That’s because the hockey room is a second family room. In ‘Mystery, Alaska’ Tree rightly rebukes his teammate for betraying the code of the room: “What’s said in the room stays in the room.” On the hockey beat any reporter in any city will encounter the wall of player silence when he or she questions what the coach said after the team put up a stinker of a period or made a marvelous third-period comeback. They still ask the question — you have to, it’s the best storyline to pursue — but the answer is always the same: “Ah, you know, coach said some things.”

A special swagger, security, and exclusivity is accorded membership in the room. Individual accountability is executed there. A team lets down its guard in there. Initiations and rituals are meted out most often in the room. I can’t count the number of rec league players who’ve detailed for me the solidarity they honor and nurture with teammates they see but for 90 minutes each week. Those bonds most often aren’t forged from individual game shifts but rather from the vulnerability and support intrinsic to the hockey room.

I’ve learned on the hockey beat that there are places you just don’t step, access points you just don’t broach, in the room. When media is in the room they are accorded respect, but it is also abundantly clear that we are stranger-guests, outsiders, and that our visit is best kept brief. I like this about our sport.

Great hockey teams, it seems to me, cannot be forged without great rooms. When Capitals’ management initiated the organization’s pre-lockout rebuild it stated that its principal design was to construct a competitive club built and replenished largely from within — call it going organic. Now that the team is competitive it’s interesting to note how many of the team’s players reference the strength and caliber of the team’s room. The past two summers I’ve made a point of asking players in the Capitals’ organization what if anything they miss about hockey in summertime, and without fail every player includes in his list “being in the room with the guys.”

Surely Sergei Fedorov noticed the novelty of the Washington locker room. You have to think his experience in the Caps’ room was a condition of being mutually beneficial for his teammates and him. He sure seemed to meld with his new teammates conspicuously well. You have to think this played a part in his decision to resign in Washington this summer.

And how special that room must have been on and between the nights of those final seven regular season games in 2007-08, when the Capitals couldn’t afford to lose a single one, and when they encountered all manner of struggle and frustration in those games and yet perservered and triumphed.

Only about 25 people on planet Earth know what that room was like then. That’s as it should be.

Filed in Hockey Rituals, Morning cup-a-joe, Sergei Fedorov, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (4)

In Defense of Hockey Sweater Weather in August

By pucksandbooks
Friday, August 15, 2008

This essay is addressed to those readers who feel betrayed by summer, and specifically, that the arrival this month of humane, universally appealing, and temperate conditions is an act of short-circuiting Mid-Atlantic misery by Mother Nature.

What is wrong with you?

Would you have us believe that our opened windows and naturally ventillated homes are inferior to artificial refrigeration pumped in by costly utilities? It would appear that the region’s mosquitos and knats have interpreted this month’s climatic changes as a cue to get out of cooled-down Dodge. Do you miss them?

I’ve noticed not a single Air Quality Index Advisory issued by Bob Ryan this month. Shouldn’t we celebrate that?

Imagine the lottery-winning fortune of tourists now in town. They consented to the normally suicidal act of August tourism in Washington because travel agencies offer deals during our deadly season. They’re here now and think themselves in upper Alberta. They’re here clogging our commuting trains each day, but their temerpamental brood among them are cheerful and (largely) obedient. This is weather-related. The men of the families are still found in sandals and socks, but this August it’s defensible — it’s too chilly for bare piggies.

Happier tourists are liberal with their wallets, which is obviously good news for the region’s economy.

Because it’s August, which delivers a congressional recess, this summer we’re actually liberated from two sets of hot air.

Of course it remains warm enough to recreate as we customarily want to in summer; it’s just that golf, tennis, bicycling, backyard barbeque-ing, jogging, sunbathing, Wrangler-ing topless, and walking outdoors holding the hand of your sweetie is sweeter in such air. Traditionally the region’s children cannot fly kites down on the Mall, as the aircraft cannot ascend through the swamp-moist saturation pulverizing us under blazing sun. This August there are reports of the kiddies and their kites being carried away by the soothing breezes.

Fans at Nats’ games — I saw them this week — can be seen outfitted in the new Caps’ uniform system tops (admittedly the radically adjusted, breathable replacements that Reebok had to engineer in the middle of last season, because the original design was hated by every member of the Capitals) at the ballyard.

One can go camping in the region this August and at night sleep inside a sleeping bag. And it is not so cool that secluded camping trips can’t accommodate impulsive skinny dipping. I would join the condemnation of cold fronts then.

We can still wear shorts this month — many are. But we can also wear bluejeans. This you might call fashion diversity. Diversity is our strength, isn’t it?

I am sympathetic to the elderly, and our elderly readers, who might point out that the truly viscious heat aids their brittle and life-battered joints. But to them I would ask, why can’t you be more like the Canadian elderly, who just pop a couple of Advil and get back out to their shinny and snow-shoveling?

Filed in Frivolous Summer File, Morning cup-a-joe, Sweaters, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (2)

The State of the Washington Sports Union, August 2008

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, August 14, 2008

We who find succor and solace in the refrigerated mustiness of rinks do enjoy the occasional night out at the old ballyard, and last night, amid yet another stunner in this greatest-ever weather in the history of Washington Augusts, two hockey bloggers enjoyed that experience at Nationals Stadium. Despite the on-field product offered there. The Sporting News’ Eric McErlain and I cracked open roasted peanuts, occasionally followed yet another Nats’ mauling, and did what two sports-loving friends do best in one another’s company: survey and solve Washington’s sports’ problems over a few beers.

Creative and caring about our home though we be, we may not be able to aid these present Nats. There is rebuilding and then there is this team: godawful, and embarrassingly non-competitive. There were no delusions about this team flirting with mediocrity this season, I don’t think, but Nats’ ownership and management, I also think, had some level of obligation to assemble something remotely attractive in this the maiden season of baseball in Washington’s beautiful new ballpark. The final last night was Mets 12, Nats goose egg.

When the Capitals were rebuilding they were rather surprisingly competitive, and even fun to support. Having Ovechkin certainly helped, but there were other heart-and-soul types to rally around, and even on the toughest of nights two seasons ago one could see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.

There are two jewel ballparks separated by about 40 miles in our region, and both most nights are half empty (or worse). It’s not so good. Last night was for all intents and purposes a road game for the home Nats, there were so many Mets’ caps and jerseys outfitted on patrons. I moved past souvenir stand after souvenir stand with lone workers in each conspicuously inactive. The baseball product here now, despite its gorgeous, sparkling new home, isn’t selling. And in such conditions, beleaguered franchises acquire the parasitic, preponderant presence of enemy fanbases.

There was as well conspicuous youth to last night’s “crowd”: offices that months ago had purchased blocks of Nats’ tickets have surrendered them, night after failing night, to summer interns and the teenage children of associates. On pretty summer nights for them it is better than hanging out at the mall.

Then there is the television dilemma: even family members of the Nationals aren’t following at home.

No one affiliated with the Nats now ought to be proud, and a revolutionary redrawing of the master plan (such as it is) ought to be well underway.

That ought to include, high on the list, re-pricing seats behind home plate to get some volume of humanity seated in them. Bad baseball is one thing; craven greed showcased with it is appalling. Put another way: the new stadium, funded as it is with bonds, can’t endure many more summers like this one.

Meanwhile, interestingly enough, across town the Capitals were hosting a third open house for hundreds of new ticket plan purchasers. A funny thing has happened to hockey here just since last fall: tickets are becoming scarce. (It would wise for Yahoo’s Ross McKeon to take in one of these open houses at the Phone Booth.) An OFBer was there last night, and around about the 4th inning I received a text relaying how few Verizon Center seats were tagged as available for the 08-’09 season. Almost certainly the Caps are holding back some seats for walkup sales, but it’s become abundantly clear that SportsWashington is investing with their wallets in this team what they did with their fashion red last spring.

Bank on this, too: media for the team’s training camp next month will blow away anything and everything that’s preceded it, including Jaromir Jagr’s first camp here. Gustafsson — father and son — will be in attendance. The hardward-hauling greatest hockey player on earth will daily hold court. There’ll be a bit of interest in the performance of the camp’s netminders.

The Wiz made news this summer by inking all of their name free agents — the ones who’ve guided them to annual first-round failures. More importantly for Capitals’ fans, the hoops and arena owner looks increasingly frail in his few public appearances.

McErlain last night shared with me a terrifically insightful assessment of the standing of the Burgundy and Gold here. “They’ve more of a college football hold on the region,” he said. It’s absolutely true. The Skins are to D.C. what the Cornhuskers are to all of Nebraska, what the Buckeyes are to Ohio and the Wolverines are to Michigan: quasi religious.

Not everybody wants to go to church on Sunday, however.

Filed in Baseball, Blogs, Eric McErlain, Football, Internet, MLB, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, Other Sports, Redskins, The Sporting News, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (15)

Rockin’ the Red Ushers in Global Cooling

By pucksandbooks
Saturday, August 9, 2008

Approximately eight feet away from my laptop station I have a patio screen door that’s opened this morning, to allow fresh Washington August air into my home.

It’s 69 degrees outside. In August. In mid-morning. In Washington. At 6 the other morning I had the top of my Wrangler lowered en route to the gym, and I needed a fleece top to ward off the morning chill. This morning I looked at the 10-day advance weather forecast for lower Montgomery County, and we’re not supposed to see a single day’s mercury north of 85, with evenings consistently in the lower and middle sixties. This is in the heart of August in Washington, D.C. I think the world must be coming to the end.

There are cooling patterns — merciful respites (almost always very temporary) — from Oven July and Oven August in Washington, but then there’s what we’ve had here this summer: namely, not really summer at all, by Washington’s standards. What the heck is going on?

We have had sticky sets of days, and we have had a handful of genuinely hot days, but we really have not had the twin agonies joined for any appreciable period. I remember well being in Colorado in early June and learning of 100-degree temps plaguing the District while I was playing in 10-foot snowdrifts in Rocky Mountain National Park. Flying home, I thought of a certain summer of agony ahead. But it’s never arrived. Indeed, that early June heatwave was the warmest it’s been here all summer.

The lifeguards in Ocean City must be seated at their observation posts this weekend in Reebok beach systems, to help retain body heat (and moisture).

Can Alexander Ovechkin actually will us cooler, more hockey-friendly, Moscow-like weather? It would appear. We’re on pace to attend the September Caps-Flyers’ rookie scrimmage at Kettler in parkas.

In such conditions, allow me to meteorologically dream a little.

Perhaps this New England summer in the Mid-Atlantic portends a deliciously crisp autumn and a Canal- and Reflecting Pool-freezing winter. Perhaps on fall Saturdays those of us who enjoy college football will tailgate in these parts in bluejeans and sweatshirts and perhaps even jackets on top of that. Or put another way: perhaps we’ll watch our football in football weather.

We’ve had a decent bit of rain this spring and summer — particularly relative to last summer — and so weather-cooperating late September and October weekends should afford us spectacular autumnal colors amid drives in the Shenandoah National Park or up along Skyline Drive. The way things are going with crude oil prices these days, we might actually be able to afford to take those drives.

And then there’s the possibility of an old fashioned Washington winter. One from my youth. Chilly at Thanksgiving. Cold at Christmas. Frozen in January and February.

Many of you have seen (or own) photographs of Georgetown under a heavenly dumping of snow. Cars can’t navigate the unplowed streets, so you see then Washington the pedestrian city it was designed to be. You know that Saturday matinee we have with the Wings on the final day of January this season? How wonderful would it be to get belted good with the white stuff that Friday, to plan an early Saturday morning, Metro-free commute to the game, all bundled up with a few puck buddies (one of them named Flask)?

I think I’ll make that thought my August Saturday night mood-enhancer. I also think I’ll wear a hockey sweater while tending to my patio barbeque this evening. I’m gonna need it, after all.

Washington the Hockey Weather Town. Has a nice ring to it.

Filed in Detroit Red Wings, Frivolous Summer File, Kettler Capitals Iceplex, Morning cup-a-joe, Washington Capitals, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (3)

Great TV

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, August 7, 2008

As one who criticized the NHL Network for a meagerness of programming this summer, I need to be quick on the draw to commend the outlet for what it did for hockey fans last night. Wednesday night’s documentary on the 1988 trade of Wayne Gretzky from Edmonton to LA, labeled ‘A Day that Changed the Game Forever,’ may end up serving as the segment that changed the network forever.

For puckheads, this was must-see TV. For 60 minutes it was compelling and riveting and thought-provoking. It offered assessments from the most important players in that August drama of 20 years ago — and not mere soundbites or cliches but rather heartfelt, pull-no-punches post mortems. The program seemed premised on an outlandish claim — that the movement of one superstar, admittedly hockey’s greatest-ever talent, in his prime — forever altered the landscape of hockey. And yet its 60 minute-argument offered up a darned persuasive case.

On August 9, 1988, Gretzky was the centerpiece of a deal that required two press conferences — one in Edmonton and the other in LA. At his morning presser in Edmonton, an hour before its start, Oilers’ GM Glen Sather approached #99 with an offer to block the trade. After it had already been made. Obviously the decision to make the trade came from Oilers’ owner Peter Pocklington. Blocking the deal would certainly have cost Sather his job, and yet he told Gretzky that’d he’d resign rather than carry out the deal if the move would be the source of unbearable anguish for his star.

Which, last night’s documentary richly illustrated, it initially was. But Gretzky was willing to endure the personal pain of being traded from the team and city he adored out of a sense of needing to grow the game’s economics — especially for smaller market teams. His headed-for-the-Hall-of-Fame teammates in Edmonton were inked to contracts for about a quarter of a million bucks while lesser names in big cities in the U.S. were earning four times as much. The Great One was aware, too, of the Kings’ struggles. It is hardly overstatement to suggest that Gretzky’s greatness was matched as much off the ice as on.

Sather alone during that August’s heady moments seemed to possess a sense of the hockey-world-altering moment. His reflections in last night’s documentary carried a searing quality of personal anguish that he appears to carry to this day. Pocklington comes off as a business guy just cutting a deal. Mark Messier lost a best friend, a buddy who was “like a brother,” and their brief reunion in New York as Ranger teammates years later now seems fitting but far too fleeting.

There was particular poignancy in the program’s snippets of Edmontonians offering their reactions to the deal. Young and old, male and female, they articulated heart-felt outrage and shock. “I can never think of the Oilers in the same way,” one lamented. Gretzky has spoken of his concern for the fans he left behind that August day; his concern, this program illustrates, was well-founded.

As the program drew to a close I was left with two powerful impressions. First, isn’t it remarkable that while American hockey was indeed profoundly changed by Gretzky’s trade to LA — both the volume and accomplishments of youths playing hockey in California today are stunning — in the totality of the Kings’ existence, the deal proved to offer only a fleeting improvement for the organization. Second, with this program, the NHL and its network demonstrated that it can conceive and produce a special product befitting a distinguished occasion and rejuvinate a slumbering offseason fanbase.

May it be the first of many more.

Filed in Canada, Edmonton Oilers, Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey, Hockey Legends, Los Angeles Kings, Morning cup-a-joe, NHL Trades, National Hockey League, Wayne Gretzky| Permalink| Comments (0)

Saturday Radio Mornings in D.C. Mean You Can Come Home Again

By pucksandbooks
Saturday, August 2, 2008

Summer 2008 is beginning to acquire a bit of a time warp quality for me. There’s a Gustafsson back in the Capitals’ organization, for instance. Then this morning I was riding up to a neighborhood gas station for my weekly wallet-letting there, and accidentally tuned to DC-101, I was startled to hear the dulcet tones of a seemingly ageless Doug Tracht, aka Nino “the Greaseman” Mannelli.

You really do have to be north of 35 and a D.C. native to appreciate what “Grease” did to and for Washington radio nearly a generation ago (mostly to). I was uniquely vulnerable to his schtict in the early ’80s: adoloscent, thoroughly puzzled (as now) by the mystery of the female, and matriculating through a single-sex high school in suburban Maryland. It was, for four years, a morning ritual among my mates to gaggle over reprisals of Greaseman bits from that morning. His on-air joie de vie can best be summarized, I think, as prurient juvenility. And at 15 and in the ’80s, it sure worked for me and thousands of mostly male Washington radio listeners.

I made my way home from my gas run this Saturday a.m. and back on line at home I wasn’t surprised to discover that there’s a web site chock full of MP3 “Grease” bits from ’80s radio in D.C. For you who grew up here as I did it could be a pleasant stroll down Memory Lane; for newcomers, it’s an effective introduction to a broadcast talent whose likes we hadn’t seen prior to nor after Tracht’s first run at 101. The station now has a Grease page at its site, so this Saturday stint is very much a weekly welcome home party.

Turns out, Grease returned to 101 this April, and he’s on every Saturday from 8:00 - noon. But I discovered his return just this morning. It’s welcome a blast from the past, particularly in our so thoroughly depressed commercial radio times.

The Greaseman arrived on 101 as Howard Stern’s replacement in 1982, Stern by then having obliterated his welcome here with his infamous on-air inanity in response to the Air Florida crash into the Potomac River. Eighties FM radio was very vibrant as media — these were the glory album rock days of the best of Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Rush, an ascendant Springsteen, the not-yet-geriatric Stones, among many others — and big-market stations sought big personalities for morning drive. When Stern left, as much of a relief as that was for most parents in the region, there was a chasm created for DC-101 in a rugged radio marketplace for its most lucrative time slot.

DC-101 recruited Grease from his highly successful radio program in Florida in 1982, and he not only replaced Stern but bettered Stern’s no. 1 numbers, and for some years ranked as the far-and-away no.1 in Washington morning radio. His run at 101 lasted from 1982-1993.

It’d be impossible for me, then or now, to identify a single favorite Grease gag. His “Habledogaga Handbook” he delivered to his listeners to help them “recognize the cheap and tawdry [amorous] moves being made by or upon them,” to acquire “methods with which to cut a quick slice.” In the Handbooks he’d relate his successes donning a priest’s collar and betraying a maiden’s trust at dinner; engage in license-revoking behavior as a medical professional; and author similarly unprofessional behavior while wearing law enforcement uniforms. This latter latitude was ironic in that Tracht had and has a deep and abiding respect and affinity for the men and women in law enforcement — he’s served as a volunteer sheriff in our region in recent years.

His “Holy Roman Empire” foray, showcasing his characteristic creativity, was decidedly unholy.

Nothing was sacred on his show, and ultimately, as with Stern, that was Grease’s undoing. In 1985 he outraged listeners of all backgrounds with an unrepeatable insult about Martin Luther King. He cracked up again in 1999, while broadcasting in small market exile. By 2002, he was relegated to broadcasting from his home in Frederick, Md.

He’s understandably misunderstood and misrepresented as boorish and even racist, but in the totality of his schticts and career he’s seemed, to me, ever to be attempting to defuse society’s prejudices, languishing — most laughably — in the bawdy and lurid all along the way. I know this, my ’80s Washington mornings were made most memorable by him.

For as long as I’ve known his program Grease has signed off his show with “AMF” — Adios . . . fill in the blank. This morning it was nice to say hello to him again.

Filed in DC/101, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, Radio| Permalink| Comments (14)

Wearing the Nation’s Colors Next February 22

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, July 31, 2008

On Sunday, February 22, 2009, the Capitals matinee-host the Pittsburgh Penguins at Verizon Center. That day will commemorate the 29th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, the greatest day in the history of hockey and the greatest day in the history of sports. Summertime question for you: what do you think of the idea of the Caps doing something radically different with their sweaters that day — like, say, wearing re-issues of the Lake Placid heroes’ sweaters? Before you dismiss the idea out of hand, let’s first have a little chat among patriots about the matter.

First, let’s acknowledge the Caps’ unique qualifications for potentially pursuing such a scheme. In representing the nation’s capital, Washington’s hockey team is different from 29 others in the NHL. They aren’t a generic animal of prey (Panther, Bruin) or an abstract circumstance of nature (Lightning, Hurricane, Avalanche, Star); they are named as a signifier, of something nationally unifying and laudatory. Millions of Americans each year flock to Washington to experience what our city represents. In return I say a sports team named for the entirety of that experience can well represent one of this nation’s finest moments. If ever there were a pro hockey team compelled to don the ‘80 Miracle look for a commemorative occasion, it ought to be Washington’s Red, White and Blue Capitals.

Over the past three decades, the NHL has been curiously uninvolved in acknowledging Lake Placid’s Miracle. Why? Thirteen of the 20 rostered miraculous Americans went on to NHL careers — and five of them earned more than 500 games in the league. On the Miracle’s anniversary, is there any possible downside to the league associating itself with the feat? Understand that I’m not calling for some extended exploitation of the team and event, just a single day’s acknowledgment, which arrives at the heart of each hockey season.

Perhaps, it could be argued, each NHL team should wear a commemorative patch for that week’s play. I’m fine with that. But the game of hockey changed forever that night in upstate New York. Boys dreamed. Men wept. Traveling strangers pulled over their cars on interstate highways and hugged. A downtrodden culture rejuvenated itself. To this day some very learned minds suggest that geopolitical affairs were irrevocably altered by those 60 minutes of hockey. (Imagine.) And so from the NHL I’m looking for something larger as display and remembrance. Why not have a team wear the actual sweater, for one day? And who better to do that than our boys?

OFB readers this week will have noticed our humble efforts at offering up a third jersey design for the Capitals to consider down the road. Its color scheme — wholly unintended — bears a striking similarity to the sweater worn on February 24, 1980, when the Americans earned gold at Lake Placid against Finland. I find that interesting.

The next obstacle to address would be a purported “forced nationalism” on a contemporary NHL club necessarily comprised of nationals from a half dozen or more foreign nations. Specifically, wouldn’t there be awkward irony in an Alexander Ovechkin and his Russian teammates wearing “USA” across their chests the third Sunday of next February?

It’s irrefutable that the achievement of 2/22/80 was distinctly sovereign, distinctly — I would argue — American. But as it’s aged, hasn’t it acquired an EveryNation sheen of admirable heroism, a universally acknowledged sense of David slaying Goliath, and thereby broadened the general appeal of our now very global game? Isn’t there something in the Miracle for every hockey player from every nation to delight in, and celebrate? Isn’t it part of the Miracle’s lore that even the shocked and stunned Russians, standing forlorn on their own blueline, looked down the Lake Placid ice at their collegian vanquishers and admired? And if not, if that’s overstatement, couldn’t we next rationalize the commemoration merely on these grounds: at the highest level of hockey, for just one day, let’s simply and distinctly acknowledge the greatest hockey game ever played.

It would be close to a franchise-best moment to have the Capitals debut a new, very patriotic-looking third sweater next February 22, but the NHL requires that teams identify in advance all sweaters to be worn during the season. The Capitals aren’t adopting a third sweater this season. What I’m advocating is a league-issued waiver from the uniform regulations for a very special Sunday that just happens to showcase the two greatest hockey players on the planet.

This is a very, very, secondary consideration, but talk about a marketable television event! The game between Ovechkin’s Capitals and Crosby’s Penguins is already slated for national television (I say this not because I’ve confirmed it with NBC but from a sense of how could it not be?). What aura in the Phone Booth then if this unprecedented uniforming were to take place. What might tickets sell for out on the District’s streets that morning? What if one or four members of the Miracle team were in the house?

I have another compelling and deeply personal reason for pursuing this idea. During their home games the Capitals like to seat me next to SovetskySport’s Dmitry Chesnokov. Dmitry, newly sworn in as an American citizen, is younger than I am and by virtue of his age forgiveably unaware of the immediate impact of the Miracle. After next February 22nd’s game I’d like my friend to accompany me down to the Capitals’ locker room and interview his countryman Ovechkin, who’d be wearing a sweater whose style will never go out of fashion, and one which changed the world.

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, American Hockey, Dmitry Chesnokov, Hockey, Hockey Heroes, Miracle on Ice, Morning cup-a-joe, National Hockey League, Pittsburgh Penguins, Sovetsky Sport, USA Hockey, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (26)

NFL Preseason: Stupid Is as Stupid Does

By pucksandbooks
Monday, July 21, 2008

I confess I’ve never understood the length, breadth, and brutality of the NFL preseason. With athletes in all sports — including intercollegiate ones — now training year-round, the practice by pro football of spending a month-and-a-half-plus in helmets and pads, beating each other’s brains out, out in summer’s worst heat, strikes me as nothing short of insane.

The topic is salient as the Redskins, already underwhelming most observers with their 2008 prospects, and guided by a new coach who’s never coached before — (they may well finish last in their division) — lost one of their most important players on defense on the very first play of practice on the very first day of training camp yesterday. For the season. Later in the day, they lost another defensive end, also for the season, a reserve, who ruptured his achilles tendon. One might be inclined to chalk this up to really bad luck, except that as NFL preseasons have lengthened and intensified most especially in the last 10 years, as players once sized for the defensive line now roam at safety, and as linebackers now run not much slower than wideouts, the triage has multiplied. More NFL players, including front-liners, are certain to go down over the next six weeks — they always do. And the NFL doesn’t care.

In a very real sense contemporary pro football has become a game of brutal attrition. It’s positively preposterous to try and forecast a season ahead before first figuring out who survives all the way through August.

Phillip Daniels is a 12-year NFL veteran. In taking reps (well, one, anyway) yesterday with the ‘Skins, he was preparing for a season opener more than 45 days away. What in the world are the Redskins — and the rest of the NFL — doing scheduling such stress and duress?

I’m not the only one wondering about this madness.

Indicting the sport most might be its collegiate counterpart: without a single “preseason” game the NCAA pigskinners seem to open up with high-value heart-stoppers each and every Labor Day weekend. Consider too that unlike the collegians, NFLers have no limit on the amount of hours they can put in in a week training, studying film, and participating in offseason “mini-camps” and “voluntary workouts,” which of course are voluntary in name only. I think the Redskins have about a half dozen of those throughout the calendar now. By virtue of the commitment NFLers make around the calendar to their profession, there’s just no defense for the prolonged training camps of today.

One of the reasons the camp injuries are as dire as they annually are is because the camps are contested in extreme conditions — high heat and humidity. You also now have hundreds of three-hundred-plus-pounders competing in them, and you don’t have to be a cardiologist to know that those folks generally don’t prosper exercising in extreme heat. With their heads encased in oven-like shells.

Once upon a time, the NFL started training camps in August, conducted its season, which ended in January, and then spent late winter and spring and early summer healing up. And the football played then was rather good; some, like me, thought it better than today’s.

Today there is no offseason, in the NFL or really in any other sport, so why start the head-bashing, knee-destroying, and tendon-rupturing while embers from the 4th of July are still aglow?

All teams play a minimum of four preseason games, and starters are expected to play nearly a half of each game because . . . teams charge regular season prices for the ghoulish meat grinder-slaughterfests. I don’t doubt that a healthy majority of NFL clubs have lobbied the league office over the years to try and get the preseason shortened — motivated by a basic sense of survival. But now we’re getting to the heart of the matter: season tickets owners in Washington don’t have the option of not spending hundreds more on the meaningless slate of exhibitions. And the hundreds more on parking.

And always the games are atrocious to watch. Even if you hate baseball you should watch it instead of the NFL’s July and August dreck.

I’m not ignorant about football players needing their “reps.” And I realize that a handful of rookies need to be evaluated in game-like situations. But given the gazillions the NFL spends evaluating college players year-round, and in combines and such, you can’t make the argument that teams need half a summer to evaluate their new personnel. Or that grizzled vets need months’ worth of reps in triple-digit temps.

The NHL with its preseason has actually taken an alternative strategy with that of the NFL, and shortened it in recent years. Teams will commence camp in mid-September and have just three weeks of training and exhibitions before the arrival of opening week. Talk to any NHL manager and he’ll tell you that his players will show up in mid-September in shape and ready to skate. We can quibble over whether the preseason should extend more than 5 games, but it’s clear that the NHL, unlike the NFL, isn’t motivated by negligent and malicious greed, for hardly anyone attends NHL exhibition games. And by virtue of having a viable feeder development league in the ‘A,’ with annual promotions for virtually every club from it, hockey’s exhibitions are defensible events as auditions of the up-and coming.

Moreover, hockey clubs aren’t obligated to dress their stars — Ovechkin might skate two of the September games, for instance.

It’s really striking when you consider how relatively blessed the NHL is when it comes to being able to dress, durably, its stars from opening night on through the postseason. It’s a fierce and rugged sport to be sure, but it’s managed by men who care about the welfare of their charges and enact training schedules to protect them.

Filed in Football, Morning cup-a-joe, Other Sports, Prospects, Redskins, Training Camp, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (7)

The Hockey Blockbuster, Coming Soon to a Rink Near You

By pucksandbooks
Saturday, July 19, 2008

This is an extraordinary American summer weekend, insomuch as it delivers something rarer than an NHL goalie scoring a goal: the arrival in theaters of a great and compelling and culture-consuming domestic movie. I’m speaking of course of the new Batman movie, ‘The Dark Knight.’ It isn’t merely exceptionally well reviewed by critics, who are discussing it in terms of Oscars and “classic.” For its Uptown Theater debut Thursday night at midnight city youths arrived to stand in line some time near 2:00 that afternoon — in Washington July heat. It will be even hotter this weekend, and thousands more, already with tickets, will stand in line hours just to get the seats they want for the screening.

If you can imagine, the nationwide midnight screenings of the film Thursday grossed nearly $20 million. To put that number in terms we hockey fans can understand, that’s a Koules-Aid kind of July budget for free agency to assemble a lottery contender for next June.

Area theaters will have Batman screenings this weekend beginning at 9:00 a.m.! The notion of arriving at any area theater this weekend a few minutes before screening and securing just a single ticket is preposterous. By early yesterday afternoon Craigslist had pages of the movie’s tickets for sale priced solidly above regular box office rate.

Yesterday I found myself marveling at so novel a cultural moment, grateful for its very belated arrival but also melancholy when I considered that Hollywood needs more or less a full decade to render it. It’s true: approximately 99.7 percent of domestic cinematic fare is altogether ordinary or outright rotten. The true gotta-see-it — because of its greatness — cinema spectacle is in frequency of theater runs not dissimilar to the prevalence of Alexander Ovechkins in NHL entry drafts. Anyway, as Americans, we have a special place in our hearts for the buzz-generators on the big-screen that actually deliver the goods. So it’s a moment indeed to savor — history suggests that we won’t see it again for quite some time.

This special moment also led me to think of something special in hockey being crafted, right here in Washington. Like the great summer blockbuster, it’s exceptionally rare for hockey here. It could very well be the case that Verizon Center, beginning this October, will be akin to the great old moviehouse showing just a single feature, for months on end, with weekend tickets very much in demand.

I wouldn’t quite call the 2008-09 Capitals’ season a sequel, however. I think in its forecasted critical acclaim, in its culminating sense of a roster’s arriving very near the peak of elite contention, it will very much be a first run of its kind.

The differences from a summer ago are rather extraordinary. In July 2007 Washington hockey fans thought they had a gifted young star left wing in Alexander Ovechkin. But in his coming off a 46-goal campaign in his sophomore season, most here hoped he’d merely return to the 50-goal club in season three. Who then thought that he’d fairly obliterate competition for the Hart Trophy last season? Today he is regarded as a game-changing force, and the greatest player on the planet.

Additionally, last summer no one even in team management knew that a no. 1 stud of a defender was already in the organization, and poised to break out. But Mike Green will enter the 2008-09 season on a short list of Norris trophy candidates.

Count Brooks Laich as a key component to a glory run in 2008-09, and yet a summer ago he was in a fierce competition among a seeming glut of third and fourth-line center candidates just to make the club. Indeed, if any of the organization’s young centers was thought to have some unexpected offensive upside heading into last season, it was Boyd Gordon, who in ‘06-07 fell one point shy of 30 and flashed a penchant for fits and bursts of well-timed production. Now Laich’s regarded as one of the league’s bright young two-way pivots. And paid like it.

Last summer, who would have imagined that a hockey legend (Sergei Fedorov) would arrive here two-thirds of the way through the season and settle a green and nervous young roster and guide it to an against-all-odds Southeast division title? And then announce, mere weeks after his arrival here, that the atmosphere in Verizon Center ranked as the best he’d ever competed in, and that despite the formation of a very well funded super league in his home country of Russia, that he’d very much like a return engagement in Washington?

There are, indisputably, one or two important areas for Director Boudreau to address in final editing this summer, one of which (the acting in net) is largely out of his control. But given that all of the East’s well built teams for next season possess question marks of their own, it’s certain that the Caps will enter 2008-09 as consensus contenders in the East. They possess star quality principal actors, on-screen chemistry in abundance, and a director newly acknowledged by his peers to be among the best in the business.

Actually, insomuch as there looks to be high-achieving hockey rostered both in Washington and in Hershey this coming season, we appear slated for long run of a great double feature.

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, American Hockey League, Boyd Gordon, Brooks Laich, Bruce Boudreau, Hershey Bears, Mike Green, Morning cup-a-joe, Nicklas Backstrom, Sergei Fedorov, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (4)

Summertime on the NHL Network: Not Yet Must-See TV

By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Any criticism of the NHL Network has to be qualified with the acknowledgment that during its dullest, most uninspired of programming slates it offers puckheads a respite — 24 hours a day — from ESPN and everything else that is broadcast-indifferent to our great game. So it is in the spirit of constructive criticism and unyielding gratitude that I offer my personal assessment of what the network presently is and what it could, and should, become.

In July especially, the network has relied, disproportionately, on replays of games from the most recent NHL postseason. To reiterate, were it to broadcast merely the pre-game warmups from those games I’d embrace that over say a home run derby carried off by bloodstream-polluted lab rats called major leaguers. Or televised poker. Or the WNBA. (Gracious what a wasteland July in American sports is.) But the NHL Network, which is a promotional tool for the league, isn’t going to lure in new viewers with that manner of prime-time programming. I love hockey as much as Mr. Hockey, but I just don’t need a refresher on game 4 between the Ducks and Stars from April. Every night of the summer.

In this odd bit of recurring programming the outlet seems to fail to recognize that the allure of NHL postseason hockey is the cumulative effect playoff series have — of antagonism built up over the course of 10 days, and from rivalries forged from season to season — and that isolating individual, non-classic playoff games isn’t the same thing as chronicling the Habs-Nordiques April wars of two decades ago.

But initially let’s acknowledge what the network is getting right. Some of the network’s staple programming — ‘Hockey Odyssey’ and ‘Hockey Academy,’ for instance — is quite good, carrying strong production values and well serving the larger hockey community. These 30-minute programs are not easy to produce, nor do they offer the promise of delivering big revenue returns for their costs. These are acts of TV goodwill by the league for its supporters.

The network also deserves plaudits for its coverage of the most recent NHL Draft, most particularly for carrying forward coverage all the way through on Day 2. The draft has become a bit of a cult hit for the league, and so it’s a natural fit on the league’s TV network.

I was also very impressed by the NHL Network’s presence in Buffalo in the leadup to, and after-event coverage of, the Winter Classic. When the NHL hosts a special event, its network seems to rise to the occasion.

But covering hockey in the dead of winter ought to be like breathing for the rest of us for this network.

I’m not an XM subscriber, but I’m familiar enough with the characteristics of XM 204 to know that puckheads who have it are grateful for it. The league has something good going with XM, and in-season, when the NHL Network broadcasts all two hours of ‘NHL Live’ each day, that’s quality programming. Repeating it in the early evening is wise as well, as most fans aren’t home at 10:00 a.m. to view it. The network in the offseason suffers to some extent by losing such a program, which offers engaging in-studio interactions with serious league insiders like E.J. Hradek and their thoughtful take on league developments, delivered informally and always with enthusiasm. That’s a winner of a TV formula, and the network needs to find some manner of replacement for it in the offseason.

It seems to me that there needs to be a recognition by the network that its patrons in summer are, on some level, seeking an escape from summer heat, from baseball — from NASCAR most particularly. It’s then when we most need images and associations of our frozen game. So why not offer up a re-broadcast of the very first league-sponsored outdoor game, the Heritage Classic, when frosty Edmonton froze up the event’s Zambonis? Some NHL teams are now annually holding one or more practice sessions outdoors (as the Caps do at Chevy Chase Country Club). Footage from those affairs would be especially novel to view in the dog days of summer.

There are also compelling stories emerging from every NHL summer Development Camp. The league’s network should be broadcasting press conferences and prospect interviews and even snippets of scrimmages. When George McPhee beamed in front of cameras at Kettler Capitals last week about the arrival of the Frozen Four in Washington next spring, that was an occasion for all of hockey to celebrate. This is not a league or a sport that goes dark in the dead of summer (influencing, incidentally, the genesis of OnFrozenBlog) — and its TV channel ought to reflect that.

I’ve yet to see ‘Slapshot’ air on the network. May I ask why? Schedule that for one summer Saturday night, and promote it with an appearance by the principal actors offering commentary in interludes, and see if more than 17 folks tune in (the Canadian Parliament will go out of session).

This is a league that is chronicled, on line, by some of the most creative and talented commentators in all of sports. Why wouldn’t the league open up a few hours of its offseason each week on the NHL Network to the wit and wisdom of its bloggers? “My NHL” was advertised by the league just a couple of seasons ago. Make it so on the network in summer, and eventually year round. After all, we’ve given traditional media a fair century at the endeavor, to underwhelming reviews.

The NHL was bold and beautiful with its idea of a Winter Classic; similarly, it needs to be bold and beautiful with its around-the-clock television broadcast branding. Especially during Redskins’ training camp.

Filed in Blogs, Don Cherry, Hockey, Hockey Movies, Internet, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, NHL Network, National Hockey League, Stanley Cup Playoffs, Washington Capitals, Winter Classic| Permalink| Comments (14)

Ahead, a Promising Harvest on the Farm

By pucksandbooks
Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Development camps such as that recently completed by the Capitals have a way of imbuing DraftGeeks and even the more balanced of hockey fan with horizons of heightened optimism. Always it seems there are a handful of young standouts there, among them compelling stories of no-name collegians or free agents making next-season names for themselves. This July’s camp in Washington was no different. Jake Hausworth, a USHL graduate (Omaha) headed for Michigan Tech this autumn, may in his hockey career make no greater imprint than what he did in Washington this past week. All that would make him, then, would be a special hockey player.

Capitals’ fans, I think, ought to delight in the accomplishments of the team’s scouts — high in drafts with lottery selections but also deep into draft Saturdays (Perreault, Gordon). Hershey Bears’ fans, however, ought to be downright giddy at what’s coming their way this autumn, in year four of the team’s affiliation with the Caps.

It’s not out of the realm of possibility, for instance, that Hershey hockey fans could see more of Eric Fehr this coming season. The injury-hampered right wing signed a two-way deal with the Caps last week. He gave great effort in D.C. upon his recall last spring, but a full season of apprentice seasoning in Hershey, earning top line minutes, may not be the worst thing for his career development.

I’m imagining an Eric Fehr, Chris Bourque, Mathieu Perreault, Sami Lepisto, and Andrew Gordon Bears power play at the moment . . . Fehr and Gordon owning the corners, Perreault and CBourque with the puck Krazy-Glued to their sticks, Lepisto making like Mike Green with his passing and hockey sense on the point . . .

Mother, hold me.

Oh, and there’s a bit of a talent infusion in net in the organization to discuss this summer.

Last September, Capitals’ rookies reported first to fall camp and, on Saturday, September 8, skated an exhibition game at the Philadelphia Flyers’ practice facility in Voorhees, N.J. Plans call for the Flyers to reciprocate, and visit Kettler Capitals this September. The Caps haven’t finalized a date for that game yet, but it promises to be a spirited, first-of-its kind event for the facility. If this past Saturday’s SRO turnout for Development Camp’s concluding scrimmage is any indication, Craigslist and or eBay may be involved in admissions with that Rookie Camp tilt.

That game may also inaugurate a season-long intrigue affair between Washington hockey fans and the team’s prospects in Hershey. It’s no secret that the affiliation between the Caps and Bears has been a fruitful one — really a perfect one in terms of the parent club drafting well and feeding quality to the farm, as well as offering fans a friendly proximity by which to travel to one another’s games. But what’s in store this coming season on the farm may be the most appealing that the affiliation has offered to date.

For this coming season in Hershey there will be bluechip prospects for the Caps dressed in Bears’ sweaters at virtually every position, from the goal cage on out: a Rookie of the Year in Finland’s top professional league; an MVP of the QMJHL; the two most recent scoring champions from the Q; at least one member of Team Canada’s gold-medal-winning World Junior champions last year; the backstopper of five shutouts in Russia’s top professional league this most recent postseason; potentially two OHL All -Stars. In other words: fairly an embarrassment of prospect riches.

We live-blogged from Kettler this past Saturday, and joining us in the fun was Bears’ PR guy Chris Poisal. If you followed our musings you absorbed Chris’ significant enthusiasm for the coming campaign. Last year’s Bears may have been somewhat short in the leadership department, and ravaged by injury beyond belief, but this summer’s signings of Dean Arsene, Keith Aucoin, and Hershey 2006 Calder Cup hero Graham Mink have vanquished any leadership concerns. They’ll be expected to mentor a crop of recent Caps’ draft picks abundant in skill but relatively short on pro league experience.

Alluding to Hershey’s offseason signings, and the promise of more help arriving from the parent club, Bears’ head coach Bob Woods on Saturday said, “Leadership was the big thing we were looking to move on, and while we don’t know what’s going to happen here [in Washington] in the fall, you get a [Keith] Aucoin, you get a [Graham] Mink, a healthy [Dean] Arsene back, now you’ve filled a lot of those voids.

“We’ve got a great group of young guys returning,” he added.

Woods admitted that in net, “we’re gonna be young, but from what I’ve seen this week, there’s a lot of promise there.

“Look at a team like Wilkes Barre last year,” he added, “They had two rookie goaltenders and they went right to the finals.”

The ride ought to be fun, and entertaining. A potent potential lineup could include a lot of these names:

Alexandre Giroux Keith Aucoin Eric Fehr/Graham Mink
Chris Bourque Kyle Wilson Andrew Gordon
Oskar Osala Mathieu Perreault / Jay Beagle Francois Bouchard
Maxime Lacroix Andrew Joudrey Scott Barney
Dean Arsene Sami Lepisto
Josh Godfrey Tyler Sloan
Patrick McNeill/Sasha Pokulok
Machesney / Varlamov
Filed in American Hockey League, Andrew Gordon, Chris Bourque, College Hockey, Development Camp, Eric Fehr, Free Agents, Hershey Bears, Kettler Capitals Iceplex, Mathieu Perreault, Minor Pro Hockey, Morning cup-a-joe, Oskar Osala, Prospects, Rookie Camp, Sami Lepisto, Simeon Varlamov, Training Camp, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (19)

A Thank You Postcard from Development Camp

By Gustafsson
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Karl,

You could not have known that it was a blogger’s son that enthusiastically waved to you and the others during the Development Camp Scrimmage Pre-Game Warmup. Heck, that little boy doesn’t even know what a blog is … much less that his dad blogs about the Capitals and Alex Ovechkin with “the eight by itself”. He was disappointed at first when I told him he would not see Ovechkin, Green, or Semin and quickly forgot when we arrived at Kettler.

I told him how you had a great shot at playing with the Caps this year and he was looking out for number “four seven”. He spotted your number and immediately started waving. When you turned and smiled at him, he quickly turned to me and said “He looked at me!” with a wide smile.

Then you skated over with a puck and tossed it over the glass to him. The puck has been well used with many nicks and gashes. That well used puck is now well loved as he was extremely excited about his gift from Karl Alzner. It’s fun with a small child experiencing so much joy from such small actions or things.

He has been to a Hershey Bears game and countless Capitals games. He told me that Saturday was the “best ever”. The moonbounce outside helped that declaration as well.

As a father, fan, and hockey blogger, thank you for brightening a boy’s day, showing us your skills on the ice, and being a great player to blog about. Number “eight by itself” may always be his favourite, but he is looking out for number “four seven” now, too.

Warmest regards,

-g
Karl Alzner
c/o Washington Capitals
627 N Glebe Rd
Suite 800
Arlington, VA 22203
USA
Filed in Development Camp, Karl Alzner, Morning cup-a-joe, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (21)

Postcard from a College Hockey Town

By The OFB Team
Saturday, July 12, 2008
A local television reporter this week wondered of Capitals’ General Manager George McPhee if this summer was more enjoyable than previous ones, positing however that, “There’s always been talk that Washington is not a hockey town, and it’s been tough to get players [to come] here?” McPhee, to his credit, didn’t accept the premise that Washington isn’t a hockey town. Alluding to the impact that Alexander Ovechkin clearly has had in transforming this franchise, he replied:

“There’s no doubt that it’s easier to have players come here, players want to play here, they’re excited about Washington. Theodore was the only move that we had to make this summer to bring someone one in, and he couldn’t wait to get here — this was the no. 1 place he wanted to come to.

“In my mind Washington is a hockey town. What we haven’t done — and some of the other towns around us, what they’ve have done is won a championship.But you saw the way our fanbase responded last year — it was incredible. The GM of the Flyers [Paul Holmgren] said ‘Your building was electric, I’ve never seen a building like that,’ And veteran players like Fedorov said they’ve never been in a louder building.

“I think we’ve got something really neat going on here, our market is really responded to it, we’ve got a really good team . . . it’s all coming together the way that we’d hoped.”

With the announced signing to Boyd Gordon on Friday only Shaone Morrisonn remains unsigned, with either an agreement or an arbitrator’s ruling determining his deal for 2008-09. Meaning: the Capitals will have zero contract issues distracting them from the moment training camp starts.
John Walton
The Hershey Bears
950 Hersheypark Drive
Hershey, PA 17033
USA
McPhee this week also reflected on the evolution of July’s development camp. “This used to go from just a conditioning camp in the past to what it is now — conditioning and evaluating. We take a good look at these guys, spend a week with them, get to know them as people, spend a lot of time on the ice. Let the coaches work with these young players, let our pro scouts watch them, because they don’t see the amateurs much. Because in training camp you’re trying to make decisions fast, but this is a better opportunity to get to know people, and there is a lot of value in how we project them and what we might do in the near future in terms of trades.”

McPhee we learned this week, very much behind the scenes, played a large role in Washington’s successful bid to land the Frozen Four in Washington next April. That probably shouldn’t be surprising for a former Hockey Baker winner.

“It should be a great weekend,” he said of next April’s Frozen Four. We’re thrilled that we were able to get it here.

“It’s finally here. It’s hard to believe — it seemed like it was so long ago when we were lobbying them.

“I just know how great the weekend can be. We don’t have a lot of exposure to college hockey in this market, and we’re gonna get it now, and I hope that somewhere along the way we get some college hockey on a permanent basis in Washington.

“This may be the thing that springboards it.”
John Walton
The Hershey Bears
950 Hersheypark Drive
Hershey, PA 17033
USA
McPhee’s wish may be further along than he realizes. Last autumn, well under the radar (i.e., the MSM failed to cover it), the Naval Academy christened McMullen Arena, a state-of-the-art facility that at present seats 850 for hockey but can be expanded to seat 3,500. (The NCAA minimum capacity for Division I is 2,500 seats). Former New Jersey Devils owner John McMullen, an annapolis grad, contributed $5 million to the $16-million-plus facility.

With Navy being the host school for the ‘09 Frozen Four, we asked Sweeney if any thought had been given to trying to arrange an Army-Navy game in association with the championship event.

“That’s the dream,” he said. “It’s not going to happen this year, but there was thought given to it when we bid on [the Frozen Four] three-and-a-half years ago — we thought that it could happen. But the timeline was just a little too quick for that to happen.”

“The new [Navy] hockey facility is fantastic — state-of-the-art, gorgeous. ” It was built, Sweeney said, “with 100 percent design” on Navy going D-I.

Washington the hockey town: assembly still required — but the building is taking place.
John Walton
The Hershey Bears
950 Hersheypark Drive
Hershey, PA 17033
USA
Filed in Morning cup-a-joe, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (1)

Jaromir, We Hardly Knew Ya, and I’m Not Sure We’ll Miss You

By pucksandbooks
Sunday, July 6, 2008

There was, seemingly, a continent-wide silence over the weekend associated with Jaromir Jagr’s departure from the NHL. Indeed, the latest flareup between Oilers GM Kevin Lowe and Ducks’ GM Brian Burke seems to have made a larger impression on the hockey world this weekend than has Jagr’s departure.

It seems oddly fitting that on Independence weekend the Capitals and the NHL would finally be liberated from the seemingly interminable and onerous payoffs to Jaromir Jagr, one of the sport’s ultimate mercenaries.

Back in January 2004, the Caps dealt the underachieving, isolated, and insufferable Jagr to the New York Rangers for Anson Carter and a promise to pay off $20 million of the $44 million remaining on his godawful contract. The deal of course occurred pre-lockout, and at the time Jagr was earning $11 million annually; meaning, that Ted Leonsis was on the hook for a tidy $5 million each season in payments to the Rangers for the duration of the deal. The new CBA that ended the lockout in 2005 included a 24-percent rollback in player salaries, so that payoff sum got sheared off a bit, but both practically speaking and especially symbolically, the Capitals were still tethered to the misanthropic mercenary, through the 2007-08 season, and that association stung.

Word arrived this weekend that Jagr had in essence ended his NHL career, in signing with Avangard Omsk of the new Russian elite pro hockey league. The terms — apparently two years and $7 million per season, tax free — mean that Jagr is back up to the equivalent of $11 million in annual salary. He spent this decade as a temperamental gun for hire, so this new agreement is fitting. Puck daddy’s overview on Jagr’s career, in which daddy terms #68’s tenure in D.C. “the near career suicide,” includes a generous helping of reader comments that seem to capture all of the at-arm’s-length regard Jagr engendered in his NHL career. Including, especially, this sentiment: “Good riddance.”

It’s remarkable that the NHL’s ninth all-time scorer could amass as massive a movement of malignant sentiments as he did, but he did.

Jagr’s was an NHL career of two careers: his years in Pittsburgh, where he brilliantly partnered with Mario Lemieux, catapulting the Penguins to two Stanley Cups, and where he won four consecutive Art Ross trophies; and those that followed, in Washington and New York, where he showed flashes of his dominant past but most often earned reviews that he was slowing down and grossly overpaid. This was especially true of his aborted stay in D.C.

Even in Pittsburgh Jagr has no shortage of detractors. Near the end of his run there he made no secret of his wish to play in the NHL’s largest market. Pittsburghers become particularly parochial over such sentiments. Jagr never seemed vested in the Penguins, emotionally or otherwise — certainly not like Mario Lemieux always has been. It’s distinctly possible that in about 7 or 8 years’ time Jagr will be regarded there as merely the fourth best forward to play in Pittsburgh — a stunning possibility, when you consider his scoring standing in the league’s history. Jagr is one of only 16 players to score 600 goals; only the 12th player to surpass 1,500 points; and only Mike Gartner is a rival to Jagr’s tally of 15 consecutive seasons with 30 or more goals. He is the only player to score goals in 53 different NHL arenas.

But for all of his red lamp lighting, he possessed an uncanny ability to leave you cold. Hockey is in many respects the ultimate team sport, in which a goal scorer typically celebrates lavishly in the arms of his teammates. Jagr seemed to celebrate many of the goals he scored with the detachment of a hitman.

It is true that the Washington Capitals today would not have Alexander Ovechkin were it not for the ruinous run of Jagr in D.C. It is therefore fitting that hockey fans here have in Ovechkin the outsized personality, a total team-first dynamo, one who is also disarmingly modest and an irrationally exuberant scoring celebrator. He is the antidote to Jaromir Jagr, our tonic from those two-and-a-half seasons of tumult.

In so many ways Jagr was an extraordinary paradox. He accumulated 1,599 points in his NHL career; that he is a mortal lock for the Hall of Fame is beyond dispute. And yet, he departs the NHL and it’s news on hockey pages for all of 12 hours, before the next free agent signing bumps it. He had fans by the thousands who wore sweaters bearing his name, but he seldom had spirited defenders. Serious hockey fans never ragged on his skill set, but even at the height of his brilliance he seemed to engender a detachment from fans. Most often you got the sense that if there was such a thing as hockey player really in it mostly for the money, Jaromir Jagr was that hockey player.

Now near 37, he’s crossing an ocean, and turning his back on the planet’s best league, for more of it.

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, Former Coaches & Players, Hockey Hall of Fame, Jaromir Jagr, Morning cup-a-joe, National Hockey League, New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (6)

Let the Roaming of a Fierce Gang (Green) on Washington’s Streets Commence

By pucksandbooks
Thursday, July 3, 2008

Just how important was Mike Green’s signing this week? Nearly as important as Alexander Ovechkin’s back in January.

Green isn’t just the Capitals’ no. 1 gun from the point — the slick-passing, even slicker skating, indispensable-in-the-new NHL engine from the back end. He’s their Mohawked Mojo, their Titan of ‘Tude, the galvazer of Gang Green. He is supremely skilled swagger on skates. He represents something this organization has never had: rock star star hockey player.

And that’s a very good thing.

You in the Grandpas of Capsdom might suggest that the Wild Thing, Al Iafrate, was such a figure 15 years ago. Iafrate’s game was special, but it was highly specialized in its impact — a really big (triple digit) slapshot, and some really big hits on the back end. And like Green he could skate like the wind. But he wasn’t quite the passer that Green is. He could deliver big hits for sure, and gracious he was fun to watch, but he was more enigma than star. Big Al never really offered the promise of being a 30-minuter-a-gamer who could, as Green showed in the Capitals’ first post-lockout playoff game this past April, outshine even the greatest hockey player in the world.

To those for whom Mike Green’s $5-million-plus pricetag seems too hefty, I ask this: you either agree or disagree that Mike Green, today, is a peer-in-ability-and-impact with Sergei Gonchar, the Penguins’ $5 million dollar man. Which is it? I happen to think he is, and that his upside, at both ends, is appreciably higher than Gonchar’s. And hypothetically, were Gonchar a free agent this summer, he’d command, on either the open or closed market, a salary likely higher than what Green got.

Also, what are the odds that in three or four years’ time this deal looks inflated and wasteful? Not real strong, methinks. In fact, seeing as how Green will be on the prognosticating minds of many hockey followers for Norris Trophy candidacy beginning in about three months’ time, the odds are better that as with his teammate Ovechkin, the deal looks fair and a good value before the ink is dry on it. Lastly, if you agree with George McPhee that the post-lockout NHL places a premium on reliable and creative puck-moving blueliners, how do you evaluate Green’s skillset in that regard?

Or put another way: can you imagine anyone else in the Capitals’ organization playing the role of fair substitute for Green’s game?

But there is also this consideration, which while somewhat intangible I think nonetheless played a direct and powerful impact on the Caps’ negotiations with Green: aside from his numbers, aside from his potential, aside from his present value in today’s NHL, Mike Green is a marvel of an entertaining hockey player to watch perform. He is dynamic with his instincts, his footwork, his howitzer of a point shot; he is a breed of blueliner we haven’t seen in these parts . . . perhaps ever.

He is two parts Steve Austin (but a whole lot less nerdy), one part Steve McQueen.

Recall his third-period magic in that game 1 against the Flyers this spring, when the Flyers held what shoud have been a lock-down, third period lead. Green took over that third period. And it was no fluke — we’d seen glimpses of that kind of command performance in the regular season as well, particularly after Bruce Boudreau came in. They just never had the stage that that postseason night did. It was a performance that led Flyers’ Coach John Stevens to single out Green for special coverage attention thereafter.

Now consider this: he’s certain to get better. It isn’t hyperbole, given the gusto of his game, to imagine a post-Nicklas Lidstrom NHL being Green’s to preside over when it comes to heavy hardware for the league’s reargaurds. He’ll have superb company (Phaneuf, Campbell, two or three names from the ‘08 draft as well, perhaps), but he’ll enter 2008-09 as a First-Team All Star candidate. The Sporting News this year named Green to its All Star team, where he joined Ovechkin.

Mike Green occasioned Gang Green in Verizon Center this past season. His puck rushes over the next four seasons in Washington will at times generate a mass rising in the home seats. That kind of response from and relationship with fans is a rarity in hockey — in sports in general. From management’s perspective, that’s no small part of his value.

If Washington is going to rise to some stature of a hockey town in a way it never did in the Capitals’ first 30 years of existence, Mike Green will play an outsized role as architect.

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, Media, Mike Green, Morning cup-a-joe, Players, Print, The Sporting News, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (22)

Goalie Shopping 2008: Skydiving with a Suspect Parachute

By pucksandbooks
Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Well, I suppose it’s worse to be in Cleveland, where their star hoopster apparently is making love-eyes at the Big Apple. We know for sure where Alex Ovechkin will be in 2012. And 2018. Then again, one more goalie to play in front of like Jose Theodore, and the Gr8 may rethink the merits of that new pro hockey league in Russia. Could you blame him? When you’re a hockey town in training and you’re looking down on Cleveland, things ain’t so swell.

It’s almost criminally cruel to have seen vanquished what we did yesterday in mere hours’ time. Namely: the Capitals’ Stanley Cup aspirations for the next two years. Or perhaps — and here I’ll channel my inner Puck Daddy — you think a journeyman netminder is somehow guiding the Caps to glory between now and 2010? Please, pass me a little of the crystal meth you’re consuming. Or perhaps you believe Capitals’ GM George McPhee, who’d have you believe there’s precious little difference between Cristobal Huet and Jose Theodore, despite the fact that the Caps offered their new no. 1 netminder — in the 31-year-old prime of his career — the lavish term of two years. And if not sub.-no.1 money, mediocre no. 1 dough. That term is code for: Simeon, get your game on, fast, in Hershey.

The point isn’t that Theodore and Hue