This season, the Caps have been doing “Chalk Talks” with various people. These are question-and-answer sessions held before the game (at 5 p.m.), and last night Tarik El-Bashir hosted. They’re for season ticket holders - we split season tickets with a group of people, and we had the tickets to last night’s game, so we were able to go to the talk as well.
I think the Chalk Talks are new this season; we’ve been in the ticket group for quite a few years now, and this is the first we’ve heard of them. I’m sure we would have at least heard of them before now if they had been happening before.
(In case you’re not sure who Tarik is, he’s a former Caps beat reporter for the WaPo, and is now on TNT covering hockey. He played hockey through his teenage years, but he knew he was not going to be going pro in hockey when he was 17 or 18.)
Extremely interesting chat. He told us a couple of his favorite stories. I’m going from memory, so I may have goofed on some details. I added a few personal notes in brackets.
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His first major scoop was the Ovechkin contract signing in ~2008. Apparently he got a tip from a reporter in Toronto, who may have been tipped off by an agent. Note Ovi had fired his agent a few months before, and his mother negotiated the contract instead, so it’s possible the spurned agent is the one that alerted the reporter. Tarik witnessed the signing by looking in the windows at Kettler. Ted Leonsis was annoyed, because they were planning to announce it at the season ticketholder event later that evening, but Tarik scooped them. Ted laughs about it now, though, and apparently also tells the story from his point of view.
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He was first to interview Bruce Boudreau after his firing. Bruce wanted to wait (“It’s Dale Hunter’s day, let him have it”), so he told Tarik to come to his house the next morning at 7 with coffee and donuts [which seems very on-brand for Bruce]. When Tarik arrived, Bruce answered the door in dressy clothes, which got Tarik’s attention, but Bruce said he was going to visit his mother. And that’s how Tarik missed out on the scoop that BB was interviewing with the Ducks. Later, Bruce said, “What was I going to tell you? They hadn’t fired Carlyle yet!” [I think it was Carlyle, but I’m too lazy to look it up, and it doesn’t matter for the story.]
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He also got an interview with Olie the Goalie after his last game with the Caps. Tarik noticed Olie taking his name plate off his locker after the game, but he was busy getting the story of the Caps loss at the time. Later he got to interview Olie directly about leaving DC and was first to get the full story. His editor said, “Great story, but you need to call GMGM and get his side of the story.”
There were a few questions.
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Someone asked about Wilson’s punishment. He agreed Wilson deserved punishment for his action, but Tarik noted that another player [whose name escapes me] committed a two-handed slash earlier this season that resulted in just a $5k fine. He actually called it “The Wheel of Justice” and wished that Player Safety was more consistent.
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Some talk about up-and-coming players, LaPierre and Miroshnichenko. Great things to say about both, but Miro in particular he was impressed with - even late in the game in that loss to Toronto, Miro was working hard and engaged and upset at losing that way.
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Carbery - he noted that part of what makes Carbery so good is that he has excellent communication skills with the players. He will tell them exactly what they need to do to improve or get more ice time or whatever, and the players really appreciate that, and when Carbery talks, they listen. Carbery is also extremely smart, Tarik noted. If the team gets into the playoffs, he thought Carbery should win the Jack Adams award [he noted he doesn’t have a vote on that award].
There was a question about the turnaround that led to the following two answers:
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He talked about Ovi’s turnaround - and no, he has no idea what happened either. He joked that maybe riding a camel centered Ovi’s mind [I assume Ovi was on vacation somewhere riding camels over the all-star break]. And the power play is suddenly firing on all cylinders, likely in part due to Ovi. The power play is suddenly the best in the league over the last 5 games at 44% [note this was before last night’s festivities].
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Lindgren has stolen something like 8 games for the Caps. This is an actual statistic - I forget the math but it’s something like high danger chances minus the final score. Kuemper has been struggling, but Lindgren has been a star.
He mentioned another interesting statistic. Unfortunately, I forget what the statistic was. It may have been goal differential. But no team has ever been below -10 and still made the playoffs, and the Caps have a good chance of being the first. It was just another piece of evidence of how incredible the turnaround is.
They gave away some signed pucks - Strome and Carlson IIRC, and they gave away a signed Ovi stick. Random drawing for everyone who was there.
Tarik knows the game so well. I’ve been watching for ~15 years, and I learned a few things from him. He’s an excellent speaker, too, which isn’t surprising given his position, but he handled the audience Q and A very smoothly too.
The talk finished up around 5:45, so you have time to walk around and hit the food stands, not all of which were quite ready for customers at that point.
It was a great experience. If you ever get the chance to go to one, take it.
Oh, neat, these are interesting. I love that Bruce agrees to give an interview in exchange for coffee and donuts.
Carbery really does seem to be meshing well with the team. I understood that there was a high chance he’d get the team more in sync as long as he was given more time to get the players accustomed to the system he was trying to implement, so I did think that it was unlikely the disastrous start to the season would just continue, but he’s got them playing now at a higher level than I thought he could reach by the end of year 1. With that said, I think their good play now is to some degree also an indictment on how badly Laviolette had lost the room.
I live in the Detroit area now, so I likely won’t ever attend one of these myself, but thanks for sharing.
Sports players have this unique ability to get their coach fired, but most of us still have to do what our bosses say regardless of what we think. So it feels a bit unprofessional to me that players can do that. But sports aren’t office jobs, either.
Meant to reply to this earlier but lost track - I’m skeptical it’s really ever an intentional decision, maybe a rare case or two, but I’d guess almost never. I think confidence in sports is not just a cliche and it has a real effect on performance. Players do care about playing well and will really try to follow through, but if they don’t have faith it’s going to be more difficult. If you really believe your playstyle is good enough to get your team wins on a consistent basis, you’ll have an easier time executing, less hesitation and less overthinking. A mistake can just be a mistake and not another piece of evidence that this isn’t working for us.
With a new coach, they can say “this shit isn’t working” but can be more open to the idea that if they keep pushing maybe the coach’s ideas will stick more. They’re more open to giving it an honest chance, even if it’s not working now. “Losing the room” means that the players are all thinking “this shit isn’t working” and have lost trust in the coach’s ability to get anything working, especially if the coach has a specific system they’re good at implementing and isn’t really interested in deviating too much from that.
In Kuznetsov’s Russian-language interview the past offseason where he went scorched-earth on Laviolette, he basically said that in that final year it was a constant fight for the players to be listened to. We haven’t heard Laviolette’s perspective on this, so maybe it’s fiction or sour grapes, but I’m inclined to believe it. I’m even inclined to believe he was speaking for more people in that locker room than just himself.
He said that last season the players pushed very hard for system changes and it took a confrontation where many players approached him together before he was willing to cave, and the response was that they went something like 15-2 over the remainder of that December and got back into playoff position. He said that when Backstrom and Wilson returned, the team was told they need to get back to playing “playoff hockey” to be ready for the upcoming grind, and the discussion about the systems was ended.
My point here is that I don’t think they sucked the rest of the season because they were trying to punish the coach, I think it was because the system they had returned to had stopped getting results, and they had seen that a system that does get results was possible but was being avoided. No one had faith they were going to win games consistently returning to a system that hadn’t been great for them earlier that year. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, but not a deliberate decision.
Interesting, thanks!
