Snowman On Fire

I have this love-hate relationship with The Hockey News. At times their reporting seems to be a best of collection of beat writers and rehashed stories, and yet having all of the hockey beat writers appear in one regular publication isn’t a bad thing. Their coverage of college, major junior, women’s and international hockey is thin, but it’s better than what you get anywhere else — what my grandmother would call “gornischt” (not zero, but not measurable in any reasonable fashion).

Last month (Oct 21 issue) THN picked Princeton to repeat as ECAC champions. Strong words, considering that they had no eye of the Tiger last year. With the ECAC season about one-third done (already??!!) Princeton is indeed atop the standings, two points ahead of Cornell (but with one more game played). Aside from an opening ECAC weekend loss to the Big Red, Princeton has done a great job with six other ECAC teams. Goalie Zane Kalemba has a sick 1.00 GAA and a save percentage of 0.957 — he falls down less frequently than your cable service on a Tuesday night.

Maybe The Hockey News is looking around the corner?

I’ve been looking for a bit of writing inspiration lately — blogging has been slow, I haven’t had the energy or creativity to devote to working on the hockey book, and work has been, well, more than a job. Perhaps it was the rainy day today, or perhaps it was the fact that I got the urge to clean up my office (it happens, usually once every 3 or 4 months). About two years ago I managed to find an autographed 1980 Olympic Men’s Hockey Team jersey, with silver autographs of gold medal winners, all save the late Herb Brooks. There was a fairly large set of them released around the 25th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice, and one ended up in my jersey collection. I finally had it framed for my birthday this year (thanks to my mother in law) and it quite simply looks nicer than the motley collection of Devils swag on my “jersey wall.” As much as I like my BC jersey with Gionta’s handwriting, the Jay Pandolfo jersey I won in a raffle, the Patrik Elias jersey with a really funny autograph (before he got serious about signing his name) and a Scott Gomez/Jamie Langenbrunner dueling penmanship sample, they just didn’t “feel” right.

The Talking Heads’ David Byrne once said that art is something you should rotate, something you should like, not permanently mount on your wall as if it’s part of the building. I think jerseys fit that profile even more tightly than paintings or posters; jerseys each tell a story, have a life or a background, give you a snapshot of time and space. Give or take a few years, the Miracle on Ice marked the first third of my life; becoming a father to a son who would later help me rekindle my passion for hockey marked the second third. There’s a nice symmetry in that, and perhaps the backwards looking perspective will get me motivated to work on the next big forward looking projects.

Sometimes you need to change your focus, and that’s what I did in hanging the 1980 sweater over my left shoulder.

It’s another night of saying “no ken a horas” after watching a 5-0 Devils lead shrink to 5-3. As the Festrunk brothers would say, “I blame myself.” Had to tweet that Elias’ points streak is now five games with the assist on Zubrus’ second goal. An extended two on one that started with Elias falling down (and later admitting to the “D” that he made a mistake, most likely, in a sidebar by the bench). A bit of 4-on-4 as a result of slightly time offset penalties, and then a penalty shot goal? This game is passing strange on the way to heart-wrenching.

Bright spots: Defense looks solid, to the point where Chico and Doc are commenting on it. Jay Leach (up again from Lowell in level, down in geography?) notches NHL point number one, just to add to the counting. The second period is only 3-3 even though the last 3 were scored by the Bolts.

Dim spots: A few minutes of el-stinko hockey made a potential laugher into a game that can go either way. It’s dark - literally - on the ice. Not sure if it’s me or my semi-random, pausing and stuttering MSG broadcast, but the ice surface looks like the players took out half of the lights during warm ups.

With accountability extended to fans, armchair coaches and those of us flipping between the NFL and NHL tonight, I’m going to stop counting altogether.

Patrik Elias has his own Twitter page. And it’s 80% him, a bit from his management team but for the most part it’s unedited Patty-streams. There are a whopping three people following him - c’mon, folks, when you get a glimpse into the daily grind of a professional athlete, it’s “Real Life” meets “Slap Shot” in electronic form - digg in.

Twitter is rapidly replacing my daily scan of blogs for news and personal updates. In additition to a more dense information flow (you can do a lot with 140 characters), there are half a dozen Twitter adjuncts that propagate updates to Facebook and other social sites. The value of something like this is a pure study in the strength of networks: the more people who are following Elias, the more valuable his updates become in terms of defining his brand and fan outreach; the more he communicates directly to the public the more he builds up that fan base. But it’s like fax machines in the 1980s: having just three fax machines is pretty useless. You need hundreds to make it a valued communications channel.

Tweet up, peeps. And if you’re looking for yours truly, I’m freeholdhal on Twitter.

When my kids were little and tele-marketing was all the dinner time rage, I used to put them on the phone with the hardiest of cold callers. I thought of it as fair play; they were interrupting my family team and my dinner for some unwanted spiel about credit cards, home loans, timeshares, or other bad uses of my money (looking back: leading indicator of today’s messes!). Instead, they got a 3-year old who asked them what their favorite color was, what they were wearing, if they liked hockey (that would have been Lil’Bubba) and other questions, in a true test of wills to see who would hang up first.

Mid-afternoon today I got a call (on the home line, no less) from the NJ Devils asking me if there were any Devils fans at home. Mistake. They got the maturity-equivalent of the little kid on the line, and instead of buying from them, I sold:

To quote the Gen Y employees trying shake up NASA, everything you know about community, demand creation, marketing, distribution and audience is wrong. Today’s hockey fans aren’t the same ones who grew up watching games on WOR or WPIX (thankfully, because most of them became Rangers fans, for the much-proffered reason that “they were on TV.” If Gilligan and the Skipper played hockey, Rangers fans would follow them, too). We get our news, data and updates online. We have friends we haven’t met or heard, but enjoy their self-published voices. We join groups because they seem like a good idea, even though only one in ten has some utility once the first laugh has damped down.

Now I’m waiting for the second call from the Rock: you obviously know where to find me.

I discovered that Elias has a Facebook fan page a few weeks ago, and while it’s short of content (for now), it takes you to some interesting places and seems to be populated somewhat regularly with syndicated news feeds. A few emails back and forth, and perhaps some trackbacks from his sports management team, and I ended up on Elias’ blog roll; his Facebook page now has a badge on the sidebar of this blog.

If you’re on Facebook, check it out, become a fan, and be vocal. Or at least feed the Czech language comments through an online translator if you want creative Rock signage ideas. If you’re not on Facebook, then you don’t know that Elias has his own church. He probably doesn’t know that either, which is partly what makes it fun.

Increasingly, Facebook is being used to create vibrant communities ranging from a few people (check out those of us who favor “mixed crustaceans” on Facebook) to a few thousand - the Washington Capitals use Facebook and other social media to alert fans when there are last-minute tickets available for a game. It’s a great way to keep your most die-hard fans in the loop, and at least make them feel like they’re getting direct access without media filtration, time constraints, language barriers, or non-hockey aware editorial types intermediating the bit stream. Octagon promises that Elias will begin putting up content on a regular basis.

In the meantime, he’s had a great two games - Friday night’s goal was a thing of beauty, the kind of play that made Bubba and me move him to the top of the favorite Devils list; Saturday’s 3-point night made all of the difference in the game. Maybe it’s me; maybe I just haven’t been watching enough Devils hockey with my travel schedule, but Elias was moving more, creating space and time with the puck, being aggressive on the forecheck, and playing well, like Patrik Elias. It’s the kind of (TV) face time that we love.

Attention Devils Fans: Don’t panic.

As reported by Tom Guiliiti and others, Marty Brodeur is out 3-4 months having his distal biceps tendon (that goes through/around the elbow) surgically repaired. I’m not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV or in my blog, but I have to believe that this isn’t a sudden or a new injury, but a continued re-aggravation (or injury past the point of short-term rehabilitation) for Brodeur. It’s pretty close to what Kevin Weekes did and had repaired over the summer, and if you watched last night’s Sabres-Devils game, Weekes didn’t look worse for the wear and repaired tear.

Don’t panic. Here are five reasons not to completely brown your shorts on this otherwise nice fall day:

1. Kevin Weekes is an NHL goalie. Not every team has a Brodeur, yet each year, fifteen other clubs manage to make the playoffs without him. Some do it by platooning two guys in the crease. Kevin Weekes is one of those caliber guys. He’s an NHL goalie with experience (in addition to being a nice guy) who will play under pressure.

2. Everybody will step up. I think this is one of the most mis-understood issues in sports. Talk to people who follow football, and you’ll hear that injuries to key players do not affect games as much as people think. On cue, everyone should say “Ooh, but what about Tom Brady” to which my answer is “What about the other 21 starters on the team?” Maybe the Patriots just aren’t that good aside from Brady. The Giants certainly proved it last year. But I digress. Immediately, your mindset as a Devils player changes. Score more goals. Play better defense. Don’t rely on Marty making the outrageous plays; make some of your own. We’ll see what Captain Langenbrunner does now.

3. This may incent management to get some blueline help. How many times have you heard “Brodeur is a third defenseman” during a broadcast? Clearly, the Devils need defensive help now. Not another goalie; they have some solid goaltending. Help in front of the net, so that visitors Buffalo-ing into the Devils zone don’t rip off 20 shots in the first period again. Now would be a good time for a big trade or signing, and would deflect both the media and fan attention away from the Brodeur theater.

4. Long-term injuries should not preclude short-term thinking. Remember when Elias contracted Hep A and missed most of the season? There wasn’t a countdown to his return or a feeling that all was lost, even though he was the team’s leading scorer five years in a row. When he came back he was a man on fire. This is long but not season-ending long. Marty could be back in the net in March, with a dozen games to go. He could still break various records this year [ed note: see next thought, though] and be back for the playoffs. If you are already thinking about the playoffs, then you’ve skipped all of the work that has to precede that run. Jim Craig once said that he broke periods down into 5-minute chunks, and treated each one as a game within a game. Think of the 08-09 season as eight separate 10-game seasons. The first one went 6-2-2 (compare to 3-6-1 last year, just to level set here). It’s possible Marty is back for the last one or maybe two of them. Five to six 10-game mini seasons in the interim. Break it down, and treat it as a series of short-term objectives, and the longer-term issues fade into the background. As I like to holler from the stands, “lots of hockey left”.

5. Marty is going to get emotional, physical and media rest. “Marty is tired” comes up way too much, especially as the season wears on and the playoffs arrive. I’d certainly never vote for an injury to force rest, but this will help Marty recharge in every way possible, including reducing strain from the media glare. He’s a professional athlete who trains well, and will be ready to go when he’s cleared to play — and I’m betting that he makes it a spring time to remember.

Feel better, Marty — on your time and schedule, not anyone else’s. The fans will still be here, cheering for your recovery, your return, and your redefinition of the record books.