Another year in the books

Seventeen years ago on this date, we posted our first entry in this space.  This is the 5,449th entry, and no, it's not the last.  It has been quite a ride over these 17 years, from the depths of the rebuild to years of frustrating playoff results after promising regular seasons to watching the boys skate the Stanley Cup around T-Mobile Arena in 2018 and partying with it like no other team before or since.

Blogging has changed quite a bit in the 17 years since we started this, but one thing is constant.  Those who write about the Caps in this format, whether as one-person operations or as teams of fans, share a common love of the sport and the Capitals.  We are proud to be one of them and hope to be doing this for years to come.

Go Caps!!!

Blogstronauts!

Verizon Center has been home to its share of fans who have displayed unique approaches to getting the fans involved in Caps games. We’ve had horns and cowbells. We’ve had booming voices and rave lights. This year, we saw the debut of “Capstronaut.” And Capstronaut got me thinking about…

Bloggers.

Rewind back to the 1960’s. Well, back to 1959, to be precise. A new government agency – the National Aeronautics and Space Administration – was charged with putting a man into space. And to that end they administered a lengthy selection process to select seven “astronauts” to be the first wave of pioneers to leave the earth wearing the red, white, and blue on the sleeve of their spacesuits.

As the “Original Seven” became the names associated with the Mercury manned space program, NASA had to recruit men to serve in the next phase of manned space flight, and hence, “The Next Nine” were born in 1962. They would be followed by “The Fourteen” in 1963, selected primarily to serve the lunar missions that would come later that decade.

You can almost see that sort of “generational” effect growing up around the Capitals blogging community. We started our own scribbles back in July 2005, and (he said with all humility) you might think of that “era” of Caps blogging as the Mercury program era. There were a few blogs out there – the pioneers like Off Wing Opinion (with blogs dating back to 2002), On Frozen Blog, and Japers Rink (think of them as the Alan Shepard, Gordon Cooper, and John Glenn of the Mercury phase, while we might be more the “Scott Carpenter”).

But quite a community has grown up to fill Caps fans’ growing need for information – numbers, features, in-game reports, previews, recaps, pictures, interviews, videos, even translations (given the European influence on the roster). We had more blogs take up the “mission,” so to speak – Puckhead’s Thoughts, A View from the Cheap Seats, Homer McFanboy, and others in 2005-2007 (at least I can find archived entries going back that far)…

Then another wave, the Capitals Kremlin, Capitals News Network, Musings of a Hockey Mom, and others in 2008. And more have grown up as the months and years pass.

Like those early pioneers in NASA, some of those early bloggers went on to do other things and find their voice in other places. Some joined the SB Nation community, others the Bloguin community, others left blogging to pursue other paths. But on this morning, when we’re cooped up and looking out on the woods behind us with snow in the air, giving us the chance to read all that we have to pick from in the Caps blog list, we were just thinking of how this has unfolded so quickly over the past five years.

Oh, and you might wonder why we haven’t mentioned the Blogger in Chief here. Well, we were thinking about that, too. Ted Leonsis predates all of us, I guess, in a way similar to those astronaut classes we mentioned. Seems that before there was a NASA, before there was a “Mercury” program, and before there were the “Original Seven,” there was a group of men chosen in 1957, called the “Man in Space Soonest” Group. While all of them were distinguished test pilots in the American military, it was left to one of that group to distinguish himself in the field of space flight –

Neil Armstrong. You might have heard of him.


(We apologize if your blog was not mentioned here. No disrespect was intended, and we recognize that all who make up this community of Caps fans sharing their observations of the team comprise probably the most comprehensive and most sophisticated community of its type in the NHL)

Do we all feel better now?

OK, then it’s time to move on. Sometimes, I think to myself that if there is a fan base with lower (at times, folks...only at times) self-esteem than those of the Washington Capitals, someone needs to point them out, because we’re not aware of them.

Your Ol’ Uncle Peerless is now going to give you folks in Caps Nation one of those lectures that you roll your eyes at, the one that starts, “now in my day…”

Now in my day, back when we had a hockey team in these parts that won a few games, but suffered the burden of no one in the media paying attention (those being the days before the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, message boards, texting, sports talk radio, and indoor plumbing), we just took comfort in the fact that sooner or later (usually sooner, because we had this thing called the “Patrick Division”), the Flyers, the Rangers, the Islanders, or the Penguins might be coming to town (the Devils being at the time, as Wayne Gretzky famously called them, a “Mickey Mouse operation”), and we Caps fans could take out our frustration at the lack of media attention by heaping grief on those teams and their fans in other sweaters who showed up at the Capital Centre.

We didn’t much care that the Washington Post had “only” the legendary Bob Fachet (and pretty much just Bob Fachet) writing about the Caps, that Dave Fay really wasn’t yet the legendary “Dave Fay” (the Times just getting started at the time), or that there was only the infrequent 45-second segment on a local TV news outlet. Hey, so what – just give us the damned hockey!

But now, Caps Nation gets all in a dither over whether local radio pays enough attention to the exploits of the warriors on ice, whether the local papers devote enough column inches to chronicling the Caps, whether this columnist or that is properly respectful of the game and those who follow it, whether TV has enough “film at 11” of the Caps.

To all that, your Ol’ Uncle Peerless has two words…

WHO CARES?

C’mon folks, really – does it matter to you that the Washington Post doesn’t have more writers, more columns, more stories devoted to the Caps? Does it matter to you that Andy Pollin or Steve Czaban or Chad Dukes doesn’t devote more of every broadcasting hour on local radio to Caps features? Does it matter to you that Channels 4, 5, 7, and 9 devote a grand total of two minutes of air time combined to Caps news a week on their late night news? Does it matter that Mike Wise or Mike Wilbon devote more column space to basketball players who don’t even play in this time zone than they do to Caps hockey players who play a few blocks from their office?

WHO CARES??

Folks, we have a hockey team. Las Vegas doesn’t. Kansas City doesn’t. Hamilton doesn’t. Hartford doesn’t. Raleigh doesn’t (ok, that was a cheap shot). In fact we have a fine hockey team, an elite team, a team that could very well have a parade in these parts come the middle of June. They are entertaining, too. We fill the arena every night, a sea of red. And it’s loud… good heavens, it’s loud. I walked out of that game against the Red Wings last night, and it wasn’t until I stepped off the train out in Virginia that the ringing had stopped in my ears. And you’re in a snit that so-and-so doesn’t pay enough attention to the Caps?

WHO CARES???

YOU are paying attention. YOU are enthralled. YOU are schlepping to the arena every night in red jerseys, red paint, red costumes, and astronaut outfits. YOU are blowing horns, ringing cowbells, chanting “LET’S GO CAPS.”

And I don’t think for a moment that this kind of devotion is lost on the coaches or players. It’s not like it was three or four years ago, when you could probably carry on a conversation with the person (and there might have been only one) across the rink from you in the balcony at Verizon Center while the game was in progress. And while the boys were working hard on the ice, it couldn’t have been terribly inspiring to them to see thousands of empty seats. YOU are that seventh man on the ice now. And you’re going to be insulted, frustrated, dispirited over TV sports segments devoting time to drag racing instead of the Caps?

WHO CARES????

You have hockey. You have a team that wins and looks good doing it. You get to spend 41 nights a year in a sold out, ear-splitting funhouse that other teams can’t look forward to playing in. Then, you get playoffs!

The folks who do the pound the beat doing the covering – the Tarik El-Bashir’s, the Lisa Hillary’s, the Corey Masisak’s, the folks who are lonely islands of Caps reporting – we don’t have any problem with these fine folks. They do great work (maybe they just don’t get to do enough of it, or they don’t get enough support doing it). But if the folks who decide where to have their reporters spend their time and attention in covering local teams don’t get it, then who cares? If those who write opinion columns (as opposed to fact reporting) choose to write about basketball or baseball or soccer or NASCAR or the most recent firearms expo on 7th Street or whether the Large Hadron Collider will ever work, instead of the Caps, then who cares?

WE GOT HOCKEY!!! And we have a lot of people -- bloggers, fans, even some of those media folks -- who do spend countless hours covering and chronicling the Caps because they want to. We have us, so to speak. While it’s hard to replace nuts-and-bolts reporting from journalism professionals who might not get all the opportunities they (or we) would want to cover the Caps, Caps fans really don’t lack for written, spoken, or visual reporting of the comings and goings of the Washington Capitals.

And that’s quite enough for your Ol’ Uncle Peerless.

Now…go eat your vegetables.

Dynamic Branding

This weekend, the Caps played two hockey games – wins on Friday and Sunday over the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Philadelphia Flyers. The events were duly reported in the Washington Post and in local television and radio outlets.

In the old days, that would have been it… move on to the next topic, the next game.

Not anymore. Tim Leone, beat writer for the Hershey Bears of the Patriot-News in Pennsylvania (hold that thought for a few moments) wrote two excellent articles yesterday, one titled, “Going Deep: Washington Capitals Out In Front of Media Revolution,” the other titled, “Web Site a Net Gain for Washington Capitals." As a set, they constituted an excellent look at the evolution of new media surrounding the Caps. And as if to make the point, much of that which Tim speaks was put on display in this weekend of two wins.

There were, of course, the newspaper, television, and radio reports. But the Caps themselves have spun off a production entity of their own – web site, full time reporting staff, video production operated by extremely talented staff. There were the blogs – two of the Caps’ “Holy Trinity” of bloggers – Japers’ Rink, On Frozen Blog, and Off Wing Opinion – posting clips and recaps, complete with locker room video and links to other sites reporting on the game. There were the dozens of “tweets” popping up on Twitter from bloggers, fans, and just folks who might have taken in the game. There were entries from a host of other blogs – some player-centric, others more general – providing as many different angles and perspectives on the games as any fan could ask for.

When I was a youngster, the term “multi-media” was born. It conjured up images of a film projector or a slide show with a sound accompaniment. The term has come to mean something else these days, but frankly it simply doesn’t capture the integrated, multivariate character of entities and methods employed these days to cover in such comprehensive ways the Washington Capitals (even though the term enjoys its own menu on the Caps’ web site).

Rather than “multi-media,” which implies more than one, yet separate, what we see now is more “integrated media.” Or more to the point, given that the whole object of the exercise is to focus on the Capitals – the games they play, the stories they live, the personalities who represent the “red” – the more precise term might be “dynamic branding.”

The Boss describes it (albeit in a slightly different context – alluding to the speed of the game) better than we could…

“…based on new viewer habits created by the web on TV (MTV anyone?); in video games; with iPods; with iPhones; with Avatar-like next generation films being produced; with third screens everywhere; with Google telling you on every search that they searched the web and found 1 million listings in 1.3 seconds; in a Web 2.0 world - what sports do you think are best positioned for the new generation of consumers? The “fast” ones or the “slow” ones? The ones that reward a viewer’s investment of time with fast paced action or with commercials? This is my bet: Younger viewers like multimedia, speed and pace and action.”

Hockey – and the Caps, who are in the vanguard of this evolution, unburdened by any need to adhere to old rules of media coverage – has carved out this new concept of coverage. An in house production; a confederation of dedicated bloggers (each with their own unique perspective on players and performance); social media such as Facebook and Twitter that provide the glue to connect fans, bloggers, and the team; player sites such as GreenLife52.com or Backstrom19.com that give fans more direct links to player favorites. And (this is where we come back to the start of all this – the articles by Tim Leone), this extends vertically downward, with no disrespect intended to all the fine folks in Hershey, to the Hershey Bears organization. The Bears are an integral part of the narrative of youngsters being brought into the Capitals community, seen growing through the ranks, and graduating to the show. They are a part of us, a part of the larger “community” that is the Washington Capitals organization. It is all a part of a piece, the dynamic branding of the Washington Capitals.

It hasn’t come without a price, though. “Traditional” media, primarily newspapers, have been left at the gate in this development. Some might call this “progress.” From a perspective of pure technological methodology, that is demonstrably true. Newspapers and electronic media are still (despite their own forays into blogging and social networks) in a calendar/deadline paradigm. Editions are published daily, programs are aired according to schedule. That simple isn’t compatible with the world described by Ted Leonsis in that quote above. About that there can be no further debate.

But, part of the price for taking away the “filter” of newspapers and electronic media is objectivity. If the club controls the message, then that’s what you get – the club’s message. If bloggers – who get into this endeavor out of their love of the sport and their devotion to the club – replaces the product of beat reporting, then what you risk are products that might be more favorable to the club than their performance would allow (as much as we and our colleagues try, sincerely, to be objective about the Caps). If tweets, Facebook “walls,” and message boards fill the gap in traditional reporting, then what you risk is a less well-researched point of view that comes with the more deliberate methods of reporting.

News cycles these days are not measured in days as much as hours, and with instruments such as Twitter perhaps in minutes. The fault line on which traditional and new media seem to be grinding is conflict between what the “consumer” wants – faster, edgier, more appealing to the senses – and what fundamental purposes an independent media serves – getting it right, being objective, serving as a check and a balance against parties with vested interests in outcomes.

We aren’t arguing that “dynamic branding” is bad, neither are we arguing that it is good. What it is, is unstoppable. This is the genie unleashed by technology – teams such as the Caps can produce and market their own stories directly to consumers. Bloggers such as ourselves can scribble, after a fashion, at our keyboards and instantly publish our products. Fans can tweet, post, podcast to their ever-loving heart’s content on any subject they can imagine concerning the Caps (although an unsettling number of them seem to focus on how much Jeff Schultz sucks).

What we might be surrendering is objectivity. There are those who adhere to the notion that there is “wisdom in crowds.” Don’t count us among them, at least not unconditionally. It is a short distance from “crowd” to “mob” (in the literal meaning of the term – a loosely organized group). The good part, at least in our minds, is that evolution tends to sort out these things efficiently. And in that respect, we think that the dynamic branding that is replacing (and has in large part already replaced) traditional coverage of teams such as the Washington Capitals will sort out its issues of consumer friendliness and objectivity. You might be getting a glimpse of that already with such aggregated “blogging” sites as SBNation.

In any case, we are all right smack in the middle of a paradigm shift – a change in the fundamental model of events and how those events and the personalities central to them are covered. It might be bumpy, but it won’t be boring.

Go to the polls

Seems there is a "blog-off" underway sponsored by the fine folks over at NHL Arena.

So get out and vote... early and often.

The Last, Best Questionnaire About Hockey

If you're into surveys, and we are, you are going to want to click on over to "A View from the Cheap Seats," where Caps Chick has compiled the mother of all hockey questionnaires -- The "Hockey Questionnaire o' Doom." You can opine on subjects are far-ranging as "What is the first jersey you ever owned?" to "Who has the more intriguing hair – Brian Engblom or Barry Melrose?" to "Coffee or tea? " You can even build your own divisional realignment.

We've sent our responses in, and we encourage all you hockey fans out there to join in.

Hanlon's Razor

No, we're not going to jump into a tell-all about former Caps coach Glen Hanlon's taste in shaving inplements. It's one of those catchy "laws" that get stuffed into compilations of Murphy's Laws. What Hanlon's Razor states is:

"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."

And that brings us to... Eklund. Caps fans have no doubt indulged in the click that dare not speak its name and seen him predict (in the same manner Jeane Dixon or Kreskin might "predict") that every hockey player whose name ended in "ov" would find their way to the Capitals (it's a Russian thing). Well, he's outdone himself this time.

In today's entry, The Bard of Bovine Excrement opines that the Caps are in the mix for no fewer than four of the remaining free agents:

Martin Skoula
Brendan Shanahan
Sergei Zubov (there's that "ov" thing)
Maxim Afinogenov (again with the "ov)

Does this boob even click on his own page? Is he clueless as to his own "Cap Central" tab (actually something worth clicking on)? Can he not see that the Caps are hard and fast against the salary cap? In a fit of message board logic, we suppose, here is (one supposes) how this works...

George McPhee trades Michael Nylander to the New York Rangers (we'll assume Nylander would want to play there) for tickets to "Superior Donuts" at the Music Box Theatre this fall. There goes $4,875,000 in cap hit.

Then, McPhee trades Jose Theodore to Boston for tickets to the Winter Classic in January (shoot, there ought to be one Cap there). $4,500,000 in cap hit just went -poof-.

Now... just a million for Skoula, a couple mil for Shanahan (hey, he's a hall of famer in waiting), and a million each for the "ov's"...

Hey, it could work!

... idiot.

But hey, I clicked on it.

<----- idiot.

* Thanks to The Official for a push to this breaking news.

Evolution at the Speed of Thought

There is another “rebuild” of sorts going on in Caps Nation, and it isn’t on the ice (even if what is on the ice is often – although not always – the focus). Or maybe it’s just a “build.”

If you haven’t been paying attention these last few days and weeks, there is a “grass roots” building of coverage infrastructure that has fairly exploded across Caps Nation. Start anywhere you like…

OK, start with the usual suspects. We’ve had “Capitals Insider” and “In the Room” for a while now, but although they are “blogs” in the more traditional sense of the term (we’re already using the term “traditional” with respect to blogs?... my, but the world moves fast these days), they already have the vague sense of being somewhat quaint. That isn’t any dig at Tarik El-Bashir, Corey Masisak, or any of their colleagues. They do really fine work. And beat reporting is still the first, consistently best source of information on the team. But…

We have all these other blogs… Japers, OFB, Capitals Kremlin, A View from the Cheap Seats, and others (check over there on the right margin for some of them). These folks have been working at their craft for a little while now, and all have carved for themselves a healthy niche in Caps Nation, providing new and unique perspectives on the team. But…

Here is where things get interesting. In a short time, we’ve seen fans jumping into the fray with impromptu video (some of the stuff being posted on the Caps “unofficial” message boards is interesting, as well as what Reed-CK is doing over at Capitals Kremlin – real-time posting of the what’s and the who’s from Kettler during development camp). And…

There is “Twitter.” We’re not entirely sold on the concept as revolutionary, but it has been a tool used by many to “real-time” their thoughts and observations of what is going on, either at camp or with respect to the latest moves the Caps are making (tweets on the Jeff Schultz contract situation have become a cottage industry in a matter of hours).

We want to reserve a special comment for some really fine work, too. If you haven’t taken a look through the photographic work being done by Jimmy Jazz over at Tic-Tac-Toe Hockey and TTT Photo, do yourself a favor and page through his work. Today’s images of Braden Holtby and the "search and destroy" look in Joe Finley's eye are just examples of the fine imagery you’ll find. He certainly has a knack and a keen eye.

What seems like a long time ago (August 30, 2006 it turns out), a “Guidelines for Granting Press Credentials to Bloggers and Other Online Media Representatives” was published at Off Wing Opinion. Today, however valuable they are or might have been, they seem like the Articles of Confederation of 1781. Fans have taken their own paths to covering the team they follow, “guidelines” be damned. And those paths have trampled on some traditional methods of covering teams that yesterday were considered cutting edge. We feel positively ancient writing this blog in the shadow of embedded video and Twitter. And we’ve been at this for less than four years.

We have no idea where things are headed. It would be a fool’s errand to try and predict or anticipate such things. One thing we’ve learned in doing this over the last four years – it won’t be “managed.” Twitter is barely three years old, although as a phenomenon its life might be measured more in weeks or months. A year ago, no one ever heard of SB Nation; today, it is as close to a media colossus as there is in the blogosphere.

When Albert Einstein was but a teenager, he pondered the idea of what a beam of light might look like if you rode a bicycle next to it. Well, take a look… things seem to be changing that fast.

Right Movie...Wrong Sequel

We noted in perusing The Pensblog a photoshopped movie poster reflecting tonight as "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," with an image of Sidney Crosby inserted as the lead.

We cannot match the guys at The Pensblog for their PhotoShop skills, but we're betting that we're better with numbers. This is Game 3, and we know what that means...

My God!...He's Talking About Us!!

Bloggers, that is.

David Brooks is an opinion columnist with the New York Times. He was honored at The Week's "Sixth Annual Opinion Awards." But it was this quote from Brooks that stopped us cold...

“I used to have all sorts of human drives, the need for food, for water for sex. Now I have one drive: the need for column ideas."

We reckon he could have been talking about any hockey blogger you can think of.

Programming Note

JJ over at Tic Tac Toe Hockey is calling on all Caps fans to come up with a fight song. It is something desperately needed -- the meat between the slices of bread that are the horn-horn-horn and voice-voice-voice of the Caps sandwich of cheerleading. And, it being a contest, there is a prize involved.

So put on your thinking caps...there have to be some budding lyricists out there somewhere. Even if it's just "what I'd like to do to Sidney, is punch him in the kidney."

So, like JJ says... "Get on it!"

Intelligence borrows, Genius steals...The "Bobby Gould Trophy"

Our esteemed fellow wizard, “Hooks Orpik,” has devised what he calls the “black and blue trophy” for that player which records the most hits plus blocked shots in the season. We think it is a fine idea…good enough to steal in broad daylight, in fact.

In the race for the Capitals’ version of this, which (in the tradition of naming trophies after people) we are tempted to designate the “Bobby Gould Trophy,”* here are the standings:

If you're looking for a frame of reference here, the league leader in this painful measure is defenseman Brooks Orpik (Pittsburgh), with 324 combined hits and blocked shots.

Ouch.

* We put Gould's name on it since he was a gritty third liner who could hit, check, defend, score, and make life difficult for Penguins...pretty much all you'd want in a Capital. Although, we're guessing we're going to have to pay royalties to the originator of the concept.

Man Down

If you look closely over there on the right, we have a compilation of our fellow wizards. If you look really closely, you will note that one of them is -- horrors! -- a Penguin blogger.

"The Sweater Ted" (the original name of the blog) is what we think of as "A Penguin Blog with a Brain." Unfortunately, the author of that blog -- "Hooks Orpik" -- is on IR with a "lower body injury."

Get well, soon, Hooks...I still owe you an explanation as to why Alex Ovechkin, and not Evgeni Malkin, deserves the Hart Trophy.

Wisdom

I saw this at one of my favorite sites today...

...and thought to myself (at least with respect to your favorite prognosticator), "and never used so many words to say it."

The first to grab the ice cream cone will win

Code for winning a series-clinching game in the Stanley Cup playoffs? Uh, no (but it wouldn't be bad as such things go). It is the latest of an equal parts disturbing and hilarious offering of video clips from Tuvanhillbilly, for whom the Caps are "a new obsession." Although in the latest offering the combatants for the eagerly sought-after ice cream cone are likened to a certain ex-president and a current professional sports commissioner, we think they have a creepy resemblance to the big-head presidents at Nationals games.

If taking a turn down one of the odder alleys of Caps Nation is your thing, well...Tuvanhillbilly is your tour guide. It's becoming a "must see" destination.