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.

Putting the Caps on the Map

In a town long known for its southern efficiency and northern charm, we, in Washington, DC, finally have a team known for both:  efficiency (these guys can win!) and charm (yeah, that's right, charming hockey players).  

And, being a hockey team, they are northern.  Picture-perfect, poster-child northern, in fact, featuring talent and charisma from every slice of global boreality (if it's not a word, it should be), from Siberia to Vancouver (the long way).

Check it out (you should be able to click on the little hockey player icons to get names and hometowns of the players):

Efficiency, charm, plus that northern penchant for the battle.  My circumpolar passion fulfilled.