Category: Capitals

This season with Caps Outsider, I decided to hire a bunch of folks to help out with that site. I recruited Taylor Lewis, a University of Maryland journalism student; Alena Schwarz, a Towsen journalism student; Nicole Weissman, who writes for Box Seats on washingtonpost.com; Jeffrey Kleiman, a New York-based Caps fan living in Islander territory; M. Richter, who I work with at the Gardens Ice House and blogs for a few other sites; Samantha Bass, also a student; and Mike Xtremist aka Caps Tattoo Guy, one of the most passionate Capitals fans you’ll ever meet. Along with Phil Van Der Vossen from Gunaxin.com, we’ve got a great staff ready to take on some of the most offbeat Capitals content we can find. We also have an army of loyal readers who pitch us nuggets of info and oddball things that wind up on the site.

For instance, I learned about these new Plush Dolls coming out from Bleacher Creatures from a reader. So I posted that an Alex Ovechkin one is coming out. Yahoo’s Puck Daddy got wind of it from my site and wrote a post of his own (going out to a MUCH larger audience, of course). I’m pretty certain that this marketing is what Bleacher Creatures will need to get sales. Sure, it could’ve happened despite my reader tipping me off to them, but I got it before other sites did. If other sites already had it, particularly with a photo of the Alex Ovechkin doll, there would’ve been no point to me posting that.

And that’s the way things work in the blogosphere.

Some people collect stamps. Some people play with model airplanes. I run a site that focuses on offbeat Capitals news. That’s my hobby and it’s utterly thrilling that the world works in such a way now that I’m able to do this type of thing for fun. It’s going to be a great season.

A few months ago one of my Caps Outsider readers suggested we do a post on casting each Washington Capital as a Star Wars character. That’s exactly the type of thing I enjoy doing but if I wanted to do it right, it would take some time. A few months later, with some help, I got around to it.

The response on Twitter was excellent. People told me that they laughed out loud and it made their week. I was glad, but the only ones who knew about it were my Twitter followers and those who got it through a retweet or put it on Facebook. In other words, it didn’t go viral, relatively speaking.

Unfortunately, my colleagues who speak to a much larger audience than me choose not to link to it. They’ve linked to plenty of stuff I’ve written before, but not this. I really don’t know why, other than the fact that it’s not serious, but that hasn’t stopped them from linking to my articles in the past. Regardless, not getting those links cost it thousands of views. That I’m sure of.

While I’m glad so many of my own Twitter followers enjoyed this video, I know it won’t become what it could be if I don’t impress  just a few key people. When that doesn’t happen, it’s extremely disappointing.

And like so many other things in life, that’s just the way it is.

Made some fun videos and attended the Russian Machine Never Breaks party last week. Check them out:

That’s me with Caps superfan Goat and a fanclub member who asked me to speak to the fanclub a few weeks ago..

That is me simultaneously drinking a beer, filming and checking my raffle ticket. I really wanted to win that Alan Mayden T-shirt. One of my readers gave me the graphic of that shirt a few months ago to post on my Caps site. That is Caps PA announcer Wes Johnson who announced the raffle.

Here are the videos I made last week.

Pauly D from Jersey Shore came into the Caps locker room. That is exactly the type of story I am there to cover, so I broke out the flipcam and filmed what I could. Eric Fehr was really interested in meeting him, as was John Carlson. Matt Bradley and his son also got their photo taken with him but mine came out blurry. Ugh.

I had a silly idea a few weeks ago to pretend to make a movie out of The Winter Classic with the Penguins and the Capitals, and the first fun part was to pick the cast. I turned it over to the readers and they had some great ideas. Then one of them sent me a video. I published this on Capitals Outsider, but I’m so happy with it that I want to show it here, too.

I rarely ask questions in press conferences, but when I do it’s because I’m fairly certain I’ll get a good response.

The other night, after the Pittsburgh-Washington game, I was in a packed press room when Bruce Boudreau stood at the podium.

The traditional media usually ask the most questions, typically to get quotes to fill in the angle of their story. That makes the questions relatively lame and not newsworthy. Questions such as: “How important was it to kill that power play after taking that penalty?”

Seriously? What do you expect the coach to say? That it wasn’t important to kill the power play? The only reason that question is asked is so the writer can enhance a passage on how the power play did. However, the coaches and players are used to taking softball questions from traditional media, so they answer it. It’s not bad or wrong, but who cares?

Several minutes in, I spoke up and mentioned something that deserved to be mentioned: Matt Cooke’s hit on Alex Ovechkin, which was knee-on-knee and could have ended Ovechkin’s season. The Penguins said they ‘clipped skates’ so I asked the coach if it was knee-on-knee.

Boudreau exploded.

“It was Matt Cooke. Need we say more? Its not like its his first rodeo. Hes done it to everybody and then he goes to the ref and says: What did I do? He knows damn well what he did. Theres no doubt in my mind that hes good at it and he knows how to do it. He knows how to pick this stuff. We as a league, we still buy into this that, Oh it was an accidental thing.”

I asked because no one else had, and it was indeed an angle I woud’ve led with on Capitals Outsider. When traditional media and other bloggers ignore a part of the game that I feel deserves a headline, I’ll be sure to cover it. After several minutes of ‘gotta get a quote for the article’ questions, I took the opportunity to mention something that should’ve been the first question asked.

The Post wrote a blog post about it. The quote appeared on several other sites, including Yahoo, ESPN and dozens of others. It was used on television, including Pardon the Interruption on ESPN, I’m told. Journalists don’t need to be attributed for asking the question that leads to the news, so there was no mention of me, and that’s fine and I understand that.

Here’s my beef: Why did it take a blogger to ask the obvious question after high profile journalists fished for routine quotes about the game as window dressing for their article?