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The Wait Is Over

By The OFB Team

Friday, October 10, 2008

The calendar today informs of our arrival home. On this early autumn Friday night we’ll return home from work, kick off our shoes, open up a cold one, and settle in for the opening of the most highly anticipated hockey season in Washington Capitals’ history.

This autumn, it doesn’t suck to be us.

And we’ll actually have two remarkably talented hockey teams to follow — the Caps and their American League affiliate the Bears. Hershey opened its season this past Wednesday night, on the road in Wilkes Barre, and the scoring summary from the game attests to the farm club’s potency (five for seven with the extra man!).

How will OFB cover what is forecast to be an exceptionally special hockey season in D.C.? It’s a question we grappled with all offseason, and some clarity in the matter has arrived of late. The ‘Web is fundamentally dynamic, ever evolving, and we feel that OFB should reflect this. We know that we don’t want to “blog in place,” if you will; we want to pursue fresh coverage challenges and angles. Because OFB is distinctly reader participatory, we welcome coverage suggestions from you.

Three of us will be attending virtually every Caps’ home game this season, and we’ll all be well equipped to capture and record what strikes our fancy. A couple of things won’t change, however. First and foremost, we do what we do here because it’s fun for us, and because it’s an outlet for our collective passion for the planet’s greatest sport. We believe that there’s long been vast under-reportage of hockey’s passion in these parts, and we want to play a small role in remedying that.

We’re aided in our endeavor by a partnership with the most pro- new media sports organization in all of professional sports in North America — and maybe the world. We couldn’t do what we do without the support of the Washington Capitals, and that support starts with the majority owner and extends down through the entirety of the team’s communications staff and includes men and women even within the team’s sales staff.

It can’t be overstated: to the extent that the Capitals enjoy a robust on line profile — and we agree with Mr. Leonsis, who this week told us that the team is a greater global and national story than they are in their home city — they’ve reaped what they’ve sowed for some years now in taking a bold leap of coverage faith with their new-media relations. We hope its a relationship in its mere infancy, and we’d like to see other fresh blogging voices emerge and join the party. We’re particularly excited to follow our friend Pepper and his first full season of blogging coverage of the Caps from New York, with the Red Skate. Pepper’s already doing a great job of keeping an eye on things down on the farm.

Speaking of that farm club, following the Hershey Bears this season will be easier than ever thanks to some big technical upgrades courtesy of the club’s communications pro and play-by-play voice, John Walton. Walton will, on a weekly bassis, host the first-ever podcast for Hershey hockey, “The Old Barn Hockey Show.” And the audio for every Bears’ game will be streamed thanks to a new partnership with SportsJuice.com. Archives of Bears’ games will even be available to fans with the agreement.

Of course, at OFB, we’re planning on following the Bears a bit live in person on a handful of occasions, again. We’re also hoping that one trip up north is of the novel variety.

Filed in American Hockey League, Blogs, Front Office, Hershey Bears, Internet, Media, OFB, OFB Interviews, Staff, Ted Leonsis, Verizon Center, Video Clips, Washington Capitals, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (10)

Collin McKinney Sees Life Through Hockey [Part II]

By pucksandbooks

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

[Miss Part I? Click here.]

What kind of job does a suddenly blind-in-the-middle-of-his-life man perform? For two years Collin McKinney didn’t see anything at all. Eventually, he could see out of his left eye an area “about the size of a 50-cent piece.” His medical remedies more or less exhausted, McKinney contacted the Virginia Department of the Blind and Visually Impaired. The work options offered him there — “moving paperclips” was how he described the meager administrative listings — were a poor fit for his broad and varied educational background and work experience.

But back in his Fairfax neighborhood, McKinney had developed an affinity for taking care of dogs belonging to his neighbors. He’d walk them during business hours, care for them during neighbors’ vacations. He developed a reputation for being something of a “dog whisperer,” effectively training unruly canine rascals on his block. Dogs and a blind man, working well together. Who knew?

Post- NHL lockout, and now fairly a fixture at Caps’ games, McKinney was enjoying himself and the friends he was making from the experience. Except for one set of fans: Buffalo’s.

“Buffalo fans are the worst,” McKinney told me. “They actually stole my blind stick one time from me at a game.”

Now you’re certainly reacting as I did as those words arrived on my ear — Buffalo Sabres’ fans . . . did . . . what?

It was two seasons ago, during the final game of the 2006-07 campaign, at Verizon Center, the one that was sold out, lamentably largely due to wave after wave of belligerent Buffaloan.

“Thank God I could see a little bit, because they decided to play keep away with my stick, and I managed to grab it back, which surprised them, I think,” McKinney related. “I couldn’t believe people would do that. They were so obnoxious and so foul-mouthed.”

As shocking as this story is, having been in Verizon Center that day (Washington’s hockey bloggers hosted an end-of-season party at the Chinatown Clyde’s after the game), I look back and think that something like this monstrosity was entirely plausible amid so large an ornery and inebriated set of visiting fans. Not all Buffalo fans in Verizon Center behaved badly that day, of course, but a striking and surly subset most certainly did.

“Collin,” I told my dinner partner, “there really was something about that day that was distinctive in a very bad way. A lot of people had a bad experience that day, although what you describe is off the charts — sub-human, really. Our team was lousy, theirs was in first [place], and the scene was just unruly and altogether unpleasant.”

Wanted: One Hockey-Loving Ocularist

In early 2008, as Collin McKinney grappled with the reality of having his right eye removed and replaced with a prosthetic, his “twisted” sense of humor set upon a novel idea. He was fitted with a standard prosthetic eye, but he again wanted to summon his passion for hockey to help alleviate his trauma. He had been in contact with an area ocularist to try and get the Capitals’ logo etched on a second prosthetic eye. In other words, when you looked Collin McKinney in his replacement eye, he wanted you to see his passion. But first he needed the team’s permission.

“I have a twisted sense of humor,” he told me. “If something horrible like this is going to happen to you, you better have a sense of humor about it at some point, because if you can’t laugh, you end up sitting around doing nothing, wasting away.”

“I just thought it would be funny and cool, ‘cause it kinda shows what I’m into.

“I don’t get tattoos,” he added with a laugh.

McKinney wrote Capitals’ owner Ted Leonsis, seeking permission to use the team’s trademarked logo on a prosthetic eye. He sent the owner his request in a letter. And the owner replied.

“‘Wow,’ I think was his very first reaction,” McKinney noted. “‘You really want to do this?’”

“I think he thought I was a kook at first,” McKinney said with a laugh.

The request, McKinney pointed out, required more than just the owner’s blessing — that of lawyers, as you might imagine. Capitals’ attorneys were consulted, but also ones from the NHL’s league offices. Ultimately, McKinney got the team’s permission, and that of the league. He also received an invitation from Leonsis to take in a game in the owner’s box, where he could model his passion-prosthetic.

Now comes the hard part. The personalized prosthetic comes with a $3,000 sticker price. McKinney, an early recipient of Social Security due to his disability, subsists on $12,000 annually and some additional, modest money from helping out his Fairfax neighbors by walking their dogs and performing odd jobs.

“There’s no way I can afford that,” McKinney noted. “But now I know that there’s an ocularist in town who’ll do it. That’s what is important to me. If he had turned me down I had already Googled the entire country for others [ocularists]. I’d have contacted every one of them. It’s not something I’m going to give up on.”

At this point I wanted to reach into my back pocket, pull out my fraying black leather wallet, open it and turn it upside down and empty out all of its contents in this cause. Problem there is that that wouldn’t have purchased McKinney a temporary tattoo.

“Things are thrown your way in life,” Collin McKinney told me over our final sips of Monday night beer. “You just have to find a way to move on.

“This idea I have for ultimately winning over . . . getting the better of, my misfortune, it’ll happen one day. I believe that.”

In my nearly 35 years as a Caps’ fan I thought I had terrific reason on top of terrific reason to support this city’s pro hockey team, and to champion its cause. Over the years it had hockey heroes — Rod Langway, Dale Hunter, Olie Kolzig, Peter Bondra, now Alexander Ovechkin — wear its sweater. It had endured, in searing and endearing fashion, a brush with death, a thrilling run to a Stanley Cup finals, a sale to a hockey-town-constructing-committed owner. And the drafting of a franchise-altering and anchoring talent. But in September 2008 I found the best possible reason yet to be a Caps’ fan: Collin McKinney wears our team’s colors, and life can’t attack his hockey heart. There’s a life-long, no-trade clause in Collin McKinney’s allegiance to the Caps. He belongs to us.

Filed in Buffalo Sabres, Collin McKinney, Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey, Hockey Heroes, Hockey Towns, National Hockey League, OFB Interviews, Ted Leonsis, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (12)

Fairfax’s Collin McKinney Sees Life Through Hockey

By pucksandbooks

Monday, October 6, 2008

[Part I of II ]

In the moments leading up to my meeting Collin McKinney, 42, of Fairfax, I readied myself for a seriously sad encounter. There are newsworthy triumphs and tragedies in life every day, and all I knew of McKinney was that he was a huge hockey fan and that he’d endured a sudden and unimaginably tragic misfortune a few years back. This was to be a happy hour meeting devoid of the happy, I imagined. But adversity, I learned over the course of two hours in McKinney’s company, even of the most shocking and harrowing kind, can summon untapped resolve and renewed purpose within the afflicted. In Collin McKinney I found the story of a man who endured one of life’s most savage blows, turned to hockey as a comfort on his road to healing, and emerged an inspiration to his Northern Virginia community.

Life in general didn’t deal McKinney, an Arlington native, much of a strong hand to begin with, health-wise. He’s diabetic, and he battles thyroid and heart problems. He also has severe arthritis.

“I have a lot of bills and pills,” he told me with a chuckle.

When I met McKinney in Ballston on a recent Monday night he stood at the very entrance of our restaurant waiting for me, wearing his Alexander Ovechkin Caps’ jersey so that I could easily identify him. I noticed the black sweater enveloping his frail, 150-pound, world-weary frame, and a blind stick in one hand.

Over our first beer he shared with me the tale of his very first Caps’ game, back in 1986. Somebody had given him tickets at work. Collin took his brother to the game.

“I had a blast, and I was hooked,” he told me.

His attendance at Caps’ games in the immediate years that followed was sporadic; working a handful of modest jobs in offices and maintenance, he attended as often as he could on a modest salary. But one visit to the old Capital Centre that featured a Peter Bondra hat trick upped the ante. He became a puckhead of the first order. Today his home is a shrine to all things Capitals — he has three sweaters, signed hats, “every ‘Rock the Red’ towel ever handed out” he noted with pride, and scores of signed player cards and photos. He owns a Caps’ Tiffany glass lamp, a Capitals’ rug, a big wall hanging of Alexander Ovechkin. “T-shirts like you wouldn’t believe,” he emphasized. I asked him how many games he attended during last season’s stirring run to the Southeast division title. “I think pretty much every one,” he told me. McKinney’s email prefix starts out “bonzai.”

“I just love the Caps, I just love hockey,” he told me. “I used to be a giant Redskins’ fan, but that’s taken a back seat to hockey.”

A Life Forever Changed

On May 10, 2001, McKinney, then working his way through more school with three jobs, was in a hallway at his job at Neiman Marcus. He dropped a paper, bent down to retrieve it, and met a brutal fate.

“There was a guy doing trash, and he had a whole bunch of folded over cardboard boxes,” McKinney began. “He came up as I was going down . . . and he caught me across the bridge of the nose.

“Both of my retinas detached.”

In an instant Collin McKinney’s world went black.

“I dropped a piece of paper and my life changed forever,” he said.

He went immediately to an ophthalmologist. “‘You need surgery and you need it now,’ he told me,” McKinney related.

His left eye was operated on first, as it was believed to be the more seriously damaged. That surgery proved moderately successful, and today McKinney has, in conditions of bright light, a tiny bit of vision out of it. But during surgery on his right eye McKinney woke up out of the anesthesia, bringing the procedure to an immediate halt. In the delay between his second surgery on the eye, damaged nerves failed to regenerate. His right eye began to die.

Thirty-plus years of battling diabetes greatly complicated both the surgeries and the recovery.

“Diabetes, what it does, it produces very weak blood vessels in the back of the retina, so they had to go in and laser them, and that’s what caused me, ultimately . . . to lose everything,” he explained.

“What made me blind is my eye would hemorrhage, the blood vessels would burst and my eye would fill up with blood and I couldn’t see through it. I could see for like a week and then all of a sudden I’d have one of these hemorrhages and I’d be blind for four or five months.”

McKinney endured this fluctuation between partial vision and total blindness for fully two years. His right eye literally bled to death. Then it started shrinking.

“Once is started shrinking, it started pressing against the optic nerve, and this went on for five years, and the pain started getting so intense that I had to go on some pretty heavy painkillers,” McKinney told me.

“I don’t know about you,” he added, “but I don’t do drugs very well. It was a pretty ugly time.”

“It was highly depressing,” he said, with obvious understatement. “It got to the point where [the eye] just had to go. That was this past June.

“I finally just said, ‘Look man, it’s gotta go, it’s either that or I gotta go.’ I just couldn’t go on [in that pain].”

McKinney and I were seated in a booth in a chain restaurant surprisingly crowded on a Monday night. As I listened to him detail his tragedy I worried about him getting emotional and overcome with his story’s sadness, but it was apparent early on that I was in the presence of a young man of exceptional fortitude and perseverance. He relayed his circumstances to me without the slightest semblance of self-pity. He’d had seven years to live with his misfortune, and in his narrative there was no account of buckling under the woe.

McKinney went through more surgical procedures and specialist visits than he can tabulate. Neiman Marcus kept him insured for a solid year while he was out of work and receiving treatment initially, but McKinney’s pre-existing conditions transformed a bad accident into a malevolent mishap — one he was left to grapple with with only the support of friends and family.

“It was quite a life-changing event,” he said. “I was scared. I didn’t know to operate as a blind person. To learn all that I had to in mid- life, was . . . a weird stream.”

“I couldn’t take care of myself — I couldn’t see. I couldn’t check my blood sugar levels.”

Fortunately, McKinney has family in Northern Virginia. His father passed years ago, and he moved in with his mother, today his principal caregiver.

“I couldn’t get through my daily existence without her,” he said. “I had to go to a lot of doctors. She got me through all these different surgeries. She knew what I needed.

“Thank God she was there.”

Determined to try and establish some normalcy in his life, McKinney enrolled in Northern Virginia Community College, in some computer training programs. Computer programming, he explained, is a relatively common pursuit by the vision-impaired. But programming he found boring. Next he tried business classes, but the further he went along with those the more he realized how limited he was by virtue of being unable to work in common business software.

McKinney had a friend whose father went blind, and their intervention helped him in his early struggles.

“I was lucky I got a really good teacher who taught me how to get around with a [blind] stick, how to get on Metro.”

He spent “seven or eight” months departing his house only for followup surgeries and doctors’ visits, and another four months after that “just sitting around.”

“I was sitting there in my house trying to figure out what to do with myself.” Continue reading ›

Filed in Collin McKinney, Former Coaches & Players, Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey, Hockey Heroes, National Hockey League, Nicklas Backstrom, OFB Interviews, Olaf Kolzig, Ted Leonsis, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (6)

Ten Top Storylines for the Start of Training Camp 2008

By pucksandbooks

Saturday, September 20, 2008

AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Frank Gunn

(10) Gabby from the Get-go. Capitals players had plenty of time to come to grips with Bruce Boudreau’s system, what with his arriving from Hershey at Thanksgiving. In his 61 games in 2007-08, Boudreau went 20 games over .500 (37-17-7). Had that projected over the full season, the Caps not only would have won the Southeast handily but absolutely contended for first overall in the East (with 104 points, Montreal finished 10 better than Washington). It bears mentioning that Boudreau had to learn most of his new hockey club in mid-season just as they had to learn his system. This fall, Boudreau knows his roster quite well, they know him now by the title of Jack Adams holder, and he starts the season with a club as healthy and hungry as any the Caps have seen this decade. Let the good times roll.

(9) Renewed Might on the Right. What might have the Capitals’ fortunes been in the 2008 playoffs had they had the services of captain Chris Clark and his 30-goal skills and leadership? And what might a fully healthy Eric Fehr finally look like? We should find out in 2008-09. Both have told media late this summer that they’re “100 percent” and ready to go. We know what Viktor Kozlov, Matt Bradley, and Clark can do. Fehr is the wild card. But reasonably healthy, that quartet ought to offer some much-needed scoring balance on the right side of the Caps’ forward ranks.

(8) Is Karl Alzner NHL ready? In what appears to have been the final foray for the Caps in the NHL Entry Draft lottery, for some while anyway, the Caps selected Calgary Hitmen shutdown rearguard Karl Alzner with the 5th pick in the 2007 draft. In his draft class Alzner was lauded as being the “most NHL ready” of defense prospects. Nothing about Alzner’s ‘07-08 season suggested otherwise. He captained Canada’s Junior team to yet another gold medal, and he was named WHL Defenseman of the Year and WHL Player of the Year. The Caps may find themselves with an intriguing and difficult call to make on Alzner this training camp: today he may well be one the team’s top 6 talents on the blueline, but would his long-term development be better aided with top minutes in Hershey this season?

(7) Center by Committee. The Capitals have a clear no. 1 center (Nicklas Backstrom) and, in ability, potentially three no. 2s (Nylander, Fedorov, Laich). Brooks Laich will get a long look on a wing. Additionally, there is fantastic defensive play and faceoff ability between Dave Steckel and Boyd Gordon. Bruce Boudreau is virtually certain to carry 13 forwards out of camp, and you have to believe five of them will be centers. But who sits? And who earns no. 2 minutes? Will there be a trade?

(6) Who’s no. 1 in Net — in Hershey? Rarely at the start of a new season is there intrigue about the goalie rotation down on the farm, but the goalie story in the Caps’ organization is a lead one in 2008-09. George McPhee has indicated that in Michael Neuvirth and Simeon Varlamov he has two AHL-worthy 20-year-olds; neither belongs in the E. Additionally, Daren Machesney has developed solidly in Hershey. One option could be to loan out one of the kids to another American League club. But both 2006 draft picks possess talent such that there respective stays in minor pros could be brief ones. Meanwhile . . .

(5) It’s Certain That There’s Some Uncertainty in the Washington Net. Jose Theodore was signed by Washington the moment that contracts talks with Cristobal Huet fell apart. Theodore possesses nearly 450 games of NHL experience spread out over more than 10 years. His career has been marked by moments of exemplary play commonly followed by conspicuously mediocre results. He has Vezina and Hart trophies on his mantle and pitchfork and torch scars on his gear bag. Playing behind a strong team of forwards and defenders, expect him to look like a world-beater during many regular season nights in 2008-09; the postseason will be more the barometer of his signing. Somewhat overlooked in the Kolzig-to-Huet-to-Theodore transition — all of it carried off in less than 9 months’ time — is that the Capitals’ blueline corps will have to adjust to yet another new netminder’s angles and rebounds tendencies. And it’s a short preseason.

(4) Is Semin a Star? There’s absolutely no doubt that left wing Alexander Semin is an elite, world-class talent. His wrist shot is simply one of the finest on the planet. But to date he has not put together a complete season of health and high production. With the Caps’ top-six-plus skill, 2008-09 should Semin’s season to shine.

(3) Potential Pitfalls of Press Clippings. It was just late last November that the Washington Capitals resided in dead last territory in the NHL, their rebuild strivings generating little returns. One coaching and netminder change ushered in a division title, a sold out home rink, and a wild-about-hockey Washington, and one of the great from hell to heaven rises in Washington pro sports history. The summer delivered an abundance of awards recognitions for the feat. And the Caps’ feel-good story of last season has fostered a pervasive ‘they’re-the-team-to-watch-out-for‘ forecast for this season. But the team is hardly dynastic, and they’ll compete with plenty of quality at the top of the East (Philly, Montreal, and Pittsburgh) and throughout the league overall. They’ll also have fewer games against their Southeast rivals this season — hockey’s weakest division.

(2) Golden Era of Ovechkin. If you believe Wayne Gretzky, we haven’t seen anywhere near the best yet from Alexander Ovechkin. The Great One believes that Ovi can score 90. Today the hockey world is Alexander Ovechkin’s oyster. He enjoys a best-in-his-sport status, he loves the challenge of making Washington a hockey town, and in 2008-09 he will skate in possession of the richest contract in Washington pro sports history. Now 225 pounds and a training dynamo, he is arrived at something close to his physical prime. There is among his fast-accumulating hardware one lone conspicuous omission. His aim in ‘08-09 is to secure that one, too.

(1) As Good as It Gets? There were three striking qualities about Verizon Center in the final weeks of the 2008 season: it was consistently sold out; it was overwhelmingly red and partisan (except to Pierre McGuire’s eyes); and it was gloriously raucous and loud. It was an environment that I think caught even the Caps off guard; it seemed about two years ahead of forecast — if management could even imagine such environs here at all. Was it a fluke in response to a torrid and historic run, or is that the reception that hockey is hereafter to receive, the home team now competing, likely for a sizable number of years going forward, with coveted skill, depth, and youth? Washington’s hockey fans have been the butt of disrespect and ridicule for decades. A full season of Red Rockin’ during a lot of winning may squelch that slander permanently.

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, Alexander Semin, American Hockey League, Boyd Gordon, Bruce Boudreau, Chris Clark, Cristobal Huet, Daren Machesney, Dave Steckel, Eastern Conference, Eric Fehr, George McPhee, Hershey Bears, Jose Theodore, Karl Alzner, Kettler Capitals Iceplex, Michal Neuvirth, Montreal Canadiens, National Hockey League, Nicklas Backstrom, Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Prospects, Sergei Fedorov, Simeon Varlamov, Training Camp, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (1)

The Hot Ticket in Town: Hockey

By pucksandbooks

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Monday night the Capitals hosted their fourth and final open house at Verizon Center. My colleague Gustafsson attended one last month, and he reported being struck then by the scarcity of available seats, particularly in the Phone Booth’s lower bowl. As in, few seats available down low for any game in the 2008-09 season. Monday’s final open house afforded me an opportunity to verify this remarkable phenomenon with my own eyes — when it comes to claims of really full houses for hockey in this town, night after night, trust but verify, I say — and inquire about the strategies of a summer-long, creative and aggressive push by the Capitals’ sales staff to capitalize on the feel-very-good story that was, and is, hockey in Washington in 2008.

I met Jim Van Stone, Capitals’ Vice President of Ticket Sales and Service, at the F Street entrance to the Phone Booth near the start of the open house, briefly chatted with him about our respective summers, and then walked with him to a perch in the lower bowl. What I saw there astounded me.

We stood in an aisle between sections 100 and 121, two lower bowl sections encompassing perhaps 1,500 or more seats. Soon we were joined there by Tim McDermott, Capitals’ Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer. The Capitals had placed white placards on the backs of seats that were available for purchase in the new season. Among these thousand-plus, premium-priced two sections of seats there wasn’t a single seat to be had, for a single game, during the entirety of the 2008-09 hockey season. And the scene among the rest of the lower bowl wasn’t appreciably different: a smattering of available seats — many of them just singles — dotting the purple vista like rare dandelions in a well-cared-for lawn. Couldn’t have been 50 of them in the entire lower bowl.

The movement of hockey tickets for the new season has been a very well cared for venture by the Capitals’ sales staff. Management doubled their size at the start of the summer, and the enlarged sales army went on the offensive, incorporating new technology such as clever electronic brochures featuring Comcast’s Lisa Hillary, for instance; the enthusiastic ticket-pitch participation of Capitals’ players and even Head Coach Bruce Boudreau; and last but not least good old fashioned, time-tested, cold-calling perseverance.

There was one other element integral to summer’s startling sales volume, Van Stone told me: June’s FanFest out at Kettler, scheduled hard on the heels of the Caps’ domination of the NHL Awards Gala in Toronto. Recall that the Caps arranged to have all of that hardware — Ovie’s Pearson, Hart, and Richard trophies as well as Coach Boudreau’s Jack Adams’, set out at the practice facility for photographing and admiration by FanFest patrons.

“FanFest was phenomenal for us,” Van Stone told me. “You couldn’t put a price on that for us.”

He has a point. In those four trophies, each of which is about the height of Jeff Schultz and the weight of a stuffed gear bag, the Caps were able to showcase their glorious and star-studded present and pitch a credible claim that it was in place in Washington for as long as the mind could imagine. And in honors volume, likely being added to, soon.

I asked Van Stone about Comcast’s Hillary and her participation in marketing the team, and if he thought that could be interpreted as a conflict of interest for a reporter covering the team. He offered me what I thought was an insightful perspective on the strategy.

“You know what I’ve found in hockey — everyone’s a partner with you, everyone wants our game to be successful.

“It’s a bit of a tribal mindset,” he added.

I found this latter reflection spectacularly searing in its truth. Go to a “lifer” in our sport, someone with a career vested in it, seeking help to help the game, and expect to get both hands extended out for offered labor. And a smile to go along with.

Alexander Ovechkin wants to make Washington a hockey town. And he’s well on his way. I think Hillary wants to cover a hockey town. I just want to shame Washington Post sports editors a little.

But back to the Phone Booth, fast becoming a building of burgeoning humanity. Now the Capitals of course have no direct control over allocation in the Club Level — the best-seats bane of the Booth. But just as we saw in ‘07-’08’s stretch run and in the first round of the playoffs, expect a sizable set of fannies in there this season as opposed to the vast sea of mid-level emptiness of years past. Winners with out-of-this-world superstars have a way of heating up interest in the lobbying and fat-cat perches.

More tangible, however, is the disappearance of seats in the loge levels. Those are the right-above-the-lower-bowl set at both ends of the rink (orange in your pictured seating chart). Really good seats. One end section of them is entirely gone, for the entire season.

“Do you see those three white placards on the three seats in the other end?” McDermott asked me. “That’s all that’s left.”

Just three single seats available out of the two end loge sections. (At this moment I briefly recalled Yahoo’s Ross McKeon and his call this summer to pull up the stakes on hockey in Washington. You know, for Washington’s indifference to the sport.)

Also gone, entirely, for the season: the Eagle’s Nest; and, upper bowl corner perches typically priced at about $25.

The Caps have set aside 2,000 seats for groups and an additional 2,000 seats for individual game purchases. Individual games go on sale this Saturday. Van Stone was blunt about the fate of high-profile games such as Detroit’s Saturday matinee arrival in January and the two dates with Pittsburgh: “They won’t survive the weekend,” he predicted.

All told, the Caps have a solid 10,000 “full equivalent” season tickets on the books, which doesn’t account for another 2,000 patrons seated in suites and the Club level. More could have been sold were it not for the group and individual game set-asides. McDermott told me that game-day sales and walk-ups account for an additional 3,000-5,000 purchases. When you run the numbers, the turnstiles are-a-humming: really, on no night in 2008-09 should Verizon Center draw a crowd for hockey south of 15,000. The Caps ranked 20th out of 30 teams last season in the number of tickets actually purchased (as opposed to the Susan O’Malley Attendance Meter), and on Monday night McDermott predicted the team would rank somewhere between 10th and 15th in paid attendance during the upcoming season.

More good news: Student Rush is returning. It’ll be on Thursday nights. $15 for a seat in the upper bowl, $35 for one in the lower (better be a small campus), and again this year, the students get fed, too: a Chipotle burrito comes with.

The Caps have so many new plan holders (”well over 4,000,” Van Stone said) that the team held two nights of orientation for first-timer season ticket holders out at Kettler earlier this summer. All of the benefits of being a season-long stakeholder were explained to them, and at the end of the seminar the newbies were invited to skate on the Kettler sheet with Dave Steckel, Karl Alzner, and Eric Fehr. (Symbolic of the team’s youth.)

The Caps this summer have made having a ticket stake in the team a special status. Beyond the value of having guaranteed access to seats for every game, membership, the Caps have demonstrated, indeed does have its privileges. All season ticket holders were mailed a commemorative laminated ticket for opening night against the ‘Hawks, and all were also shipped lanyards with a plastic sheathing for their tickets. VIP planners — those down hard by the glass in rows A and B — have instead of individual tickets a laminated badge akin to the all-access passes we’ve all seen worn by roadies for rock bands. Cool stuff.

If you build it they will come is the memorable refrain from a very memorable Kevin Costner sports movie. The “It” being hockey is being built in Washington, and they are coming, very much red and rockin’.

Filed in Comcast SportsNet, Hockey Rinks, Hockey Towns, Lisa Hillary, Media, Morning cup-a-joe, TV, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (10)

Nurturing the Fashion Passion of HockeyWashington

By pucksandbooks

Monday, August 25, 2008

What does Rock the Red mean to you today, well away from its inauguration and deployment during the 2007-08 season? What does it mean to the Capitals now? How should it be cultivated, nurtured, and deployed in 2008-09?

Also: was it hooey and hokie or a heartfelt rallying cry for you? Do you want to see more of it in the new season? Should Verizon Center be Redded Out for Cristobal Huet’s return with the ‘Hawks on Opening Night?

Let me submit that what we sat among and saw on television in the stands last spring was special. It was an uprising. Of passion-fashion. It was a community powerfully connecting with its hockey team.

(It actually forced old media print columnists to come and cover hockey.)

Let me also submit that it wasn’t fad or fleeting in its heartbeat — that it’s an indigenous state of the contemporary hockey mind here. Team officials in Philadelphia tried to replicate what was originated here in their rink, but they had to distribute thousands of orange t-shirts in their rip-off act, and in the end, it came off as copycat, forced, and generic.

There will be more genuine Caps’ fans in Verizon Center this coming season than perhaps in any season preceding, as thousands of Washingtonians have purchased season tickets this summer. The opportunity will be red-ripe to Red Out the building whenever the team wants to.

Personally, I have one deeply ingrained reason for wanting to see the scheme continue — but with great care: the sight of an orange-and-black-less Washington rink for games against Philthy — playoff games at that! — remains something of a dream theater to me.

In real time last spring there was a searing sense that the Caps had, with the look, connected with their much-maligned fanbase in durable fashion. Metro trains never looked so gorgeous. Folks painted their faces and dyed their hair. Some wore red socks. Men in red dresses never looked so . . . mainstream.

That Alexander Ovechkin would lead our hockey team to great feats like the against-all-odds Southeast Division title last season was, and is, from my vantage, merely predictable byproduct for his other-wordly game. But that he could engineer, in Pied Piper red-fashion, the obliteration of the enemy’s colors and pawns from our building, precisely when they most wanted to be there, that’s special. I’m not sure I thought I’d ever see that happen.

Of course, in identifying Ovechkin as architect and engineer of our awesome new atmosphere I’m conflating his on-ice heroics with the clever atmosphere actions of the team’s marketing pros. And AO alone among Caps’ players shouldn’t be exclusively credited for 07-08’s home rink euphoria. But he is, for lack of a better description, our banner boy — certainly the face of the franchise. He is the Pied Piper of Pucks in this town.

It’s amusing to think that perhaps AO foreshadowed the Caps’ special spring scene at home back in July 2007, when the first installments of the team’s new colors and look made their way to Russia.

Those who participated in the Red Outs, as well as those Caps’ fans watching on television at home, likely are of one mind when it comes to rolling out the Red again: it ought not to be a commonplace occurrence, it ought never to be trite and trifling. It ought to be summoned only for truly special occasions. It’s like a team’s special occasion jerseys or sweaters, in a sense — you always want them to remain special.

Good news on that front. Tim McDermott, the Caps’ Senior VP, Chief Marketing Officer, this morning told me, “Red will be our brand campaign/theme again this year . . . we will select a few high profile games for a Rock the Red/Red Out theme.”

And note that the Red Rally Cry still has to be tested against Pennsylvania’s other team. Hmm . . . should we Red-Out all games against the two Keystone Staters? And by extension, should we avoid the fashion-passion statement against all Southeast division foes, further damning an already depressing division alliance? Or, the Caps and HockeyWashington might opt to Red Out the Phone Booth on November 10, against Tampa, and welcome back Barry Melrose to the NHL in spirited fashion.

And welcome back a certain netminder, too.

Going forward, should the team, on its website, make the selection of Red Out nights an interactive force, and poll the impassioned on their fashion in advance of select regular season games? Should season ticket holders have a special say? For certain there should be specially priced Killian’s Red at the concession stands.

There was a marvelous viral quality to the rollout of the Red last spring. It was a beautiful infection, anything but unhealthy. Long may it afflict us.

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, Cristobal Huet, Morning cup-a-joe, Olaf Kolzig, Puck Sodas, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (15)

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)

One Washington Hockey Fan’s Very Good Fortune

By pucksandbooks

Thursday, July 31, 2008

Letter received today from the NCAA:

“Dear pucksandbooks:

We are pleased to inform you that your offer to purchase tickets contained in your application for tickets to the 2009 NCAA Men’s Frozen Four at the Verizon Center in Washington, D.C., has been accepted. The semifinal games will be played at 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Eastern time, Thursday, April 9, and the championship game will be played at 7 p.m. Eastern time, Saturday, April 11. Please note that game times are subject to change.

You will receive 2 all-session tickets . . . Tickets and seat locations will be distributed in March 2009 . . .

The seating capacity for the 2009 Men’s Frozen Four will be 18,875 [interesting, that]. Priority ticket applicants and those individuals applying for the first time have been allocated 9,626 tickets. The remaining tickets are reserved for the four participating institutions, the NCAA membership (e.g., athletic directors, coaches and various committee members), the host institution, the local organizing committee and other groups affiliated with the NCAA . . .

We thank you for applying for tickets to the 2009 Men’s Frozen Four and appreciate your interest in and support of NCAA ice hockey.

Sincerely,

NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Championship Staff

Filed in College Hockey, Frozen Four, Verizon Center, Washington the Hockey Town| Permalink| Comments (24)

Fedorov II Returns to the NHL

By OrderedChaos (Mike Rucki)

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

The New Jersey Devils have signed Fedor Fedorov, Sergei’s younger brother. Fedor spent last year with Dynamo Moscow, tallying 26 points in 49 games.

The Devils visit the Phone Booth twice this season (Oct. 18, Nov. 14).

Filed in New Jersey Devils, Sergei Fedorov, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (6)

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)

Morning Cup-a-Spirit: This Bigotry Against Babes, I Won’t Stand for It!

By pucksandbooks

Monday, July 14, 2008

To read the reactions left only here related to the Caps’ plans, announced over the weekend, to introduce SpiritBabes to the team’s home games next season, you’d think management announced that Verizon Center was hosting 41 brothels next winter.

It’s too warm in there for brothels anyway.

Would that the peasants took up pitchforks and torches in these numbers when the league bleep-canned hockey jerseys for Reebok’s tuxedo vests a year ago.

Count me among those with a more inclusive spirit — one who will approach the scheme with an open mind. I take the owner at his word (”I am a family man with a wife and daughter“).

I was all prepared to write about my first one-on-one chat with Hershey Bears’ head coach Bob Woods on Saturday when this fracas broke out later that day. No wonder Washington is consistently regarded as a sex-appeal-less city.

In reality, though, all the NHL is doing is catching up — modestly, I might add — with football’s spirited sidelines. Or Fox News. In a culture of seriously foxy FoxNews, is this really anything to get all that worked up about?

But by late yesterday we’d received pointed clarification from the Capitals on the matter: “The squad won’t be ice girls in the traditional sense . . . It’s also not a dance squad, a la the NBA. It’s more of an evolution of the entertainment team we have had in the past” [the one that most in the stands thought was remarkably annoying -- I'm all for evolving that].

Still, I found it riotously funny to learn that Bruce Cassidy had contacted the team’s sales department Sunday seeking a full plan for next season. And Smoken Al Koken — has he been revived since Saturday’s news?

Actually, you can make a compelling argument I think that hockey, particularly in markets like Washington, is much more in need of some sultry spirit than is the NFL. Mr. Leonsis, in defending the move on Sunday, noted that it was with new revenue in mind that the team pursued the idea. In case you hadn’t noticed, television ain’t exactly throwing mad dough at the NHL’s 30 clubs these days. Meanwhile, the league’s salary cap has mushroom-clouded by more than $15 million in just the three seasons since the lockout.

It’s swell that we’re all in love with this rockin’ garage band called hockey, but the band still has to be paid, and if Hooters-Lite (not Hustler) wants to underwrite the Friday night jam session, I think the beer will still taste cold. Count me as one who wants a hockey team’s practices, scrimmages, and camps to remain free and open to the public, year round.

Anyone remember the millions the NHL spent on its post-lockout relaunch television advertisements — you remember the ones, the “My NHL” spots featuring the hockey locker room beefcake, rather shirtless, massage-motivated by a Fox News anchor in the pre-game? I remember thinking the first time I watched it, ‘My, how shirtless this hockey player is, and my, how little I now want lunch.’ Now that was profane, and brought to you by Bettman & Co. I’m confident that Ted doesn’t have quite that in mind.

I’m not sure what revenue the Washington Redskins’ cheerleaders bring in to the team, but whenever they make community appearances you seldom hear of Puritanical protests accompanying them or of anyone having a real lousy time at them. In fact, once in a while, the tight end marries the babe. Maybe the SpiritBabe will marry the bachelor blogger.

The Capitals, and hockey in Washington, need increased exposure (if you’ll pardon my word choice). If the Caps’ SpiritBabes are going to be out and about town during and after seasons hence, perhaps toting along a few congenial players with them, it’s bound to improve the team’s visibility, as well as that of the sport.

And in our recessionary times, where is the acknowledgment of the idea’s job creation ???

There’s been all manner of hyperbole associated with this past weekend’s high-pitched hue and cry reaction. For instance, some have alleged that the aisle ladies in their shimmer and shake will distract from the play on the ice. On nights when the Caps lay an egg, I agree — and let’s hope so. On those nights especially I’ll be glad for Verizon Center’s new state-of-the-art, high-rise, high definition, center ice scoreboard. But really, if the Alexanders are barreling down the ice on a two-on-one scoring chance, how many men’s and women’s eyes will be fixated on tight fannies in the stands?

And what of the selectivity of outrage in this instance? When it’s Mites on Ice, all are quiet, despite the fact that with that exhibition the laughter is generated at the expense of really, really short people. But raise the specter of pretty girls prettying up the District’s rink, and all hell breaks loose.

The only genuine harm that can come from this scheme is if, to quote the wit of one of the few in this town with a sense of humor, who imparted it in the maelstrom of message board madness yesterday, “they come down to the Johnny Walker Club after the game and are attracted to out-of-shape middle-aged men.”

When Messrs. Vogel, Parker, Rucki and I were taking in the World Championships in Moscow in the spring of 2007, we had no shortage of aisle-jiggling accompanying our blogging endeavors (see photo above). I think I can speak for the four of us in saying that we got our work done just dandy. In point of fact, the real distraction in terms of Moscow hotties diverting our gaze came with the middle-of-the-night trollop parade through our hotel’s lobby (where we were blog drafting), aided and abetted by bellhops on the cash take.

Baltic beauties in boas and hip-high black boots. Naughty, naughty Nikitas! Sorry, that was the indulgence of reverie.

Anyway, over in Moscow, we learned that NHL scouts were in favor of off-ice girls.

Perhaps since Alexander Ovechkin has to spend the next 13 seasons skating here we should let him be the arbiter in the matter.

Filed in Football, Hardcore Hockey Fans, Hockey Art, Hockey Rituals, Ice Girls, Mike Vogel, OFB in Russia, Other Sports, Puck Bunnies, Redskins, Spike Parker, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (22)

The Capitals Have You (and Your Commute) Covered

By OrderedChaos (Mike Rucki)

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

All Aboard As the Caps vs. Flyers Game 7 third period ended in a tie, I turned to my wife and said, “If the game goes past midnight, I’ve got enough cash for the cab home (to Bethesda) — happily, if the Caps win.” Metro Rail closes at midnight, but the cost of a taxi home was nothing next to the chance of a multi-OT Game 7, particularly one that could result in a Capitals victory.

Sadly, as we well know, that’s not how the night ended. But it got me thinking: What would happen if a game went past Metro’s last call? As players and fans at the quadruple OT sharks at Stars game in Round 2 stumbled into the morning hours, I reflected that Dallas fans would not experience the same problem that Washington fans might. After all, Dallas has practically no public transportation, so 99.9% of the fans likely drove to the game. It’s a different story in our nation’s capital.

So in light of another multi-OT grinder last night, and the likelihood of the Capitals’ frequent return to the post-season for years to come, be reassured: The Capitals and WMATA have got you covered.

A WMATA representative provided a breakdown of their policy for the Nationals and other DC-area sporting events. She explained that WMATA has a standing agreement with Nationals Stadium to operate the rail system beyond normal hours if Nationals games go into extra innings — which makes sense, since any of the Nats’ 81 regular-season games could go well into extra innings. With regard to other sports events, “the sponsoring team makes arrangements with Metro in advance to operate beyond normal hours.”

I also contacted Kurt Kehl of the Washington Capitals; he confirmed that, in the event of extended playoff OT (or even, one would assume, some sort of interruption that significantly delays a regular-season contest), fans need not worry about getting home:

The simple answer is yes, Metro will always make sure that fans get home after a game at the Verizon Center. Metro will keep Gallery Place open and have trains available to get people home. Metro has had a long-standing agreement with Verizon Center to make sure no one would ever be stranded, and they have service agreements in place just in case a hockey, basketball or concert event runs past midnight Sunday to Thursday.

It seems the Caps can simply inform Metro that a given game may be pushing or exceeding Metro’s typical operating hours, and the trains will be there.

So as Alex Ovechkin leads the Capitas into the 2008-09 playoffs and beyond, Capitals fans needn’t let travel concerns make them consider early departure — they can devote full attention to the ice.

As for work the next day . . . well, that’s what caffeine is for, no?

Filed in Alexander Ovechkin, Baseball, Basketball, Front Office, Verizon Center, Washington Capitals| Permalink| Comments (5)

The Capitals’ Top 10 Storylines for 2007-08

By pucksandbooks

Monday, April 28, 2008

10. The Rebuild Is Over. Owner Leonsis uttered this proclamation during the preseason, later claiming that the season’s barometer for success would be qualifying for the postseason. Through the middle of November both seemed delusionally wishful thinking. But when the right guy arrived behind the bench, when the Caps’ skilled young core was encouraged to attack, the team took off, rampaging from last in the league at Thanksgiving to a Southeast Division crown on the regular season’s final Saturday. The right pieces indeed were in place, and the team’s future has never been as promising.

9. Backstrom: the no. 1 Pivot of the Future — and the Present. Really nobody knew what Nicklas Backstrom’s rookie season in the NHL would bring. During last July’s Development Camp, he seemed to struggle a bit with making plays on a smaller sheet. But he looked better at the end of camp than at its start, and by September’s training camp he looked even more adjusted. Like other skilled players in Glen Hanlon’s system, he struggled. Like other skilled players under Bruce Boudreau, he blossomed.

His 69 points on the season represented the second-most prolific rookie season in Caps’ history (behind a certain precocious Russian in 2005-06). Most telling: 60 of his points came in the final 61 games. He adjusted all right. He played his finest hockey of the season when you want a player to — in the postseason. In so doing he defied a long tradition of rookies fading under the rigors of an 82-game season. And he rightfully earned a nomination for the Calder trophy.

8. One Seriously Sorry Sheet. Washington’s never been known to offer a quality sheet of ice for its NHL games, but the matter gained unprecedented urgency when in December team captain Chris Clark spoke with commendable candor to the Washington Post about the indefensible ice at home. This surface wasn’t merely bad aesthetically, it was, suggested Clark, injurious to players. Clark himself lost virtually the entire season to a groin injury. Flyers’ winger Mike Knuble injured his leg when he caught it in a Verizon Center rut in the playoffs. And game 7’s sheet was so ill-prepared that arena workers could be seen repairing it on their hands and knees in the moments before puck-drop — and throughout the game.

Whatever greatly skilled and exciting roster Capitals’ management assembles for the future, it won’t much matter if at home it’s asked to compete on an ability-leveling and integrity-sacrificing surface.

7. Deadline Day Doozies. Trade deadline day was supposed to be quiet for the Caps. It turned out to be anything but. General manager George McPhee engineered a dramatic infusion of postseason experience and skill in areas of weakness on February 26, including securing a no.1 netminder in Cristobal Huet from Montreal for merely a second-round pick in the 2009 Entry Draft. All three players acquired on deadline day played pivotal roles in the season’s final 18 games.

In his Capitals’ debut on February 29, Huet stopped all 18 shots he faced in backstopping the Caps to a 4-0 win in New Jersey. He went 11-2 in his 13 starts for the Caps, winning the final nine games he started. In the biggest game the Caps played in years, Sergei Fedorov, acquired for 2007 second round selection Teddy Ruth, was named the game’s first star in the Caps’ 3-1 win over Florida on April 5, which vaulted the team to the SouthEast title and the postseason for the first time since 2003. He was especially adept in the faceoff circle. Matt Cooke played a less significant part statistically during the stretch run but recaptured his active, pest-like play from years ago in Vancouver night in and night out. All three veterans were credited with providing vital leadership to the young and inexperienced Caps.

6. Mike Green: the no. 1 Gun Arrives. If there was one overarching question confronting the Caps’ blueline heading into the 2007-08 season, it was: is there a no.1 Gun among? If last September you thought there was, you knew something the rest of hockey didn’t. In 2006-07, Mike Green played 70 games for the Caps, tallying just 2 goals and 10 assists. He offered glimpses of high-end promise, but he also seemed years away from becoming consistent and reliable and earning a top pairing assignment. But this past season Green blossomed into a dominant, mature-for-his-years force. He led the entire league in goals by a defenseman during the regular season, and he followed that with a superb playoff series — so much so that Flyers’ head coach John Stevens very publicly made it known that Mike Green was a weapon his team had to strategize to stop. The no.1 Gun on the Caps’ blueline has arrived.

5. AO: The Best Hockey Player on the Planet. Alexander Ovechkin’s hardware-hogging brilliance during 2007-08 earned him broadcasts of “Ovechkin Ovations” on the NHL Network and, more importantly, ascension over the Nova Scotian as the game’s greatest talent. His 65 goals during the regular season were the most scored by a Capital in franchise history, and he became just the 19th player in NHL history to score 60 goals in a season. By the end of the regular season he’d staked unassailable claims to both the Richard and Ross trophies and was a near mortal lock to command both the Hart trophy and the Lester Pearson award for his most valuable performance. At one point no less than the Great One suggested that his seemingly unbreakable record of 92 goals scored in a single season could be within Ovechkin’s visored viewfinder.

4. Canning Glen; Finding the Right Guy Right up the Road. After winning their first three games of the season, the Capitals proceeded to lose 15 of their next 18 and plummet to the very bottom of the NHL standings. While Glen Hanlon may well have been the right coach to preside over the rebuilding Caps beginning not long before the team began its purge of high-priced, under-achieving talent in the 2003-04 season, autumn 2007 seemed to deliver a resoundingly rotten verdict on his ability to advance the team to where management deemed appropriate for 2007-08.

No one would suggest that Hanlon didn’t offer the organization his fullest possible effort. But by late 2007 that effort wasn’t working. “He knew as soon as he saw me this morning,” McPhee told the Washington Post on Thanksgiving day. “He said, ‘I wouldn’t have known what to do today.’ ”

Enter Bruce Boudreau, aka “Gabby.” On Thanksgiving Eve Bruce Boudreau was in his third season behind the Hershey Bears’ bench. He’d enjoyed an auspicious first two seasons there: a Calder Cup title in his first season in Hershey in the spring of 2006 and a return to the finals the following season. He’d won a Kelly Cup title in the East Coast League as well. Still, to many Capitals’ fans, he appeared to be just another “no name” plucked from the farm.

Probably it was with this in mind that Hershey Bears’ Senior Manager for Communications John Walton authored a memorable open letter to Capitals’ fans on the day that Gabby was announced as the new Caps’ coach. “Know this first and foremost,” Walton wrote in his letter. “He’s a winner . . . For what it’s worth, we have seen the magic here. We’re more than willing to share.” Continue reading ›

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Frozen Moments, in Red

By OrderedChaos (Mike Rucki)

Friday, April 25, 2008

Yes, the dull ache from the season’s end remains. But as we head into the weekend, I hope you enjoy these moments in red — photos from the Washington Capitals’ playoff run that remind us it was an incredible ride.

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