What this fan wants to see...

I want to see smiles from these guys!

What does this fan want to see from her dear but beleaguered team, the Washington Capitals? Well, of course, I'd like to see them bring the Stanley Cup home to DC. (Yes, HOME!)

But the Cup is, for all its mystical pull, one of those rewards that we work for but whose actual meaning is in the hurdles we must clear to win it: we must constantly hone our skills, practice, prepare, and endure physical and mental sacrifice and hardship. The Cup is what it is because of what it demands: dogged, persistent play on every shift, tons of courage and spirit, plus a grand dose of favor from the hockey gods. You can strive your entire life for a reward such as this, and never win it. Many never do. But they can hold their heads high because of the striving. 

I want to see the Caps play hard, give up nothing easy, and, if they do, come back immediately, with a vengeance.

Last spring, swept by Tampa Bay, they looked like deer in the headlights. This season, it seems, they have been in the process of transitioning into the kind of team that won't go down easily. Who knows whether they've accomplished the full transition? No one. But the playoffs - a heightened version of hockey reality - will surely hold the answer. Maybe, just maybe, the playoffs will be the anvil on which the new Caps are finally, fully, forged. 

That's what this fan wants to see.

Unleash the sprinklers!

One of my favorite movies is Bull Durham. I just love the thick, ungainly rookie pitcher "Nuke" Laloosh. He's the Natural Man: unfiltered, unabridged, uncensored, unexamined, unzipped. Hilarious! And somehow he ended up with the million-dollar arm. (I guess in today's dollars it would be 100 million.)

One of my favorite scenes in Bull Durham is when the Durham Bulls - a minor league baseball team - turn the sprinkler system on at the field they're scheduled to play on the next day, and slip-n-slide into the wee hours in the resulting mud, causing an artificial "rain out." For some reason that scene popped into my head last spring while the Caps were in the process of blowing it in the playoffs. It's recently returned.

I came across a reader's comment on a website a couple of days ago. Something to this effect: the Caps should have stuck to their old (pre-losing streak) style of play because they don't have the personnel to be good enough on defense, and the new system is too difficult for the offensively-minded stars to master. Play to your strengths! the reader admonished.

It's easy enough to dispute the first part of this; it seems the lads can play defense; the team's GAA is down, the PK has been very effective, and even an non-expert like myself can see that they've got a new, more aggressively defensive style going. Even when they don't have the puck, they are, by and large, skating purposefully and working hard. Those things are good.

But - too true! - they haven't been scoring goals. Monday night they scored only one goal - and that was on "a depleted Rangers squad" (check out my awesome sportscaster lingo!) - and they can't even blame it on a "hot goalie," because ours was way hotter than theirs. On Saturday they scored 4 against the Maple Leafs, but that was first time they've scored more than 3 in a game since who knows when.

Obviously I'm not alone in worrying that the new system has irrevocably sucked the life out of this team - and sucked the life out of, specifically, Alex Ovechkin, Captain.

Let's talk about Ovie for a moment, shall we? (I love to talk about Ovie!)

Of course, I don't actually know him, I only admire him from afar.  And it's not only for his hockey skills, either, or his good looks (thank you, Gillette), his ability to pick up the tab, or even the fact that he wears his mother's number (bless his heart). No, what finally bumped me over the edge and caused me to plunk down my $24 to purchase that Winter Classic t-shirt with the "C" and the "8" and OVECHKIN on the back was my feeling for the guy himself. It's clear that he's been having a tough time this year, and I wanted to show my support. I won't go into all the gory details, because we all know them.  But I do want to point out that before, during and (probably) after his current tribulations, expectations are heaped upon him by the dozen, by friend and foe alike, while at the same time he's all too often put down, vilified, or pointedly ignored by the North American hockey powers-that-be.  

At the risk of sounding too maternal, let me remind you how young he was when he first came to this country (20 years), and how young he still is even now. And while some may envy the acclaim that has come his way, the celebrity, and the salary (heck, with that kind of money I could have bought the damn jersey instead of the lousy t-shirt!), those things don't necessarily make it easier to adjust to a new country, a new language, a different style of play, and a different hockey culture. (How well would Crosby have done in Krasnojarsk? Or Novosibirsk? I can't be sure, but, it's safe to say, it would have been a challenge.)

So maybe Ovie's hit a rough spot. Development - physical, mental, emotional - is not a constant upward slope. There are plateaus, and there are setbacks. But what I think we see now is someone who is growing up. Willing to risk change. Taking on new responsibility. Playing a new role on this hockey team. The role of captain. He is, as they say, buying in - not only to the new more defense-oriented system of play, but to the system writ large. Both are adjustments.

And, generally, I think, that's what the whole team is doing, or trying to do. It has to be tough, it has to be scary to make changes in mid-stream. To change the way you think of yourself. It takes intelligence, work, confidence, and a leap of faith. It takes mental toughness to stare down the naysayers.  

So what does this have to do with sprinklers? "Crash" Davis - the veteran catcher assigned to grow Nuke up - sort of a Jeeves to Nuke's Wooster - switched on the sprinklers to punctuate an interminable, losing road trip that was just oozing demoralization and misery. Why? It wasn't to avoid losing the next game; rather, he manufactured the rain-out in an attempt to take control of an out-of-control situation.  

But of course, it's only in the movies that "taking control" is as easy as flicking a switch and sliding around in the mud, or breathing through your eyelids, or wearing a woman's garter belt, or pulling the head off of a live chicken. Or a goat. But the Caps are doing it in real life, they're taking control again, little by little, with every battle won, every pass completed, every shot blocked, and every goal scored, even if they are few and far between at this point.

The other part of the sprinkler scene, though, is the mud-sliding part. That's the fun part, the letting loose. That's key, and I hope Ovechkin and the Caps are still having fun - on the ice as well as off. They're young guys, playing a game, and they need to find a way to relax and - in the words of my favorite color commentator - enjoy the journey.  

To hell with the playoffs, to hell with the Cup (I know, I know - blasphemy), and to hell with critics and cynics and, yes, to hell with fans who want it all right now. Don't be afraid! You're still you, the Washington Capitals! Work hard! Take control! Play your game! And don't forget to unleash the sprinklers!   

Dear Caps: On the occasion of your first reality show

Dear Caps,

So far I've been a pretty uncynical fan.  Which is something, considering my demographic profile. And although this year ticket prices at the Verizon Center have become so very steep that I can no longer justify the expense (Hershey, here I come), I still love you.  I still watch your practices sometimes, and I was very excited when, last week, I had the opportunity to hold the door open for rookie prospect (since sent to the AHL Hershey Bears) Jake Hauswirth.  (He said, "thank you."  I said, "you're welcome.") 

And guys, technically I'm probably not qualified to judge on this matter because, although I aspire to reality in my everyday life, I've never actually watched a reality show.  I look forward to the time when a couple of TV writers might get together and write a show about a hockey team and their off-the-ice experiences. It wouldn't claim to be real, but if it was really good, it would show a heightened reality; it would show something of the humanity of the players and of the game.  My father served in the Army in Korea.  We'd always ask him if M*A*S*H was a realistic portrayal.  He'd say, no, M*A*S*H was actually more real than the real thing.  That's because it concerned itself with showing not the things, but the essence of things.  

Okay, sports fans.  If that's too Platonic (with a capital 'P') and, well, weird, for you, consider George Plimpton.  Did he just plant some cameras in those dressing rooms?  Hell, no.  He put something of himself on the line.  You might say, "wow, the ego of that guy!"  And you might say, "that wasn't a real look at the locker room, at the guys, because Plimpton interacted with them; he violated the prime directive!"  But if you really think about it, isn't that at least as natural a scenario as setting up cameras to record people's necessarily self-censored conversations?  After all, people have always interacted with one another.  Cameras - not so much.  We have far less experience deconstructing camera play than word play.  You can read Plimpton's accounts and decide for yourself what was what.  You know it is his perspective, and you know it is subjective.  And from a player's point of view, there was just one guy, and he was accountable.  If you didn't like him, you could fire the puck at him.  Hard.

In this case, I'm not sure what your recourse is, or mine.

Because the camera lens is a filter that is, paradoxically, much less transparent, much harder to explicate than George Plimpton's persona, or the writers of M*A*S*H and their socio-political/humanistic agendas.  The lens filters not only light, but also a bunch of other less tangible things that are tough to enumerate or describe.  In the hands of a master, it might be masterful.  But, last I heard, Ingmar Bergman is not working on this shoot.

And this is me, the uncynical fan speaking again:  Even though, I know, professional sports is a business, and yada yada yada, I like to believe, I want to believe, I have the god-given right to believe that there remains something primal and sacred in that locker room.  I don't know what it is exactly, but I imagine it's partly guys blowing steam and partly reporters asking dumb questions and partly jockstraps hanging from pegs in the wall and partly bloody birthplace of creativity.  What it is I'll probably never know for sure, but I'm pretty sure I prefer my own imagined version to the one on HBO.

But what's done is done and there's nothing you or I can do about it.  The cameras will be on you, boys.  I'm not sure whether I get HBO; if I do, I may be watching - unless actual reality intrudes.  But in any case I will surely be watching the real you - no, I'll be watching the you that's more real than you - the Washington Capitals on the ice.

Sincerely,

Your 4-ever uncynical fan

Go Caps!

Playoffs 2010: It's all a fan can do; or, a review of some favorite hockey clichés

So what's up with my home team?  What's up with my Capitals?

It's like this:  On a sunny day you think it'll never rain again.  The sky is the definition of blue from horizon to horizon.  The sun is pulsing with warmth and light, lavishing its love on the lush green earth.   But then the very next day you wake up and the sun is gone. The sky is flat and gray, the rain is hard and drenching, and sogginess permeates every molecule of the material world. 

That's the way it is with those guys.  Some games are ugly.  But I don't want to think about them anymore.

I'm thinking about this instead: They're moving their legs. The ice is tilting and they're skating downhill, they're playing THEIR game, they feel the power. 

Their hard work is being rewarded.  The hits, the grit, the battles, the board-smashing, the net-crashing, the teeth-bashing mingle with the sublime.

This most-creative-of-teams merges into the flowing creative force of the universe.  Now they're rolling!

They're seeing the puck well. They're seizing every chance.  They're at the right place at the right time.  They are CREATING SPACE. 

And it doesn't matter HOW many guys the other team has on the ice!

There's a blind drop pass between the legs, or a nifty one threaded through a pair of defenders, or a chippy one from behind the net, or the long one traveling two-thirds the length of the ice, puck arriving, adhering to the stick of our brave captain on a breakaway, deking, beating the goaltender, going top-shelf…

Visualize, visualize, visualize!

It's all a fan can do.