Monthly Archives: December 2010

Special Guests at Wizards Game Tonight

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We have our first Wizards alumni meeting scheduled for this afternoon. It will be a working session. I address the group at 1:00 pm.We have invited a group of great players to Washington to visit with us and to brainstorm how to embrace and celebrate the past and this is our formal kick-off meeting. The group is being led by Bobby Dandridge on our behalf.

Many of your favorite players will be in town. We will celebrate them at half time and they will be on the concourse before the game signing autographs.

This will be fun and we will roll out nights of celebration for our past players as a part of this program.

I also will host my friend Spike Lee at the game tonight.

Spike and I are friends. We share Brooklyn, filmmaking and sports in common. We are the same age as well. Spike was very generous with his time as I made my first film and I am grateful to him.

He loves the Knicks and he trash talks all day. I hope we can keep the man quiet all night with our play!

Every Right to Boo

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That wasn’t a pretty game.

Some fans booed at the game’s end and I understand why.

As I noted the other day in a blog post, we have good goaltending and good defense and good penalty kills now. We are struggling on the power play and our forwards are in a slump.

Simply stated, our best players aren’t playing like they are our best players.

To be 0 for 8 on the power play and then to lose 3-0 isn’t a surprise. We have to score on 5 on 3 advantages. We can’t allow goals against with one second left on the clock. Ugh!

Every team that we play comes in at 110 percent effort. They want to beat us bad.

If we play to our capabilities and with energy, we are a very good team.

If we play at 90 percent of our capabilities, we will lose like we did last night.

As I have noted every day, the regular season DOES matter. Every shift does matter. The hang over from the concept of only the playoffs matter is an issue for us. We can’t go through the motions. We can’t be casual and get through the regular season. We have to play with intensity. I know it is a long season but last night was a game that made me quite uncomfortable as I know many fans felt depressed with our performance as well.

So let us see what we are made of. Can we shake off the slump? Can we find a solution to make our power play more effective? Can our forwards play a two way game with discipline for 60 minutes? I believe.

But these are questions that need answering. We can find out Saturday night. Practice today will be intense deservedly so. We hope to turn boos into cheers.

Yep – No Magic Beans

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No easy way out.

No magic wand to wave.

No fail safe solution.

Hard work.

Patience.

I know it is hard. I know people freak out. I read it in your email. And in certain blog posts.

But now is the time to NOT panic and NOT have knee jerk reactions. We are 20 games into a long rebuild. I am being honest and truthful with people.

I knew what I signed up for. Everyone can make fun of us. I have heard every insult before – during the Caps rebuild – but having a plan and a strategy and sticking with it and not panicking is the sign of maturity and I believe strong leadership.

It is perfectly fine to vent and to be mad and passionate. I love it. It means you all care.

But we are 20 games into our rebuild, a rebuild that may take years to go from bad to good to great.

See this article. Thank you for the reasonableness!

Does It Really Matter, Redux? :-)

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Read this one. Must have been a slow news day. :-)

I am sure someone at AOL before me must have been talking about Social Media and Social Networks. It was a natural extension out of community, content, context, etc. and the early work in AIM and instant messaging. AOL pioneers must have had first use of this term. I am probably sure I talked about it even before 1997 as noted here, too.

This reporter called me after he did his search and said I had a first public use of the term. I said, “Who cares?”

And I still say, “Who cares?” :-)

I ain’t competing for credit. Too funny.

I Am Quick To Defend

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But I don’t have any issues with this analysis.

I don’t think any one within our franchise would disagree here.

It is on us.

Even though we are 16-0-1 with a lead or tied going into the third, I agree. We need to be able to close the deals with more comfort. We are easy to criticize. We need to self reflect and simply play better and with more discipline and attention to detail.

Doesn’t Matter, Does It?

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Last week.

This week.

Power rankings.

#1 or #5. Or as two fans write me daily “worst team in the NHL.” Click here for a synopsis of the rankings.

It does feel like we aren’t playing well of late or up to our capabilities.

We are less than 30 games in to the season. There have been ups and downs.

All that matters to me is tonight and each shift to play the right way.

Goaltending: Is it improved or not?

Defense: Better than last year?

Penalty kill: Better than last year?

Power play: Is it still dangerous?

Our forwards are struggling at times this season. My belief is that they will work it out. When they do, we should be a very good team 5 on 5.

Onward. Rankings don’t matter. Qualifying for the playoffs matters.

Playing the right way matters.We have work to do.