Small Press Expo '09

Saturday afternoon I begged off covering the Maryland-Rutgers football game (good choice!) primarily because of a lot of schoolwork, but Sara and I took a break for a few hours and ventured to Bethesda and the Small Press Expo.

For those of you who have never heard of SPX - and that's probably most people, since I'm fairly plugged in to that world and I didn't know about it until recently - I'll quote from their website: "In its fourteenth year SPX now serves as the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comic books and the discovery of new creative talent. SPX will bring together over 400 artists and publishers to meet their readers, booksellers, distributors, and each other."

Coming in to the weekend I was most looking forward to meeting the artists of a few of my favorites webcomics: Diesel Sweeties, Scary Go Round (now Bad Machinery), Questionable Content, Goats, and Hark! A Vagrant.

It was fantastic to meet all of them, and I got some great sketches, but one of the highlights was meeting an artist I have heard of but did not know would be at SPX: Rob Ullman.



Ullman is a multi-talented artist who currently has a strip, Traffic & Weather, at Richmond Magazine and has appeared in lots of other places in print and online. I know him through what can be termed a fascination with him at Uni Watch Blog, a paean to all things related to sports uniforms. Paul Lukas, the blog's proprietor, absolutely loves another aspect of Ullman's oeuvre: his pin-up illustrations of women wearing (and only wearing) lovingly-rendered jerseys.

It's quite possible Ullman was the only exhibitor at SPX to have anything remotely related to sports at his Atom-Bomb Bikini table, but he did, and hooray for that. He had quite a few collection of his Teeny Bikini pin-up collections (one of which, with the cover on the left, I bought) in addition to other pin-ups and illustrations he did while an illustrator for Dan Savage's Savage Love column.



He also had a fantastic short collection of illustrated stories from the Original Six era, Old-Time Hockey Tales!. Dollar for dollar it was the best $2 I spent that day. Ullman's tales were ones I know well - Bill Barilko, Terry Sawchuk, the Rocket Richard riots - but the treatment and obvious love of the artist for the subject matter made it a great little text.

Though this was my first SPX I've been to a few San Diego Comic-Con's and other similar conventions, and it's a pretty true characterization to say every actual artist sitting behind a booth is usually thrilled to talk with a fan or prospective fan, and Ullman was no exception. We talked for maybe 5 minutes about hockey, Uni Watch Blog, and other stuff.

Ulmman is a true hockey fan, which was great to hear. He is also a Pittsburgh Penguins fan, which is nice for him but not so good otherwise. He did refrain from any gloating after I mentioned my Capitals fandom, and actually gave me some words of sympathy. He also proffered a couple of stickers with the image at the top of this post, a gorgeous dark-haired woman in an old-school Caps uniform, which he said he made as a peace offering for any Caps fans he might meet (he'll also be at the Baltimore Comic-Con in two weeks, where I imagine he'll be handing out a few more of those).

All in all it was a great afternoon, and wonderful to meet Ullman in addition to the other writers, artists, and publishers at SPX. Maybe I'll commission a pin-up some time...Sara in a Stanley Cup, maybe?

Hockey Lexicon 1 - Hope Pass, Cobb

Learned a pair of new hockey vocabulary words in the Caps locker room tonight. The first one, from Karl Alzner, actually makes a lot of sense: hope pass. As in "no-look, speculative, I hope there turns out to be someone at the end of this" pass.

The second one, courtesy of Andrew Gordon, is: cobb. As in goose egg, nil, nada, zip. Usage: "We were down four-cobb after about two periods and ended up coming back and winning a big one in overtime" is how Gordon described the game he appeared in last season in NYR when the Caps were down 4-0 and ended up winning 5-4 in OT.

Hope pass is a good one, and I hope to work it into my vocabulary. Cobb makes absolutely no sense, so I'm gonna try even harder to use it on a regular basis.

At the Rink - Caps v. Sabres 9/21

A couple quick hits in the first intermission at Verizon Center.

-As Corey Masisak pointed out on Twitter, the Caps banners and retired numbers have been taken down from the rafters. As my friend and colleague Craig Stone postulated, they might be redoing them all to have a consistent design and color scheme.
-The ice looked pretty good before the game, but a few players took unassisted spills. I'm hoping it's because there was a Dinosaur show here through yesterday (no, really) and not a sign of things to come.
-Mike Knuble has not looked good. He seems out of sync with Backstrom and Ovechkin- they are dipsy-doodling through the neutral zone and he just wants to go to the net. Took a bad hooking penalty as well.
-Also not a good period for Andrew Gordon, simply because he only has 51 seconds of ice on 2 shifts. Andrew Joudrey is not faring much better, with 2:44 on 4 shifts. There have been a lot of PPs and PKs for the Caps, so hopefully with even strength situations they'll get on more.
-Chris Bourque, on the other hand, has gotten a lot of ice, notably 2:05 of power play time. What's interesting is much of that was spent at the point on the Caps second PP unit, paired with John Carlson.

At the Rink - Caps Media Day

Yesterday morning, the day Caps players had to report for training camp, was also Washington's season-beginning media day. I was there when Jose Theodore, Brooks Laich, Nicklas Backstrom, Mike Knuble and Brendan Morrison, as well as George McPhee, took the mic for some questioning.

A fair amount of the material from the day will go into various preview and preseason articles at DC Sports Box, but I wanted to share a few nice nuggets that probably won't make the articles:

-Brooks Laich has dubbed new teammate Brendan Morrison "Shifty," for some moves the center pulled in informal scrimmages this past week.
-Not only did Mike Knuble remember Piney Orchard (Washington's practice facility prior to Kettler) from his time as a visiting Red Wing in 1998, he remembered that it was both "dingy" and "dark." (Disclosure: I used to play summer hockey at Piney and worked in the pro shop for a couple months, and Knuble is telling the truth)
-When Knuble commented how much he was looking forward to playing with Washington's world-class players, he was staring directly at Alexanders Ovechkin and Semin, who were on the ice at the moment (not that it's any surprise)
-Many of the players were sporting Under Armour shirts with the phrases "Get Ready" and "Its Our Time" bookmarking an image of the Stanley Cup on the back.
-Among other duties, all the players took time to sign about 50 feet of jerseys, sticks and other merchandise. A couple players (I saw Brooks Laich and Boyd Gordon, among others) took time to sign for small groups of fans stationed at both ends of the staff/media-only sections.

Okay, I'll admit that section felt a little more tabloid-y than expected, but I still plan on From the Rink to be one of, if not the primary, content type for this blog. Specific game information has a place in game reports,, more in-depth reporting in feature articles, but some of the 'lighter side' stuff is the thing that makes people love hockey, and professional sports, and I'm all for that.

A New Twist on an Old Story

There was a very interesting article at Puck Prospectus today (thanks to Puck Daddy for the link) regarding the Ovechkin-Crosby debate, specifically looking at statistical projects for next season as well as matching each player's 2008-2009 season against historical comparables.

What struck me, beyond the simple (and encouraging) projection that Ovechkin will score 118 points (and likely win the Rocket Richard, Art Ross, and Hart), and the fact that Ovechkin is projected to play all 82 games while Crosby projects to 74, is the criteria listed by Robert Vollman (for Crosby) and Andrew Rothstein (for Ovechkin) to be considered 'the best player in the world' (at least in 2010) is to score 110+ points, lead his team to the Cup finals and win the gold medal.

The problem with that assertion is that it's very likely for both players to be in the same point range, and the chances are much higher for neither to make the finals than it is for one (though currently the odds at Bet365 are 11/2 for Pittsburgh and 12/1 for the Caps!).

However, it is very likely that one of the two young men will be on the gold medal podium at the conclusion of the 2010 Olympics. The Games are being contested in Vancouver and you better believe the home team is the favorite. At that same betting site Team Canada is getting unbelievable even 1/1 odds 1/1 odds on winning it all, while Russia is by far the next-highest contender at 5/2 odds.

I'll be rooting for the U.S., and Sweden is a very strong contender, but realistically either Ovechkin or Crosby will have a gold medal on their resume come February 2010. Also realistically, one gold won't decide the debate between a 23-year-old and a 21-year-old (especially if Canada wins) considering they still have at least 1 more Olympics in them, one of which will be in Russia (assuming the NHLPA decides to attend) and no doubt will combine for at least one or two more Stanley Cups.

Nonetheless, it's an interesting field of battle that has been completely underplayed to this point in time. Crosby has the Cup, Ovechkin has the Hart, but chances are both will have won both by the time their careers end. Olympic gold medals, on the other hand...

What flies in the press box nowadays

As I’ve mentioned before, in addition to the Capitals I also cover several other teams and sports for DC Sports Box. Terps football and the Washington Freedom are two such teams, but my primary secondary beat (does that even mean anything, ‘primary secondary’?) is D.C. United and international soccer.

It’s been a good few weeks in the local area in terms of live international soccer. First there was the Gold Cup game between the U.S. and Honduras (not to mention the Haiti v. Grenada undercard) at RFK on July 8th, the Chelsea-AC Milan exhibition on July 24th in Baltimore, and most recently D.C. United taking on Real Madrid Sunday at FedEx.

It’s been a good few weeks for me too—I covered all three.

Sometimes I’ll complain to friends about having to take the Metro down to RFK on a weeknight or joke about the quality of the food in the media room (hint: not good), but really I have a great time every time I cover a game (I shared the beat with my friend and coworker Craig Stone). It’s rare like a Capitals game, in terms of personal interest, but then again the Caps have never put 70k butts in a stadium, so there’s that.

One thing I’ve noticed about these major international soccer events, however, is a difference in terms of the type of media presence in the press box, post-game interviews and mixed zones.

Basically, there are a lot more fans.

This is definitely not to say there are no fans in hockey press boxes, so let’s back up a moment. I don’t mean ‘fan’ in the sense of any person who likes a specific team. Go to the Caps press box, or any other, and you’ll find plenty of people who prefer a specific team.

Any team-specific blogger you may find out there (Storming the Crease, Musings of a Hockey Mom, even TheHogs.net, for example) is most certainly a fan of that team. And most other supposedly-neutral reporters covering teams are fans too- you want someone who likes the sport to cover it, right? They don’t necessarily have to root for the teams they cover—Greg Wyshinski, who lives in DC and is at many Caps games, likes the Devils, while Corey Masisak is a Penguins fan—but they have to love the sport.

No, what I’m talking about is fans being fans in the press box.

The most obvious transgression is cheering the press box. No matter your rooting interests, the press box is supposed to be a neutral atmosphere. That doesn’t mean media members don’t react to things happening in the game, but you gasp or smile instead of shouting and cheering.

At RFK stadium, the press box seating plan always has the same arrangement. The front and back rows on the right side are traditional media, the middle is announcers, statisticians and press staff, and the left back row is bloggers and new media. All of the news media who are in attendance for one game only are seated on the far left on the front row, and coincidentally enough that location, if any, is where cheers will emanate from during a game.

Every credential pass has tons of boilerplate language on the back, telling you all the things you can and can’t do, and there’s always a statement about crossing the line from media member to fan. The credential I got from the Gold Cup has a simple statement: “NO AUTOGRAPHS ARE PERMITTED DURING MEDIA ACCESS PERIODS AND AN ATTEMPT TO OBTAIN AN AUTOGRAPH MAY RESULT IN THE CONFISCATION OF THE CREDENTIAL.”

Yes, it was in all caps.

No brainer, right? I was surprised, but not shocked, when in the post-game mixed zone for United and Madrid, Kyle Sheldon, an underappreciated member of the United media staff, had to repeatedly tell “media members” wearing both credentials and Madrid jerseys that no, they could not stand along the barrier and ask every member of Real Madrid to sign their soccer ball, jersey, or whatever.*

And that’s another thing. At every international soccer game I’ve attended there’s been at least one, usually a few, people in the post-game press conference wearing soccer jerseys (and no, I don’t mean the players). They’re for one of the teams represented, or a previous team of one of the players.

That’s something you would never see in ice hockey, partly because hockey jerseys are unwieldy but also because they cross the line. Everybody knows, to go back to a site I previously cited, that Rob from Storming the Crease roots for the Caps. That’s fine, because he’s in the press box and the locker room not as a fan but as a provider of media content for an extremely technologically-savvy Capitals fanbase.

The jersey-wearers in soccer games are not, as far as I can tell, content providers (maybe they work on the technical side of a media organization, but they certainly aren’t writing, recording, or even paying attention to the press conferences I’ve seen them in) but rather establishing their physical presence as fans.

It fascinates me, as to why people do that. Is it really acceptable in cities outside of DC and sports outside of ice hockey to wear not just your team colors, but your team logo, while serving as a member of a supposedly-neutral press.

That strikes me as something like being an arbitrator and wearing a shirt from one of the parties involved, or wearing apparel from a company while sitting on the jury for a court case in which they’re involved.

Even if you are 100% completely objective in your thoughts and actions, your objectivity is questioned through your apparel. Would you, as a United player, want to take questions from a reporter wearing a Chicago Fire polo shirt? Even if the questions were completely legitimate, you would perceive bias and feel uncomfortable in your own locker room.

This isn’t an argument as much as an observation. Something that makes me respect the atmosphere and community of ice hockey as a sport that much more.

*I have to note that while the D.C. United media staff takes the lead in dealing with on-site press box concerns and the like for some these games, they are not in charge overall and have to follow a different set of guidelines for accessibility and credentials than for MLS matches. For example, I had to go through CONCACAF for my Gold Cup credentials, and the United staff was not involved at all with the Chelsea-AC Milan game.

Musings on the Wicked Wrister

Browsing SI.com earlier today, I happened across a Daren Eliot blog post, "Who is the Next Joe Sakic?", asking which player in the NHL has the best wrist shot now that Sakic is retired.

Fair enough, Burnaby Joe had one of the best wrist shots in the game, quick and deadly accurate. So I skimmed the article for Eliot's thoughts. Jeff Carter, okay. Ryan Getzlaf, maybe. Jonathan Toews? I can see that. But where's Alexander Semin? Heresy!

Then I actually read the article, and saw he was talking about centers only. That got me thinking though, who has the best wrist shot in the league? When we think of big-time scorers we tend to gravitate towards the hard shooters (Ovechkin, Jarome Iginla), razzle-dazzle pucksmiths (Rick Nash) or garbage-goal opportunists (Carter, Johan Franzen).

Practitioners of the wrist shot like Thomas Vanek, Marian Hossa and yes, Semin, garner attention for the puck in the net rather than the way they put it there, unlike the way the action itself of taking a slapshot is heroized in hockey.

Which, of course, is an excuse for the District Puckhouse to celebrate the wrist shot with a collection of Alexander Semin clips. Long live the wrister!