NHL Education Doesn't End With Caps Demise

I thought I’d be done talking about hockey and the NHL Playoffs by now.  I also thought I’d be done watching the NHL until next fall since the Washington Capitals saw their season come to a premature end last week at the hands of the Montreal Canadiens.  I guess I was wrong!
To be sure, I’ll spend a great deal of time and energy following the (hopefully) steady rise of the Washington Nationals in the coming weeks and months.  Like most baseball fans (and baseball was, after all, my first true love) I’ll keep a keen eye on the progress of Stephen Strasburg.  As a self-professed “convert” to the World’s Game, I will continue to chart the progress of DC United as they look to find themselves in these troubled times.  I will, as a matter of civic duty, obsess over everything related to the NFL with specific interest in a certain outfit in burgundy and gold.  The NBA, NASCAR, and Golf will take up considerable chunks of my television viewing time while tennis (the sport of my life) will never be far from my heart. 
Yet this spring, for the first time, I am fully invested in the chase for the Stanley Cup. Anyone who has read my blog during the season knows how significant it has been for me on a very personal level.  And if you have some time, this is what my wife, Brooke, posted on Facebook the day after the Caps were eliminated.  But it hasn’t always been like this.
I’ve always understood the significance of the NHL postseason, but I am new to actually paying it much mind beyond my personal preferences.  Sure, as a New Jersey native, my interest was piqued when the Devils began their run of success in the 1990’s, and growing up just outside of New York City, it was impossible to ignore the Rangers’ run in 1994.  Yet much like soccer, hockey just wasn’t an integral part of my upbringing in sports.
The first NHL game I ever attended was at Madison Square Garden, Rangers vs. Penguins.  I was in middle school.  I think the next one I went to was after I graduated college.  I was covering the game for a now-defunct company called “Sports Phone”.  To say that I was out of my element around the sport would be a vast understatement.  I wasn’t subjected to regular exposure to the sport until I lived, in all places, Lincoln, Nebraska.  It was there, in the heart of college football country, that I first began to learn about the most elementary aspects of the sport.
Working for KLKN-TV in Lincoln, I covered the Lincoln Stars.  We’re talking about Junior A hockey, the USHL.  For the most part, the members of the team were high school aged young men looking to catch the attention of college or pro scouts.  They were living away from home, many of them for the first time.  Hockey was their life, and it was a way of life that was totally new to me.  It was a start, for them and me.
I began covering the Washington Capitals in 2001, around the same time Comcast SportsNet Mid Atlantic came in to being.  Since I had worked briefly in Pittsburgh for Fox Sports Net, I was sent on the road to cover the playoff series between the Caps and Penguins.  Reporting from The Igloo, I began to “get it”.  Soon thereafter, I was the first studio host of “Capitals Post Game Live” on Comcast SportsNet.  I would spend game after game picking the brain of Joe Reekie, the recently retired long-time NHL defenseman and “go-to” locker room sound bite.  I can never thank Joe enough for explaining to me the “why’s” of what we would watch unfold on the ice.
From Joe Beninati to Craig Laughlin to Al Koken to Alan May, I’ve always tried to extract as much insight as I could from people who have either played the sport or been around it long enough to enlighten me about things I otherwise wouldn’t pick up upon.  Since I’ve come to understand it just little bit, my curiosity has rarely waivered.  Yet now it continues on, for the first time, even without a team to cover or an organization to agonize over.   I hope I don’t annoy those guys when I call or text them to ask them about games that don’t involve the Capitals!
Last Thursday, like so many people in the D.C. area, I awoke with a feeling of loss, an emptiness that I thought couldn’t be filled until the free agent signing period began in July or the first minicamp later this year.  Yet here I am, fully ensconced in the Flyers and Bruins, the Penguins and Canadiens, even the Sharks and Red Wings.  Instead of watching with Alan May and Smokin’ Al, I’m with Brooke and my son Max.  When they have questions, sometimes I’ll have answers.  And when I don’t have the answers I know exactly who to call!