It seems reasonable to posit that Olie Kolzig’s play as a middle-thirtysomething netminder during the first two seasons after the lockout was distinctly solid. Not spectacular, clearly, but quite solid. He didn’t have the most formidable blueline corps in front of him, which to some extent his numbers reflected, but few in the sport would have pointed to those seasons and suggested that Olie Kolzig was no longer a no. 1 netminder in the NHL.
Heading into 2007-08, we knew that Kolzig the gracefully aging elder statesman was a superbly conditioned and distinctly dedicated professional athlete. He spoke very openly about the adjustments he was incorporating in the twilight of his career to ready himself for a new and long season and its rigors. This was an explicit acknowledgment that he was feeling the effects of Father Time. Still, he appeared to be aging a bit like wine. During training camp he spoke of playing another two or three seasons after ‘07-08, under a new contract, hopefully with Washington.
Last fall, the present and the forecasted future for Olie Kolzig seemed promising, without a scintilla of wishful thinking attached to it.
The difficulty, the angst, as it’s settled in among Kolzig’s legion of loyal fans here this spring derives singularly from what settled in upon Kolzig’s game this past season. Most glaringly, October through January: really bad numbers. Now Olie Kolzig, save his Vezina season and his spectacular run through the postseason in 1998, has never really been about stellar numbers. But this season’s were unprecedented in their wretchedness. At one point deep into the season the statistical Olie Kolzig didn’t rank among the league’s top 40 netminders. George McPhee wouldn’t have dealt for a no. 1 netminder bearing looming unrestricted free agency unless he believed he needed an upgrade — immediately — in net. The acquisition of Cristobal Huet proved to be one of the GM’s most impressive personnel moves in his 10-year run in Washington.
No one would reasonably have suggested that with Kolzig in net instead of Huet the Caps would have won 11 of their last 12 regular season games and stolen a Southeast title away from Carolina. The lone loss during that run was with Kolzig in net.
Moreover, there was something peculiar and unnerving about Kolzig’s very public rebuke of Bruce Boudreau to the Washington Post’s Mike Wise at a time when the team was really gelling and making early rumblings of transforming its season. He intimated that the locker room had become a home for Hershey Bears, and that he was a bit out of place in it. He very explicitly called into question the head coach’s faculties in handling goaltenders. The bellyaching seemed out of character. It seemed distracting. Knowing what we know about Kolzig and the franchise deep in the spring of 2008, one wonders if that wasn’t the breach from which there was no repair.
Which brings us to early this offseason when every apparent indicator suggests that Olie Kolzig has played his last game in a Capitals’ sweater. The situation strikes many of the team’s fans as outlandish, as cruel and cold-hearted to the core on the part of management. These fans are reacting as fans should. Caps’ management, however, is acting precisely as it should.
The fans, understandably, want the franchise’s all-time best netminder to enjoy the promising harvest from a rough rebuild. Kolzig having guided the team to its only appearance in the Stanley Cup finals, this thinking goes, it’s only cosmically just that he’d lead them into postseasons ahead, when the Caps would enjoy roles as favorites rather than long-shots and underdogs. He’s been through so much this sorry decade, his sympathizers sigh. And it’s true. But fairness and cosmic justice and Hollywood endings aren’t the domain of the National Hockey League.
This is about business. The business of winning hockey games. And the cold hard reality is that in this Olie Kolzig NHL offseason the skill set he has to offer is at odds with the present composition and ambition of the only NHL hockey organization he’s ever served. Gordie Howe shouldn’t have left Detroit, ever, but this isn’t a mythical, age-resistant athlete we’re talking about. Olie Kolzig, somewhat sadly, but also somewhat predictably and certainly rather naturally, is aging away from the Capitals’ ascension.
He may well find gainful if non-no.1 netminder employment elsewhere in the NHL this offseason. And as with Peter Bondra, Dale Hunter, and Calle Johansson before him, if that comes to pass it will be jarring and painful to see him compete in a sweater not the Capitals’. Against the Capitals. The man who stood so tall when all around him hockey was so small here actually working to defeat the Caps? I could almost feel an opposing force emanating from the keyboard as I typed the thought.
But by April 5, when Cristobal Huet backstopped the Caps into storyline-of-the-year contention, the business writing was bright on the arena wall. No longer losers, with losers’ payrolls, the winning Caps now need to pay up for services very well rendered. (Think Mike Green.) The team needs not Olie Kolzig so much as his $5.45 million per.
Kolzig and his agent, to judge by their public pronouncements, believe that #37 is worthy of no.1 dough and no. 1 minutes, somewhere. The Caps can’t deliver either to him. It’s really that simple. There is also the matter of their having a capable backup netminder under contract at a budget-friendly rate for ‘08-’09. And Brent Johnson’s contract will expire right about the time it would appear probable that one of a stable of young, highly skilled, recently drafted netminders is ready to ascend to an apprenticeship behind Cristobal Huet or someone like him.
It’s business — the business of pro hockey. Uncomfortable at times to be sure, but never sidelined for sentimentality.
Enough about business, though. Olie Kolzig deserves his night of honor, he deserves to have his sweater retired, when the timing is right, and the wager here is that it’ll happen. Kolzig with his commitment to his club and his leadership in his hockey community came to embody what fans cherish most about pro athletes: he was the rare superior performer and role model. His fans deserve a night to shower him with a decade’s-plus worth of admiration. But until that night, gone now seemingly forever is Verizon Center’s chant of “Olie, Olie, Olie.” The place won’t quite be the same.
Hall of Fame netminder Eddie Giacomin played 10 seasons for the Rangers before being dealt to Detroit. He famously discussed his return to Madison Square Garden to face New York as a Red Wing, where Rags’ fans stood and thundered down — drowning out the national anthem — chants of “Eddie, Eddie, Eddie” while Giacomin stood in his new crease with tears streaming down his cheeks.
“The New York crest is embedded in Eddie Giacomin’s heart,” he said of that night and New York’s impact on his hockey career.
Giacomin never won a Stanley Cup. He also never forgot where was his home in hockey.
Let it be said — God willing one day soon — that this player, his organization, and his fans realized that Olie Kolzig is Washington’s Eddie Giacomin.
A bit more backfile before I lay my bombshell of a theory on you. I was able to arrive in the Verizon Center press lounge reasonably early in the 5:00 hour Tuesday. It was a zoo in there, as you might imagine. There were a lot of friendly faces and plenty of new arrivals as well. It being a game 7, I wanted to survey the pros — the men and women who get paid to work hockey as a beat, and especially the veteran ones who’ve worked these decisive games before — to try and gain a sense of how they thought this remarkable series would conclude.
Through the middle of the first week of March, we’re gaining, at long last, a firm sense of identities in the Southeast division. To state the most obvious, Tampa and Atlanta have forks in them: It’s a three-team race through the final 15 games, and Florida could be the next casualty. Their no. 2 goalie is their best and hottest goalie.
Do not seem to be enjoying themselves.
