Friday 6:05 p.m.: This evening at Verizon Center I’m thinking about the lovers of apple pie. Of the men who take their pleadings for the hands of the women they love first to the fathers, for permission. Of citizens who instantly yield their seats on public transportation to the elderly and infirmed. Of men who hold open doors for women. All of these upstanding citizens, those who resist the vogue of the moment and honor tradition — today, they were vindicated: by lethal and cruel and unanimous volume did the Washington Capitals this week sh*tcan Reebok’s uniform system.
The Caps, unanimously, voted to toxic waste site what Reebok delivered to them this autumn and revert to the fabric of last season’s sweaters. The vote was unanimous. Wednesday’s game versus the Rags was the debut of the Caps’ relief from all that drowning sensation. The funny thing is, like everybody else, I didn’t learn about this until earlier today, when our own Gustafsson dug up the jewel buried in some team notes, but watching Wednesday’s game even from up high, I recall something vaguely more appealing about the team’s tops. More telling: after Wednesday night’s game, once media was allowed into the Caps’ room, I saw a couple of Caps still in their sweaters. It didn’t register with me at the time, but in every other home game preceding, the players meeting with the press in front of their lockers were always out of their uniform systems. They were too hot to remain in them. But not Wednesday night.
It’s one thing, isn’t it, for an innovation to fail merely hours after it’s debuted, but something altogether transcendently humiliating for the entire universe of its users to, by roll call unanimous, announce, “This is not fit for lining the garage residence of my canine.”
I just spoke with Nate Ewell about the timeframe for the change. The Caps made the request some time ago, because the first replacement sweaters arrived in time for Brian Pothier to try one out at Carolina on November 30. Pothier’s thumb went up that night, and two weeks later a full compliment of sweaters arrived. I asked Nate if he’d been present at the unanimous vote, the one where not a single Cap opted to retain the faddish faux sweater. He said he hadn’t been. I wanted to know if in executing the vote the players’ arms shot up so fast in support of the motion that some injured their shoulders — is this what actually happened with Michael Nylander? — or if instead they merely screamed their support for dumping the dress dreck. I also asked Nate who paid for the changes.
“I don’t know whether the league or Reebok does,” he told me, “but we don’t.”
I am also thinking about the more than 6,600 men and women, boy and girls, who signed an online petition last summer to protest Gary Bettman’s profaning of hockey’s iconic look. We at OFB signed it as soon as we found out about it, provided updates and encouragement for the tradition-honoring, and took some ridicule for not genuflecting before the altar of vulgar corporate greed. Sometimes, though, David slays Goliath.
I think as punishment, Commissioner Bettman should be required, for the remainder of his tenure, to attend those swanky, offseason Board of Governors meetings — the ones that are always held in tropical temps — outfitted the entire time in a Reebok original sweat chamber. He should have to golf out under hot desert suns with the Governors in one.
5:50 p.m.: An NHL off-ice official wearing his snazzy navy blue blazer approached me at dinner and asked if he could still secure two tickets to Tuesday night’s OFB Night at the Movies. I got a kick out of that. So he’s coming, and if you haven’t signed up yet, you should as well.
6:50 p.m.: Miss New Jersey is back blogging tonight. So far, no Christmas card, no baked gingerbread goodies from her.
7:05 p.m.: The lower bowl tonight is a lot more filled than it was for either New Jersey Monday or the Rangers on Wednesday. So too is the upper bowl. It’s good to see.
7:20-ish p.m.: It’s so feel-good here at Verizon Center this week that a pair of lovebirds pledged their future lives together in high definition in a cleverly planned out surprise for the future bride. She was playing that game of watch the fast-moving puck on the big brilliant center-ice screen, and when she identified the correct puck, instead of the screen saying “You Win!”, it said, “Will you marry me?” Just then her boyfriend moved in to the screen shot and fell to one knee. Being proposed to in such a romantic setting, the young woman had the good sense to answer affirmatively. Briefly I pondered such an arrangement between Miss New Jersey and me. Continue reading ›
Buried in Wednesday’s news of the three-game home winning streak, Joe Motzko’s offensive explosion, and Mike Green’s overtime winner was this 
The Hurricanes switched two games ago to the modified jerseys, which feature a looser fit on the arms, more air-knit fabric and less of the “bead-away” water repellency technology touted by Reebok.
Quality human beings comprise the vast majority of the enrollment for the great game of hockey, and so when the giants within it are called upon to offer reflections on their journeys within the game, we shouldn’t be surprised at the quality they offer in that endeavor. It’s impossible to watch the NHL’s Hall of Fame Induction ceremony and not be persuaded that the humility, character, and most particularly the connection to family that hockey players demonstrate and articulate is unrivaled in the landscape of professional sports. Baseball’s induction ceremony this past summer, by virtue of the character of its principal inductees Gwynn and Ripken, seemed to take a step back in time and grace and generate a renewal of honor for a sport badly in need of it. But the NHL, with its highest honor event every November, has it every year.
NHL players and equipment managers might have tolerated their new unforms being unsightly relative to their predecessors, but what if they not only don’t work as marketed (repelling moisture, making players more comfortable) but actually make player performance worse? That would appear to be precisely the case. Last week’s Pittsburgh Post Gazette alerted its readers to the disconcerting development that some Penguins have nearly 
Here’s where we stand: the league is no longer hiding its intent to obliterate the classic and novel look of its athletes in action and replace it with something grotesque and profane and indefensible and never to be purchased by its fans. Gary Bettman, confirming hockey fans’ worst instincts about him, recently told 
