Op Bevroren Blog

The great Bob McDonald was singing the national anthem near 7:00 Tuesday night in a darkened Verizon Center when, standing high above the playing surface in the press box, I noticed something most peculiar: two uniformed Verizon Center maintenance workers were, to Bob’s immediate left, on their knees, trying to remain inconspicuous, a bucket stationed between them, doing something of a repair nature to the ice quite near a goal cage.

This was transpiring some 120 seconds before the puck-drop for an Eastern Conference quarterfinal Game 7 in the Stanley Cup playoffs. The maintenance workers performed their labor while the arena lights were dimmed and while most of the arena was patriotically distracted. It was abundantly clear that they didn’t want their work to be noticed.

As odd as this sight was, I didn’t make much note of it at the time. I think I was consumed by the novelty, the spectacle, of taking in my first playoff game 7 from a press box to pay it much notice.

Then I encountered Daniel Briere’s reflection to the Washington Times’ Corey Masisak yesterday afternoon. This is what Briere said:

“Another thing that favored us was the condition of the ice,â€? he said. “It was so bad that it was tough for guys like Semin, Backstrom and Ovechkin to get anything going, the ice was so bad. That was another thing that went our way.”

Twice in the same sentence Briere used the words “so bad” to describe Verizon Center’s ice surface Tuesday. Post-game, Briere was amid a madhouse celebration of Flyers’ teammates. What in the world was he doing flapping his yap to a Washington Times’ reporter about Verizon’s Center’s ice surface . . . unless it really was part of a storyline of the game?

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.

I was able to chat up 11 press members before seating myself upstairs at my assigned seat, eight affiliated with Washington media, two with Philly, one with a Canadian outlet. All eleven reporters forecasted a Caps’ victory Tuesday night. That sort of unanimity, imbalanced as the survey sample was, struck me as odd, particularly for a series as closely contested as this one. But it matched forecasts I’d seen on television since late Monday night.

With two of the scribes I pressed the matter. Why so Caps’-certain, I asked? The answers were the same, and interesting. The Caps had matured about midway through the series — learned tough lessons from the series’ first three games. Moreover, they were able to adapt in the series in a way that the one-weapon Flyers weren’t: the big-bodied Caps could go physical, whereas the bruising Flyers couldn’t hope to out-finesse the highly skilled Caps.

These reporters mentioned the word “momentum,” if at all, only at the very end of our dialogue, almost as an afterthought. The one variable of vulnerability for the Caps, a few of them suggested, was if somehow Cristobal Huet turned in a dog of a showing. Unlikely, they suggested, but possible.

The Flyers as we all know prevailed Tuesday night, defying the forecast of all 11 hockey media pros I surveyed and a host of national television commentators. I didn’t really think much about this oddity until late yesterday afternoon.

Over a beer early Wednesday evening, without a game to monitor for the first time in months, I had this thought: couldn’t it be possible that all 11 reporters presumed, subconsciously of course, that the Caps Tuesday night at home would be skating on a sheet of ice comparable in quality to Philly’s from the night before?

Makes sense. The two cities, close as they are to one another, experience basically identical weather, and both are home to multi-purpose venues experiencing virtually identical challenges in terms of attaining hockey ice integrity. And perhaps more to the point: fresh in the minds of these reporters was the nature of the goals the Caps scored in game 6 just the night before: that dazzling exchange between Brooks Laich, Alexander Semin, and Nicklas Backstrom on the first Caps’ goal, the one that led Pierre McGuire to issue a warning to the rest of the Eastern conference for its virtuosity; then, Viktor Kozlov’s near 100-ft. bullet, to the tape, of Alexander Ovechkin’s stick blade up the center of the ice, for a third-period breakaway, game-winning tally. And lastly, the insurance marker — a perfectly flat, cross-ice setup from Laich to Ovechkin for a bullet one-timer Martin Biron never saw.

Those type of plays can only be made on decent ice. Those type of plays weren’t made just one night later — though some of them were attempted. On Tuesday night the Caps, on about a half dozen attempts, tried long-range, middle-of-the-ice passes from various players to Ovechkin and Alexander Semin, seeking to replicate game 6’s success. All of them failed, most of them bouncing over or away from the recipients’ stick blade.

Also conspicuous Tuesday night, in light of the preceding night’s success in breakout passes and offensive zone entry, was the Caps’ reliance on dumping and chasing. Why so dramatic a reversal in tactics just 24 hours removed from stunning success — and before 18,000 lunatic-loud supporters?

The explanation, it seems to me, is both simple and shocking: the Caps had no home-ice advantage very late this spring; indeed, as Daniel Briere noted, they had a distinct disadvantage at home. Worse, it was a wound self-inflicted in nature. A most unnecessary one. At one time not all that long ago the Verizon Center aptly demonstrated its ability to chill out, and get the building feeling like a hockey rink should. Correspondingly, the hockey played on the sheet within was of comparatively high quality. But despite the absence of Verizon Center’s other principal tenant, the Wizards, over the weekend, event staff was unable to deliver a competent playing surface for a game 7 in the playoffs — for perhaps the most anticipated and important hockey game Washington, D.C., has hosted in a decade.

It was — is — a scandal. Continue reading ›