. That situation got resolved. Otherwise, though, the entire Olympic experience was smooth sailing in terms of generating work product.

When I pressed Greg again about his comfort level with engaging the Games with his characteristic (and endearing) irreverence, he pointed out that Yahoo’s coverage mission overall was to cover the Olympics as largely a straight news story, but he also reminded me that his inner Puck Daddy tossed off his red mittens at times.

“The article that I wrote after the Canada-Russia game was complete id — I tore the sh*t out of Russia,” he said. Indeed!

“Russia’s 7-3 loss to Canada in its Olympic hockey quarterfinal game is one of the most definitive, declarative and emphatic emasculations the sport has seen in decades . . .

“The defense was pathetic. Unable to move Canadian players from Nabokov’s sight line. Unable to defend odd-man Canadian rushes. There may be a “D” in “forward,” but there sure wasn’t any in these tentative, meandering Russian wingers.

“The non-NHL players were pathetic. The Russians have nine players on the roster from their native Kontinental Hockey League. There were a combined minus-9 with two points, getting outclassed and outcompeted in every zone. They were warm bodies, background players to Canada’s stars.”

Yahoo wasn’t alone as a dot-com entity in Vancouver, Wyshynski noted. Fox Sports.com was there, and there were a few other web oriented outlets, almost all North American-based. One particular caliber of new media reporter — “the Dan Steinberg types,” Greg called them — wasn’t present, and that he felt was a detriment to the overall coverage.

“There were a lot of columnists, a lot of old school shoe-leather types, let’s say,” he noted. “I think the [Olympic] gig demands a versatility. For the first few days I was there, I was doing the ‘Man about town’ [feature-y files] before going straight into covering hockey.”

There were hardships to Greg’s tour of Olympic duty. He’s an expecting father, and he was a full continent away from his family for more than half a month.

“I’m not a beat writer, I don’t leave [home], I’m a homebody, and I hate leaving,” he said, “so the first week was beyond anything I was used to.”

“The Olympic experience, at least with the winter Olympics, is like a Roman orgy. It is Mardi Gras. It was unbelievable, the level of revelry that existed in that city for a month. For a month!

“Vancouver is split up into different neighborhoods, and a lot of these neighborhoods are very concentrated with bars and restaurants. Every night tons of people would be there. There was a street called Granville Avenue where every single time you walked past it the street would be filled like a concert in Central Park.

“Girls kissing . . . the U-S-A fans chanting against the Canadian fans. . . ”

I pressed him for more details on the kissing girls. That sounded rather Roman to me.

Did hockey’s most famous blogger encounter any evidence of a condom crisis in Vancouver?

For a lot of the Games’ athletes, Wyshynski noted, “there’s nothing else to do” besides fornicate, outside of competing. You have literally thousands of extraordinarily fit young men and women encamped together in a sequestered village for weeks, he noted. Some athletes find the competitive portion of their Olympics participation over literally within hours of the Games’ start.  That’s a lot of free time around very fit bodies before the closing ceremonies. Hence, 14 condoms per athlete, and with these particular Games, that volume barely lasted beyond the first week.

The Olympics are unifying in this regard.

As for the PR hits Vancouver initially took, Wyshynski said a lot had to do with the opening day tragedy of losing a luger, and the Olympic torch not working at the Opening Ceremony, but beyond the somberness of the first day or two, for those actually attending the Games, “you never got a sense of [anything negative]. It was an overwhelmingly positive vibe, because it’s an overwhelmingly positive city.

“Being an American, in that building, and watching the USA beat Canada, on their home ice, and then losing in overtime in the gold medal game, was mind-blowing.”

That initial defeat of the Canadians, Wyshynski suggested, “was a lot like the World Juniors — you had [Canadians] questioning their existence. I mean if you remember what happened right after World Juniors, you had people writing columns about, ‘Well we need to rethink our entire system!’ And it was like that with the Canadian [Olympic ] team, except it was ‘Well, we need to rethink this entire team — where is Stamkos, where is Mike Green? We can’t work the power play.’

The Canadians ended up rethinking things rather thoroughly — overhauling their lines. The Canadian team the Americans faced in the gold medal game was a markedly different team from that of a week before.

“Canada 2.0,” Wyshynski called it. “Totally professional, assasin-like.”

“The loss in the gold medal game, and walking around town as an American, made me feel like an atheist in the Vatican.”

Roman orgies and a seeming visit to the Vatican, all in one Olympic Games. The NHL better go to Sochi.

Thanks to WNST’s Nestor Aparicio for the heads-up.

We’ll be snapping pics of the touqued, and the wearer of the best touque in our survey will be awarded a giant Pond Hockey movie poster signed by filmmakers Tommy Haines and Andrew Sherburne. We’ll have additional signed movie posters as well, and we’ll hold a drawing for those.

If you haven’t secured your tickets, do so right here. Also, consider purchasing the Pond Hockey DVD as a stocking stuffer for the puckhead in your holiday good tidings. Or just to add to your collection of special treatments of hockey on DVD.

OFB now has a Facebook presence, and an event page for this special night at the movies. If you visit the event page, you’ll see how many folks around town are keenly interested in making it to the Avalon next Monday night.

In the spirit of the Capitals’ Student Rush program, knowing that now especially undergraduates are trying to scrape up funds to get home for the holidays, we’re awarding a free pair of tickets to the screening each day this week through Friday. The only requirement is that you be a college student in the region and contact us from your school email addy. Each day we’ll select a favorite student email detailing an instance of skipping school to go play pond hockey.

To whet your appetite for ‘Pond Hockey’s’ arrival in Washington, filmmakers Haines and Sherburne consented to a 10-question OFB grilling from yours truly, the content of which follows. Read it in your competitive touque!

pucksandbooks: From the very first time I watched the trailer for ‘Pond Hockey’ I had the thought: this seems like such a natural subject for documentary treatment, why hasn’t it been done before? From the splendor of nature’s winter gifts to the exhilaration of shinny’s participants — at every age — this just seemed to me to be a winning film idea. You guys conceived this project a few years ago, and I wonder, what was your igniting inspiration? Was it a moment of recognition while playing shinny? Something you read? Warming up in a bar after a full day of play?

Tommy Haines: The first seed was planted a long time ago, growing up playing outdoor hockey as a kid in Northern Minnesota. When I moved to Iowa in 2003 I realized how special outdoor hockey is (you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone). But, yeah, the final bit of inspiration probably involved a bar somewhere.

pucksandbooks: Anyone who has enjoyed the novelty of playing hockey as it first invited people to, outdoors, has seized upon its timeless appeal, and I don’t think it’s overstatement to suggest that truly there is a spiritual dynamic to the experience. As you talked with hundreds and hundreds of hockey players in your years putting this film together, I wonder how often they acknowledged something like this — that the pursuit of playing outdoors in layers, enduring ‘burning’ toes, chasing after errant pucks in tall grass, was about more than competition or exercise, that it was an experience fathers wanted to share with sons, brothers with brothers while home for a visit at Christmas, that kind of thing?

Tommy Haines: Can we say everyone? Seriously! That was one of the amazing things about this project was learning over and over again how whether you are from Sweden, Russia, Canada, the US; if you are an NHL All-Star, a former D-1 player, or even a rink rat who never played organized hockey — everyone had similar stories of growing up [with outdoor hockey]. The snow is falling, you’re almost flying on the ice — it truly does become something spiritual.

Andrew Sherburne: Definitely, the frozen toes, playing into the wind, skating until the sun goes down. Playing outdoors is about more than just hockey, it’s a mentality, a connection to the world around us — to the people in our lives — that’s hard to find in the arena.

pucksandbooks: If I had to identify a single-most memorable quality to my own outdoor hockey playing experiences, it would be the distinctive friendships that I forged with strangers I shared frozen ponds and canals with over the years. With Washington’s warmer winters, I could be 5 or 7 years removed from being able to return to my favorite skating spots, but occasionally when I am able to return, I will on that winter Saturday morning see a familiar face or two from a skate years and years back. We don’t necessarily remember one another’s names, but when we’re reunited in that moment, there’s a unique smile of recognition we do share. Can there possibly be any comparable connection in all of recreational sports?

Tommy Haines: I don’t think so. Sand-lot baseball, blacktop basketball — those are all special memories too, but there is something more to outdoor hockey. The common instinct to head to the pond when the weather obliges, it stays with you, and when mother nature cooperates again, you can feel it.

pucksandbooks: If you had to distill outdoor hockey’s cross-generational, cross-cultural appeal into a single sentence, what would it be?

Andrew Sherburne: Freedom. And not in some political way, but the freedom to roam the ice, to glide across a pond, to play without rules; that’s sport at its purest.

pucksandbooks: I’m a big believer that skating outdoors on big surfaces as a youth has irrefutably positive effects on skill-building, both for skating and stick handling. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the game’s greatest skaters (Orr and Gilbert Perreault, most particularly) churned their legs on large-sized lakes and rivers. What are your thoughts about outdoor hockey’s skill-building virtues?

Tommy Haines: It’s critical. The ice is bumpy, so you get better hands. The pressure cracks which force you to be good at improvisation. Shoveling makes you stronger and heartier, works the muscles. You skate into the wind, in the snow, and brave freezing temps, which makes you a tougher and grittier hockey player. Can you work on these skill building exercises in the indoor game? To a certain extent yes. But more than anything else, playing outside builds your love and appreciation for the sport.

pucksandbooks: What’s at stake if the youth hockey experience evolves, as it appears at present to be doing, away from the outdoor ritual shinny offers of camaraderie, improvisation, and time-constraint-free skating, to one exclusively of years of rote, highly structured drills indoors in formally coached settings?

Tommy Haines: You might lose that love of the game. When you see the Miracle on Ice team win the gold medal in 1980, you see more than a bunch of robots going out and do
ing their jobs. You see grown men living out their childhood dreams, there’s an enjoyment and fulfillment in their faces you only can see on the players that truly love the game.

pucksandbooks: Clearly the NHL has embraced outdoor hockey, not just with the now annual Winter Classics but also as northern teams make a bit of a habit of skating outdoors for practices once in a while, seemingly to break up the routine of their indoor practices. The Senators have done this, as have numerous American League teams. What more can and should the NHL do to promote outdoor hockey?

Andrew Sherburne: Sponsor more shinny tournaments for the kids. Work with the arenas in the warmer areas to promote “pond hockey” style play.
 
Tommy Haines: I know it’s unrealistic, but rip the roofs off these arenas. If you can play football outside in the snow (i.e. Lambeau Field), why can’t we play hockey the same way? Sure, it would never happen, but the Winter Classic was so cool last year — for the fans, the players and the people sitting at home — why can’t we have that for the entire season?

pucksandbooks: Give me your all-time shinny team — Team USA vs. Team Canada — for a four-on four Saturday showdown. The four best from each nation from all eras considered.

Tommy Haines: Team USA — Neal Broten, Jeremy Roenick, Johnny Mayasich, Mike Modano (give Patrick Kane one or two more years to make the team)

Team Canada (boring I know, but how can you argue?) — Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe, Sidney Crosby (Steve Yzerman if Crosby gets a cold)

pucksandbooks: Great squads, no doubt, but I’ll take my chances against both with Eurizone, Johnson, McClanahan, and Morrow.

pucksandbooks: You must have visited some amazingly gorgeous locales with your cameras — Minnesota parks, Quebec farm properties, perhaps mountain retreats in the American Northeast. Among all of that beauty, can you identify a truly standout site for outdoor hockey — something that today looms as a bit of a natural hockey postcard in your mind’s eye? Put another way, where is Pond Hockey Mecca?

Andrew Sherburne: You want the cheesy answer? Pond Hockey Mecca is different for everybody. You talk to anyone and their favorite spot isn’t the most beautiful spot they’ve played, it’s where their team is. It’s about the people you play with. That’s what’s different about outdoor hockey: every pond has its flaws, but every one is unique. You love it because it’s yours.

pucksandbooks: Lastly, I’ve heard that you’re actually considering screening ‘Pond Hockey’ this winter out on a frozen pond, presumably in your home state, the State of Hockey. Can I be invited to that?

Tommy Haines: Of course, bring your skates!