One of which isn’t Atlanta.

The story of the Atlanta Thrashers really is pretty much the same with that of the Atlanta Flames: a long-odds experiment carried off for about a decade before largely vast vistas of rink emptiness. “Many nights the Thrashers played in front of great wastelands of empty chairs at futuristic Philips Arena, located downtown beside CNN headquarters and the Centennial Olympic Plaza,” the Canadian Press noted yesterday.

Although with the Thrash you ought to acknowledge that in the persons of Ilya Kovalchuk and Dany Heatley and Marian Hossa there were top-flight superstars wearing the team sweater, in their prime . . . and still it didn’t matter. There are of course superb hockey fans in Atlanta. There just aren’t enough of them.

Big league hockey has now failed twice in Atlanta. It should be a cold day in August there before it’s located there again. The Atlanta Spirit are the boogeymen of the moment in that town, but in time the Atlanta Journal Constitution will reflect on the failure with greater sobriety and perspective. Or maybe not. More importantly, we need our commissioner to reflect thusly.

Ultimately, he’s the figure to blame for hockey going up in flames in Atlanta. Hockey never belonged in Atlanta. You can’t quite imagine eight or ten buses filled with Atlanta hockey fans driving up 95 to take in a Saturday night Islanders game next season, can you?

Did you behold Bettman’s constipation-like countenance yesterday in Manitoba, at the presser confirming the worst-kept secret in the history of the NHL? If it wasn’t a look of constipation, it surely was one of ‘My eldest daughter just texted me from a tattoo parlor in Vegas, where she’s apparently eloping with a roadie for a gangster rap band.’

In his nearly 20-year tenure as NHL commissioner, yesterday in Manitoba won’t rank among the highlight moments for Gary Bettman.

Nor should it.

Hours before the start of the Stanley Cup finals the commissioner was out in the Canadian prairie, explaining (sort of) how it was that a top 10 U.S. market had rejected his marketing experiment. Yesterday in Manitoba was a seminal moment for the NHL, and it ought to have been one for the league’s owners and their unflinching conviction in the branding wisdom of their commish. It was Gary Bettman, the NBA marketing genius, who sold them on this notion that hockey can pretty much be plopped down anywhere in the U.S. and succeed just fine. Today we know with certainty that it cannot.

I’m very happy this summer for the hockey-loving people of Winnipeg, but some core questions emerge from news like yesterday’s, and they ought to be grappled with by the owners promptly. Foremost among them:

• Is NHL hockey a 30-market enterprise? And if it is, should a glut of franchises be located well south of the Mason Dixon Line?

• Also: Irrespective of lease agreements, how much arena emptiness, over successive years, is too much emptiness?

• Lastly (for the moment): If there is to be additional, dramatic market correction, and associated realignment, is Gary Bettman the guy we want carrying it off?

There was, too, a conspicuously ominous backdrop to yesterday’s news, and it too offers another referendum front for this commissioner. For most sensible people, there is an inevitability of failure to be found as well in the Arizona desert for NHL hockey. The Coyotes put a few more fannies in their seats than the Thrashers did (I think), but their rink is stupidly situated, virtually impossible to access by car from Phoenix in rush hour. Kinda like old Capital Centre was. And like Atlanta, there is no root infrastructure buttressing the big league club, no flowering youth and high school hockey scene driving hockey parents and hockey playing kids to the games. There is with the Phoenix Coyotes the fairly broadly held belief that this spring they stayed their ultimate execution by merely a year, that where we were with the Thrashers the past few weeks is where we’ll be with Phoenix in a year’s time, maybe sooner. Just as no notable deep pockets showed up to bail out the Thrash in their town, none ever seem to out in the desert for that hockey club. For good reason.

Strike two for this commish. Anyone wanna bet the bleeding stops with Phoenix?

In recent years I’ve come to the conviction that hockey can not only survive but thrive in non-traditional markets, but that a root infrastructure of support must take hold in these uncommon outposts. Hockey is an expensive sport to play, an expensive sport to patronize 40-plus times a season. It helps a lot to have it located in a community of affluence. Washington passes this test with flying colors. We actually have kids here on travel teams who go up against top competition in New England, the upper Midwest, and Canada and win games. As a community, we invest well in the development of our hockey players, relatively new to the sport though we are, and that investment is paying dividends. DeMatha’s hockey team competed in a top-flight tournament in Maine last season, around the holidays, and the Maryland high school surprised a lot of New Englanders with their competitiveness. DeMatha’s first two lines can often compete with those of many of New England’s power schools. They lose games up there with their third and fourth lines. It’s an issue of depth. I bet that gap closes in the next five or six years.

We aren’t a hockey town merely because we say we are, and we will be one after Alexander Ovechkin retires. And Gary Bettman had nothing to do with our becoming one.

An agreement to sell the National Hockey League’s Atlanta Thrashers to a Winnipeg group which plans to relocate the franchise to the Manitoba capital is done.

Sources confirmed tonight that preparations are being made for an announcement Tuesday, confirming the sale and transfer of the Thrashers to True North Sports and Entertainment, which owns and operates the Manitoba Moose of the American Hockey League and the MTS Centre arena, which would become the NHL team’s new home.

“The Atlanta Thrashers were a professional ice hockey team based in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. They were members of the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League (NHL).”

The entry was subsequently modified. Though perhaps to be modified again — perhaps even today. Because of:

This tweet from Fan590 personality Greg Brady:

Brady added in a subsequent tweet: “Let’s face it. Gary might have needed to keep Coyotes in PHX to free up Winnipeg for Thrashers. Quebec’s not ready in 11-12.”

The sixty four competitors are divided up into four brackets, just like the NCAA hoops tourney (until recently), and they’re named after . . . golfing legends: Ben Hogan, Sam Snead, Gary Player, Bobby Jones.

Once upon a time, the NHL identified its divisional alignment by the names of legends in the sport — Smythe, Norris, Patrick, Adams. Who changed that? Why, the visionary marketing guru hired away from the NBA, Gary Bettman.

How’s that structural re-branding worked out, do you imagine, over the past decade and a half, in terms of broadening NHL hockey’s elemental identity? Also, looking back on the rationale offered at the time by the league for jettisoning hockey’s heritage, how does it strike you today? Would it be wise, do you think, to replicate it, given the league’s overall standing in the sports world today? (The league’s American television contract is with Versus, incidentally.)

(Here’s another fun question for you: what will be the name of the division in which the Capitals reside in about 12 weeks’ time, after the moving vans have packed up the Thrash?)

This PGA Tour event, by virtue of its structural novelty and elite talent, draws more media attention than does your typical Tour event. PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem of course presides over a niche sport; interest in professional golf in America will never rival that of fans’ interest for football, basketball, or baseball — and the moreso once Tiger’s competitive viability durably wanes. And yet Finchem, in his remarkable curator’s role in growing the Tour’s revenues (admittedly aided to no small degree by Woods’ emergence) has never sold out his sport’s heritage. Pro golf under Finchem has enjoyed a stratospheric rise in fiscal health, while not ever losing a sense of its historical bearings. It’s a good thing, I think, for a professional sport of significant legacy to adhere where it can to its roots. Its hero roots.

Finchem, incidentally, arrived at his present post in 1994 — one year after Bettman.

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

Conscription in the Red Army starts early in life

And thanks to tier I puckhead Dan Rinzel for sharing his oh-so-endearing father-daughter photo from Winter Classic weekend 20011.

Some parting reflections, first from Elisabeth, who represented us in the Heinz Field Press box this past weekend:

Lis: The Other Side of the Looking Glass: You know that excitement you get when you’re given tickets to a game, you walk in, and you realize the seats are even better than you thought? That was my first impression when I got to the Heinz Field press box and saw my seat in the front row. Press boxes are tiered, and, while I’m sure there are numerous advantages to sitting up higher, I never have, and thus am blissfully ignorant of them. Because I felt nearer the action, I loved being close to the glass windows.

I did, however, develop a love-hate relationship with this perch. Watching a game from an enclosed box gave us great perspective (and kept us warm and dry), but it was also a little isolating, something my OFB editor and mentor appropriately termed the “reverse fishbowl effect.” It’s similar to watching a plane take off from an airport terminal — you can see everything and hear most of it, but you’re significantly separated from the action. At one point, we had to text people sitting in the stands to make sure it was raining, not snowing, since it was difficult to see the precipitation from our seats. At Verizon Center, since there’s no glass closing off the press box, the energy of the crowd is easier to experience. It’s more an observation on the football venue than a critique of any press box setup. I think the glass can be opened, weather permitting, but I’m guessing that’s not the tradition in January.

Though I would have camped out rinkside for 48 hours if the league had let me this past weekend, the brief time we spent there during Friday’s practice was surreal: right up by the glass, dodging pucks that flew over the top of it (there was no protective netting there Friday). You got to see the players’ excitement during the family skate after practice. Brooks Laich had a huge grin the whole time, and it looked like he was filming everyone as he skated around with a camera. You’ve probably seen the pictures of people clinging to Ovechkin as he helped them skate around the rink. Tom Poti skated by carrying the cutest baby I’ve ever seen.

Players come off the ice at different times, which adds a layer of challenge for the reporter — for example, if I wanted to catch a Caps player for an interview in the dressing room, and he came off the ice early, I was liable to miss whatever funny events happened rinkside. By the time Ovechkin started playing with a football and giving photographers everywhere the photoshoot of the day, for example, I had already left the rink to interview one of the players in the locker room.

That being said, locker room interviews are an essential part of the experience. One of the most interesting exchanges I had Friday was with Pittsburgh’s Max Talbot over his locker situation, since he has the unfortunate draw of sitting next to Sidney Crosby. This seems cool until you realize the daily throng of media surrounding Crosby’s locker means Talbot literally can’t get to his. He was, by the way, very gracious during the interview.

Final thought: for a rookie at these events, there’s always a fear that something will go wrong, that your credential will be lost somewhere in cyberspace, or that you won’t know how to find your way around. But I’ve rarely seen a smoother process, particularly in light of media demand for this high-profile event. The NHL credential office seemed exceptionally well organized, as did the entire operation. Thanks to Washington colleague Ted Starkey and some well-placed NHL direction signs, I didn’t get lost, either. I’m sure it can’t be easy dealing with that many journalists (we can be a rather demanding bunch), but the NHL seemed to handle everything media smoothly. Job well done.

pucksandbooks:

• At the Winter Classic Alumni Game last Friday morning Bruce Boudreau, attired for evening business, strode out to the rink in the center of Heinz Field for a television interview amid a thundering chorus of “Haagen Dazs!” derision from 20,000 Pittsburgh Penguin fans. Oh he heard it alright; in typical Gabby fashion, he took the jabs in perfect stride, and as the Caps’ alums were leading the game at that moment, he simply pointed to the scoreboard as rejoinder. We thought about that moment deep into Saturday night, right as the Winter Classic’s final horn sounded. Seemed fitting that the man whom HBO cameras and this Midwest stadium so crudely treated at the end of 2010 enjoyed a victor’s walk after a huge hockey game in his stylish Capitals’ red letterman’s jacket.

• Also at the Alumni Game, near its midpoint, with the aged Capitals conspicuously competitive against an alumni Pens roster that would beat today’s Islanders and Devils, Mario Lemieux skated over to the Washington bench during a stoppage and complained, ‘You guys are skating too hard.’ They had to. And in so doing our heroes of yesteryear revived that overachieving work ethic that Comcast’s Alan May forecast would be on display. It was an exhibition, pure and simple, one easily forgotten by most of hockey, and yet somehow Peter Bondra’s tying tally with under a minute to play — with Don Beaupre pulled — felt significant. Guess that illustrates just how enduring and timeless a classic rivalry, represented by any era, can be.

• A few of us on the OFB team are old enough to remember what the Super Bowl was like before corporate schlock and egregious over-production overtook that game. Seems to us that the Winter Classic today possesses a lot of that early Super Bowl charm: it’s a city-enveloping affair, yes, but at puck-drop the game is about the game and remains that way. We hope the NHL never succumbs to elaborate corporate greed and bad taste in its stewardship of this special event. There should never be sixty-something Who concerts in between periods, for instance. Saturday’s game, contested in poor weather, still ended in under three hours. All Winter Classics should. Trust hockey fans to amuse themselves outside of those three hours on Winter Classic weekends just fine — as Capitals’ fans most assuredly did in Pittsburgh.

• 

  Our intrepid blogger Lis working the 2011 Winter Classic

  Part of the intrinsic charm of this event is that at its conclusion all of hockey begins speculating on the locale and participants for the next game. That’s good fun. Early in 2011, there seems to be emerging the sentiment that perhaps the NHL has exhausted the rotation of novel stadium sites for this game and needs to consider taking the Classic to an outside-the-convention locale. The New York Post’s Larry Brooks on Sunday suggested Central Park. Maybe that can be carried off, maybe it can’t. But the hope here is that the Winter Classic retains an aura inviting of such fresh and fun thinking.

• Our two cents for the 2012 game: How about a Heritage Classic here in the States? The Quebec Nordiques (formerly the Atlanta Thrashers) and the Hartford Whalers (formerly the New York Islanders). Then you’d follow that in 2013 with a rematch between the Caps and Pens, in D.C. — except it would be a showdown of reconstituted rivals in the Patrick Division.

Andrew:

• When I sit and think about my time in enemy territory last weekend I think about Eric Fehr’s two goals, John Erskine’s fiesty fight, and of course screaming out Matty P’s name as loud as possible to spur him on. Out of the whole weekend, though, the one thing I remember most is something Dave Nichols of the Capitals News Network said on New Years Eve at the Hofbrauhaus. I stated simply how amazing the turnout on this roadtrip appeared to be. Clearly moved, Dave stood for a second and somberly stated how he had been to Caps’ games since second one of their existence and had never seen anything like the showing of New Years weekend.

• Right there, that’s it, that is what made the weekend so special. It wasn’t the win — although that was special — or the night air and lights or the fights or the heckling. While those were all great and memorable attributes of Winter Classic 2011, the outpouring of support and camaraderie all we Washingtonians experienced was what made this Classic special. The experience for me was once in a lifetime, something that can never be replicated because of the people who surrounded me. Whether it was the nine other friends who road-tripped out there with me, the couple behind me whom I swore I knew, or every fan who chanted “C-A-P-S CAPS CAPS CAPS!!!” on New Years Eve, they are all the ones who made the weekend memorable.

• 23 busloads of hockey fans from Quebec City, all attired in Nordiques’ bleu.

I used to think a half dozen buses of Flyers’ fans pulling up in front of old Capital Centre, and soon thereafter making the brawling on the ice appear child’s play relative to the fisticuffs those hooligans initiated in the stands, a sizable show of high-pitched passion, to say nothing of malicious mischief. I can’t imagine what 23 busloads of impassioned Quebecois will look and sound like in an otherwise empty Isles’ rink tonight. What a brilliant bit of passion-branding by Nordiques Nation.

Think about it: beyond the extraordinary volume of Quebecois crammed into 23 buses (and with all the attention this story is getting, maybe it’ll be more (seats for the game are still available — hah!)), it’s a 10-hour busride from Quebec City to Long Island. This Revolution en Bleu is basically surrendering an entire holiday weekend for two-and-a-half hours of lousy hockey, just to make their passion and commitment more broadly known . And even with a somewhat downscaled New York media monitoring the moment, they surely will.

What an embarrassing moment tonight will be for this apparently tenured-for-life NHL commissioner. I’m all for embarrassing him. And it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see the lower bowl in Glendale Bleu-ed-out by the Quebecois during a playoff game next spring. Canadians love migrating to the warm sun after a hard winter, and the moreso if unloved hockey in t-shirts and shorts is available.

Fanhouse has more on this massive breach of our borders by Nordiques’ bleu:

“The plan is that the large group of fans will sit in the lower bowl behind each net with light blue shirts that read ‘Nordiques Nation.” At the 15:00 mark of each period, the group plans to make a lot of noise to commemorate the 15 years it has been since the Nordiques left Quebec City for Denver. With rumors of relocation swirling for both the Thrashers and Islanders, the Nordiques supporters plan to make their voices heard in an attempt to help bring NHL hockey back to their hometown.

“We just want to show the N.H.L. that Quebec needs a team and is a better market,” [Quebec radio personality and event organizer Vince] Cauchon told the New York Times. “Maybe a third of the markets in the N.H.L. aren’t doing so well right now.”

Boudreau was frank about why a team with as much firepower and as many chances as the Capitals (they finished with 46 shots on goal) fell short of the win.

Photo by Clyde Caplan, clydeorama.com

“You look at our team, we haven’t scored a lot of goals lately,” Boudreau continued (the Caps have only had one 3 or more goal game in the past four outings). “I think it’s the lack of commitment to paying the price to score. We’re all wanting to score, but we’re staying on the perimeter hoping to get the puck rather than being the guy that’s going to get the puck. And the guys that did that had chances, but they’re not natural goal scorers…the guys that are looking to score are not getting their nose dirty enough to score the goal.”

John Carlson summed it up in one line: “We attacked the zone well, but we really didn’t attack the net that well.”

The ice wasn’t really in top form, either – there was a basketball game that afternoon and the night before in the building. Players slipped frequently, and the puck looked like it was taking a few weird turns.  Carlson was quick to point out that Atlanta had to deal with the same issue, however. He  did observe that the Capitals’ skillset in passing may be something of a handicap on poor ice.

“We’re a pretty skilled team — we like to make nice plays, but it’s a lot tougher than just getting the puck on net and whacking away than trying to make those nice passes on bad ice,” Carlson. “I’m sure on a lot of plays that we would like to have a clean slate of ice — maybe it would make those plays.”

A bright spot for the Capitals Saturday was Alex Ovechkin breaking his 9-game scoring drought with a goal at the end of the second period. The Capitals did an excellent job keeping the puck in the offensive zone for almost two minutes, and Ovechkin had at least three tries before finding the back of the net (Ted Starkey of the Washington Times helped run the numbers).  The end of the second period spent in Atlanta’s zone was a great reminder of just how dominant this team can be – Karl Alzner and Nicklas Backstrom were both on the ice for the goal, and Carlson and Alexander Semin had the assists.

New Washington Capital Scott Hannan was paired with Tyler Sloan for his home debut and logged 14:33 of ice time, including 37 seconds of penalty killing.  He finished with a -1 and was on the ice for Atlanta’ second goal, which frankly looked like it caught the entire Caps contingent out of position.

Finally, this is a minor note and hard to describe, but worth mentioning – Mike Green’s much more confident attitude this season. There was one point in the game when play stopped and Green had a sort of standoff by the net with one of the Atlanta players. It wasn’t even a skirmish, but Green’s body language at that point caught my attention – he was clearly saying, this is my goalie’s crease, it’s my turf to defend, my house, and it really looked like he was proud to defend it.  I don’t know that this attitude will necessarily reflect itself on the stats sheet anytime soon, but I think it bodes well for the team and for Green’s continued maturation as a blueliner.

Friday night’s season opener started in stunning fashion with a collapse by the Thrashers’ starting netminder Ondrej Pavelec. A little over two minutes into the game, positioned outside his crease with the draw in the Capitals’ end, he seemed to motion to the Thrashers’ bench as if he was in trouble, and a second later he was flat on the ice, frighteningly motionless. He remained that was for some minutes before being removed on a stretcher. Reports suggest he’s okay now; he was kept in an Atlanta hospital overnight for observation.

Friday night kinda looked like Montreal II, didn’t it? Inferior opponent, blocking shots all over the ice, doing the things necessary to win . . . while the Caps seemed content to mostly play a perimeter game. The Thrashers blocked 23 Caps’ shots.

The Thrash are improved — how couldn’t they be? — but last night they competed against an opponent largely disinterested in doing the things necessary to win an NHL game. Wasn’t there a movie, or perhaps a comic book, titled ‘The Invisibles’? Here’s our list of invisibles who wore white sweaters Friday night:

• Eric Fehr . . . just AWOL.

• Tomas Fleischmann . . . He appeared to pick up where he left off versus Montreal in April — one lone shot attempt from the second-line center.

• Nicklas Backstrom . . .  just out of synch, ineffective.

• Ovi, during the game’s first 30 minutes: a wee bit of banging in the game’s second half, a nice assist on Mike Knuble’s goal, but otherwise of little impact.

In the opening game of the season the Capitals were largely lifeless. And on the bench, Craig Ramsey’s system sure seemed to confound Bruce Boudreau.

Two years ago, when the Caps opened up with a stinker in Atlanta, they had an excuse. It was Jose Theodore’s first game as a member of the Caps, and he definitely let in some softies. This year, there are no such excuses. Michal Neuvirth gamely kept the Caps in it, making numerous high-quality stops, but ultimately he had little support in front of him. It was not a night that bolstered confidence in the new-look Capitals’ blueline.

John Erskine also made his presence known with some strong physical play — he cared last night, and  he stood up for his netminder. Alexander Semin made an amazing knee-high snare of a cross-ice pass from Fleischmann to earn an assist on the Caps’ first goal.

But overall, the Caps’ limp debut is best forgotten, by fans and team alike.