When I think back about what made covering the Caps so amazing, I realized it wasn’t the stories I wrote or the games I covered. Instead, it was the chance to be a part of this vast Caps community that made it so special. While the chance to cover good hockey has always been my dream, I never knew the thing I would cherish most would be the relationships I forged while doing it.

All of the dedicated OFB fans have suffered through my analysis and writing since I first debuted way back in 2007, and, to that, I have to say thank you. Just knowing that people thought what I had to say was worth reading was inspiration enough for me. It was all your comments and feedback that helped shape me as a writer. I am not just talking about all of the positive things I heard, either–those of you who disagreed with me were of a great help as well. You allowed me to see an eloquently written counter argument to what I had to say, which is always important.

Some of the opportunities I had here are ones some people don’t get in a lifetime. Whether it was standing three feet from my favorite hockey player of all time or breaking into a cold sweat because I got to speak to Sergei Fedorov, all of the people I got to meet and talk with will be memories I carry with me forever. They are the kind of stories I know I will tell my children and their children.

Of those experiences, though, it is not the big stars I enjoyed speaking with the most, but the people with the best stories. Getting the chance to sit down with Nate Ewell and learn how he became the face of Caps PR was the most fascinating piece I wrote, while waking up before the crack of dawn to see our own Miss America, Tara Wheeler, off to the pageant was the most unique interview. Then of course there was Matty Perreault, who I got to interview in the cold at Chevy Chase, in the locker room and at Kettler. He never turned down an interview, and I always was grateful for that. Oh, and I will always remember when he turned to the camera during a video shoot and waved.

Those three experiences have got to be the most memorable ones, but really being accepted into this community is what I will never forget. I am always astounded when someone approaches me and asks if I am the guy from OFB. Whenever that happens it always reminds me how great you the readers are. It is you guys and gals that make the magic happen. Without your dedication and support this would be nothing. It has always been our readers involvement that has made me want to play a whole 60 minutes, even if the team we live vicariously through doesn’t.

Of course above all else, the people I am most thankful for throughout this journey has to be my colleagues here at OFB. Every one of them has had a profound impact on my life and are people I hope to continue to have a relationship with. If it wasn’t for their belief in me as a writer, I would never have had the chance to grace your computer screens.

So without being too sappy, I just want to thank everyone for allowing this to happen. A big thank you to Matty Perreault, Braden Holtby, Marcus Johannson, Mike Knuble, Donald Brashear, Michal Neuvirth, Nicky Backstrom, Bruce Boudreau and the whole team who had to put up with my questions every night.

To John, Lis, Mike, Gary, Liz and Alex, thank you for all the support you gave me night in and night out. You guys helped hone the product I had the privilege to publish on OFB.

Finally to all of our readers, once more thank you. Love me, hate me, agree with me or disagree with me, I thank you for taking the time to let me into your hockey lives. I’ll still be around on Twitter and I bet you will see me more than a few times in a Caps jersey next season. Hockey is in my blood, it will always be a huge part of my life ,and now the Caps will always be in my blood, too.

Turns out, Killer, who played with so much heart and passion and courage, wanted to try and impart some of that in younger hockey players. So he started coaching. Turns out, too, that not many folks in D.C. were asking about it.

I tracked him down as head coach of the Youngstown Steelhounds of the Central Hockey League. I found contact info for the team’s staff on the team’s web site, and I shipped off an email to the team’s PR guy, identifying myself by name and blog affiliation, seeking an interview with the head coach, figuring that would pretty much be the end of my pursuit. But about two hours after that email a secretary in my office interrupted a meeting I was in to inform me that “a Killer is on the phone for you.” That’s exactly what she said. I remember it like it was yesterday. Funny, too: in that novel and bizarre moment, I sorta sensed that my life was about to change, that blogging about hockey in Washington was gonna get fun, fast. I still love telling my friends this story.

For the next hour on the phone Killer and I strolled down Memory Lane of Landover, Maryland. He treated me as if I were a 25-year veteran of the Washington Post. It wasn’t so much that he answered every question of him I had, with warm reflection and inspiring passion for our game, it was that he was, frankly, elated to be engaged with someone in Washington who remembered him, in the city that was his hockey home away from home. And it was from this remarkable initial conversation that I learned a lasting and important lesson about the athletes of our sport: they play in our cities and as fans we tend to commoditize their residence — are they playing well?; are they overpaid?; what have they done for us lately? But for the athlete, the residence here is signature — the dream of being a big leaguer realized. And for a player like Killer especially, Washington was uniquely embedded in his hockey heart: no organization believed in him like the Caps did, and he literally surrendered his health while wearing Washington’s sweater.

I remember hanging up the telephone for my call with Killer that autumn afternoon in 2006 and feeling like a lottery winner. An ex-Cap who was a hero to me as a fan had just engaged me as what seemed rather like a friend. I wrote up my story and it did what I wanted it to: it occasioned powerfully warm reminiscence of Killer’s guts and blue collar glory among OFB’s elder readership. My blog in its infancy suddenly seemed to have a spirit — and precisely the one I was seeking.

I could tell, too, that Killer appreciated the coverage. He began ringing me on my cell phone from his interminably long minor hockey bus rides across the U.S. with his team, looking to kill some time and just chat pucks. You know how with address fields in cell phones you use shorthand or nicknames for family and chums, and how those monikers appear on your phone’s screen when they call? Even years later I never quite lost a sense of marvel every time “Killer” would appear there on my phone when he rang me.

A couple of years ago OFB banded together with a few other local hockey blogs, the Capitals, and the Hershey Bears and organized a fundraiser at Clyde’s in Chinatown for the Wilson High hockey team. Wilson was the District’s only public school with a hockey team, and a Washington Post feature brought word of the loss of their coach to pneumonia, and serious financial hard times. Things looked seriously grim for the team. As a D.C. native and puckhead, this story was a sucker punch to my gut. I couldn’t not try and help. I got great help from the other blogs, amazing support from both the Caps and Bears (Hershey’s entire team signed a goalie stick and donated it to our event), and just two days before the fundraiser, I got a call in my office from Killer.

I wanted him to know that times in Washington were changing when it came to hockey, that high school hockey here was fairly flourishing, and that in the instance of the District’s lone public school puck program, we were gonna fight to keep it going. ‘When’s the fundraiser?’ Killer asked me.

‘The day after after tomorrow,” I told him. ‘I’ll ring you to tell you how we fared.’

The very next morning a box sized for a large television arrived via FedEx in my office. It had come from Youngstown, Ohio. Inside was a treasure trove of signed memorabilia from Killer’s playing career in D.C. as well as fashion and other trinkets from the Steelhounds. Killer was still going hard at his adversaries, apparently. At the fundraiser, I was in a circle of bidders around large signed color glossies of Killer in his bloodied Capitals’ sweaters. Those photos fetched hundreds of dollars by themselves. Our event overall raised thousands for Wilson. They’re still skating.

(Speaking of charitable impulses by hockey blogs, please consider stopping by tomorrow’s night’s big shindig at the Front Page in Arlington hosted by Russian Machine Never Breaks. I think I’m gonna bring a Killer to it.)

At 4:00 today my friend Killer will touch down at Reagan National for his first visit to his hockey home since he left it as a player. He’s gonna take in a couple of Capitals’ games this weekend. He follows the team pretty closely. Tomorrow night we’ll drive over together to the WTOP studios and stroll down Memory Lane again on ‘Saturday Night Caps’ with Jonathon Warner and Ben Raby. I’m looking forward to driving around town a bit this weekend with a Killer in my car.

I know for a fact that he received it in timely fashion, and that makes me smile every bit as much as last night’s outcome at Verizon Center.

Texting with my father is a very big deal. Using technology with my father is a very big deal. It was only recently that Dad took an email account for the first time in his life. He had a secretary the entirety of his law career who handled things like faxing and, at the end, the primitive iterations of business email for him. Dad just wasn’t interested in technology. To this day, when he’s at home, every morning without fail he gets in the car with the family chocolate lab before breakfast and drives 5 minutes to the grocery store to retrieve two Washington newspapers and the Wall Street Journal. There are two computers in his home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, and until recently he wouldn’t turn on either.

Without notice family one day late last summer began receiving email from Dad. At first I thought it was a hoax of some sort. (Dad’s email address has “Caps” and his birth year in its prefix.) It remains somewhat startling to interact with him electronically; family was resigned to Dad’s stubborn stand against technology, and truthfully there was an Old World charm to it. But he’s coming around, slowly.

Dad’s cruise ship departed its Florida port the Monday before last at 4:00. At 3:15 he was on board and up on deck holding his cell phone and awaiting word from me of deals made by the Caps before the trade deadline. That’s my kind of cruiser. I’m quite sure with modest initiative Dad could keep reasonably well apprised of hockey happenings while out at sea, but I think he holds special this puck-bond we have while he’s away. I know I do.

Dad and I talk two or three times every week when’s home, a little about life, lots about hockey in season. This is a tough time for me not to have phone access to him, as I’m starting to get terrifically excited about our new-look Caps. But I do enjoy sending him the update texts, and allowing word of win after win to represent well the changed state of things.

This winter I’ve noticed Dad taking extra heightened interest in the welfare of the team. One Sunday afternoon a couple of months ago he was driving back from a visit with his granddaughters in Connecticut, and he rang me from a gas station seeking an update on the game with the Senators then. It just sorta struck me as odd, his anxiety and concern over a mid-season game against a non-rival. And he pushed hard for the two of us to go to Pittsburgh for the Winter Classic New Years weekend. I was concerned about iffy weather, and spending New Years Eve in Pittsburgh, and losing that game among all those insufferable Steel City partisans. I also simply wanted to watch that game with him in his shore home, on his fancy flatscreen, with a few cold ones. But Dad pushed and pushed and eventually he won me over, and we traveled, like so many other Washingtonians, and that ended up being a weekend I’ll never forget.

Recently it occurred to me: should the Caps fail in the quest again this season, I will dust the disappointment off, compose constructive criticism here, recharge my battery over the offseason, and get back at it come autumn. That’s what we Caps’ fans do. But I am beginning to suspect that for Dad the disappointment would be different — a good deal different.

My father will turn 70 next year. He was in Verizon Center for game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals in 1998, and he counts that moment watching the Cup being paraded around the ice as one of the highlights of his sporting life. He’s a true hockey fan. And on any number of occasions he’s told me that one of the things he wants most in life still is an opportunity to see in person again the Cup awarded in Washington again, but this time to the right guys. And I’ve been thinking a lot lately: if the Caps come up short again, and particularly if they fail to make a strong showing this postseason, there could some significant changes. Significant changes often don’t lead to swift returns toward elite triumph. I think Dad this season is sensing a bit of hockey mortality with his team, and mortality with his big goal.

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An OFB reader named Doug just this week left us as comment this golden nugget: “I read you folks daily — even aboard cruise ships (much to my wife’s chagrin). At least she won’t find me in the ship’s casino — reading hockey blogs and keeping up on the Caps. Hmm . . . maybe I ought to be found in the gym, working out (not).”

Gym workouts on cruise ships? Nah — that’s for land-living, Doug.

There are many rewards to investing the time and energy we do in cultivating this forum, but I have to say, learning about offshore patronage ranks way up there in thrill and satisfaction. I’m beginning to imagine my father downloading the blog on a Kindle he’ll tote along on his next vacation.

* * * * *

Still my favorite OFB-at-sea story: about a year and a half ago we received email from a seaman in the United States Navy. He was messaging us from abroad. A Caps’ fan, born and raised in our region. Occasionally, on training missions, he’d be submerged on his sub for weeks at a time. He told us that one of things he’d first do when surfaced was power up his laptop and get updated on the Caps by accessing our site. My dad was an Army guy, but I bet he’d buy that devoted follower a beer.

Couple of minutes of Nats chatter at the start of this audio link, then we get to hockey systems, potential trades, the precocious play of John Carlson and Karl Alzner, and the return of Alex Semin.

OFB on 106.7 the Fan with Danny Rouhier and Grant Paulson, 2/8/11

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.

Greetings OFB readers. My colleague Tara Wheeler introduced me to OFB earlier this season, and I really enjoy following it — makes me feel like a bit of frozen Minnesota is with me each morning during the day’s first cup-a-joe. I did grow up in Minnesota playing outdoor hockey.  Nothing ever organized, mostly on the outdoor rinks.  A couple of my friends and I would play 2-3 nights a week.  Because hockey is such a great workout, I used it to keep my weight in check for wrestling. It was a great way to get outside, skate, have some fun, and work out at the same time.

As for the Caps, I started following them in 1996. I was in D.C. to attend American University, and it was right after the North Stars left for Dallas(I’m still angry about that, by the way). In 1996, our strength coach for the AU wrestling team was the assistant strength coach for the Caps(guy named Jim Fox).  He would help me get interviews with the Caps for my journalism classes.  In fact, Dale Hunter was the first pro athlete I ever interviewed. It was a story about strength training (and it wasn’t very good if I remember; I was only a sophomore). I also had the chance to go to games in Landover, Md., at old Cap Centre on several occasions to watch Bondra and the boys.  Now that I’m back just outside the area a bit, I’m still following them.

I’m the 6 and 11 p.m. anchor here at the Charlottesville Newsplex, and I also have a franchise called ‘Make Dan Sweat’ every week.  For that, I go out and try different workouts and challenges sent in by viewers. I’m greatly looking forward to my next challenge — shooting on Tara Wheeler next month. We’ll let you know how that goes.

Some thoughts Caps as we head into the All Star break.

Blogging is no sweat for Dan; besting Tara Wheeler on the ice? Another story

Turbo Boost

Will speedster Jason Chimera shift the Caps’ first line into high gear? Last Thursday night, Bruce Boudreau shifted speedy winger Jason Chimera to the first line to boost production. It’s too early to say if this will be a permanent fix, but after one game, it looked like a good plan.

The line was plus 2 on the night, and had several solid scoring chances. Chimera not only has speed to open up the ice, he also goes hard to the net, and is strong on the forecheck. With his presence in front, it will force defenses to keep a close eye on him. That, in theory, will open up the ice for Backstrom and Ovechkin, as seen against the Islanders Thursday night and again against the Leafs last night. Both goals Thursday were within two feet of the goal, and were a result of charging hard to the net. As Boudreau said after the game, good things happen when you put the puck on net.

During his Thursday press conference, Boudreau said he was happy with the production from Backstrom, Ovechkin, and Chimera. If the offensive production becomes a trend, it could be a front line that stays together for quite some time . . . and lights the red lamps at Verizon with more frequency. It might also be enough to shift the Capitals offense back into scoring gear.

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Will ESPN Get Back on the Rink?

Hockey ratings are on the rise — but you wouldn’t know it watching the “Worldwide Leader in Sports.”

Ever since ESPN dropped National Night Hockey after the 2004 season, you don’t see much coverage of pucks on the network. SportsCenter doesn’t show nearly as much NHL action as it used to when it had broadcast rights for the games. (But you can see European soccer highlights on SportsCenter these days. Not coincidentally, ESPN recently signed a 3-year deal to broadcast the English Premier League).

When OLN (now Versus) picked up the NHL in 2006, many cable subscribers couldn’t find the network, or simply didn’t get it, and ratings suffered. However, thanks to exciting playoffs, the success of the Winter Classic, and the growth of the Versus network, numbers are on the rise. During last year’s Stanley Cup finals, ratings soared. During the NBC coverage of games 1 and 2, ratings increased from 4.8 million to 5.2 million viewers. The ratings for game 1 were the highest in 11 years. Add in the success of the Winter Classic, which drew in 4.65 million viewers this year even after a last minute time change, and you can’t argue that hockey is growing, and growing fast. The mainstream popularity of HBO’s ’24/7′ documentary with the Penguins and Capitals also built up interest in the Winter Classic, and the sport. The Capitals saw a 68 percent boost in game ratings when the series aired.

Then there is this little nugget from the LA Times:

“On May 7, the Boston Bruins played the Flyers in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference semifinals and got 328,000 viewers in Boston on Versus; the Red Sox played the New York Yankees and the local television broadcast on NESN had 223,000 viewers; and Game 3 of the Cleveland-Boston NBA Eastern Conference semifinals drew 142,000 on ESPN.”

Those are numbers that simply can’t be ignored.

It all leads to this: NHL television contracts are up after this year. If ESPN wants to remain the “Worldwide Leader in Sports,” network executives might want to think long and hard about bringing back National Hockey Night.