Monthly Archives: March 2011

Young and Younger

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At one point in OT last night on the ice were Holtby, Alzner, Carlson and Johansson – four rookies. What other teams in contention for a playoff spot and with our overall record plays that many rookies? We have six rookies on our active roster.

Of our 27 players on the roster, 15 were drafted and developed by us.

We sure know how to stick to a plan.

Feeding the Monster – A New Recipe

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For those of you who blog or manage a website, if you want to feed the monster you must know what the monster likes to eat.

Read this article. Algorithms rule. Google is like oxygen – get used to it.

Move up or move down on the page. It is now up to you to understand what monster finds tasty these days. I am an investor in Mahalo, a great young company, and this news concerned us all. Mahalo is hand crafting very good video intensive content.

As an aside and as long as I am at it, have you ever noticed how the new media have become a virtual brotherhood? All in service of feeding said monster?

In this newly enabled world where anyone with a keyboard is a journalist, media are allowed to say whatever they want to feed the monster. If you ever go at it or disagree with a member of the media online, other members of the brotherhood will run to the media’s defense. That creates “relevance” and more click throughs and better listing positions and it feels really good emotionally as well. Many members of the media want a one-way relationship. Dish it out. Don’t get dished back. But that is anathema to an interactive real time two-way world.

In this new transparent real time world media itself ironically have developed very thin skins. They can dish it out but they are truly reactionary and defensive when you dish it back. But if I am blogging and I manage websites then I am a part of the media. I, too, feed the monster. The lines have blurred, haven’t they?

Feed the monster carefully. It can bite back. It can create fortunes or take them away. It can make you self important or render you irrelevant. The worst case for most media? Irrelevance and just being ignored.

Monster hungry. Feed it today.

Epic Game

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No real winner and loser.

A wonderful night for hockey.

Both teams battled like a playoff game and we get the two points while Tampa gets a single point.

We have now won a game in OT and a game in a shootout in two days. We gain the 4 points needed on this mini road trip. Lots of drama and lots of heroes.

The injuries are piling up though. We play yet again tomorrow night at home against Edmonton.

In this grind it out year we have had to overcome many obstacles and multiple injuries and I am pleased with the team’s heart and determination. It seems to rise to the occasion in big games. I am grateful.

We now have 84 points. The 9th place team in the East now has 71 points. The 1st place team in the East has 86 points. We are ranked 3rd in the East. My assumption is that all of this will change as each and every team – it seems – is still in the race and the sprint to the finish line now will have lots of theater and lots of standings changes. Buckle up your seat belts. Enjoy the ride.

We have 15 games left to play with 30 standings points left on the table.

See you all for this home stand. Go Caps! “Try to be happy. You can do it.”

Just Saying…

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To the folks that have sent me emails about the new NBA with a logic train as thus:

“In the new NBA you can’t draft your way to success – only big time free agency works.”

The Chicago Bulls have swept their season series against the Miami Heat. The three core players – Rose, Deng and Noah – all played huge rolls in yesterday’s victory. All three were drafted and developed by the Bulls.

In an ironic twist the Bulls traded us Kirk Hinrich and cash and a first round pick that we used to draft Kevin Seraphin.

They made the trade to clear cap space to go after big time free agents. They weren’t successful in their initial efforts but did land Carlos Boozer in free agency.

We then traded Hinrich to Atlanta for a first round pick in next years draft and Jordon Crawford, Atlanta’s first round pick last off season, and Mike Bibby, who we then bought out to reclaim our salary cap space and to allow the player to go to Miami. He played in yesterday’s game.

So Chicago’s efforts to land a big time free agent helped us land cap space, two first round draft picks – one which we used for Seraphin and one that will be used next off season – and Jordan Crawford plus cash.

And Chicago may be the best team in the East. Go figure, huh? No one knows nothing.

Slow News Day

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I have seen this movie before and it actually has a happy ending!

To start let us NOT have a contest or a debate on the Wizards name. Like that hasn’t been done before. :-) See this article. Let us then have another Washington Post editorial on whether we should change the name next! Yikes. The cycle continues.

And in regards to the logo, all I can say to add more value is thus:

The Capitals rebrand was successful. We changed our colors to red, white and blue. Some bloggers went crazy early on generating pixels with opinions before they ever saw the new jerseys or designs or new design treatments. The jerseys were called “an eyesore”; a “colostomy bag”; and “who designed that? a 6 year old with learning disabilities?” to name a few comments I remember.

Today the Caps red home jerseys are considered among the strongest look and feel in the NHL and have also become best sellers.

I would expect the same for the Wizards new look and feel. I like them and there has been an incredible amount of work done on the overall look and feel and design.

I hope I have built a modicum of trust that we can do good work and that the actual redesign and new jerseys and look and feel will be of great comfort to you all. I am hopeful.

But if we showed you today it would take all of the fun out of the process. And it wouldn’t fit with our timing and plan. So feed that monster and generate the click streams. Make fun and comment and then just stay tuned to what we actually do unveil. Thank you.

Everything Old is New Again

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I saw this article and smiled.

I once did a deal with the nice people from Mars, Inc at AOL and we launched a customized M&Ms promotion in 1998.

You could order your own M&Ms and choose the color and what you wanted to be messaged on the candy. Order it online and have it delivered overnight. “Clicks instead of bricks.” You could then send some candy as gifts to folks on your buddy list. They would be alerted to this nice gesture by you on email.

We had our members’ credit cards on file, more than 35 million of them.

We, too, wanted to get a piece of every transaction.

We, too, were all about social, community, platforms and payments.

After a while, AOL just took folks’ dollars as sponsorship and ad revenues.

Good to see Facebook running this play in the playbook. It is a good one.