Back in March 1978, one of my wire service duties was to take dictation on the University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux hockey games. I’d never been to a hockey game. I figured out what hat tricks and power plays were, and that was about it.
In the fall of 1984, I’d recently moved to Milwaukee and was given a ticket to a minor league Admirals hockey game. It was all right, but my husband and I were more focused on the NBA’s Bucks, who played in the same arena.
We moved to Chicago in time for the Bears’ Super Bowl season, and then came Michael Jordan and the three-peat, parts one and two. It never occurred to us to go to a Blackhawks game.
I came to DC in 2004, and was puzzled by how passionate some of my coworkers were about hockey. I must have asked one of them, Vic, a thousand times: “You mean they’re only on the ice for 45 seconds at a time? How do they set up plays?” Patiently, over and over, he explained the physicality of skating at top speed for less than a minute and other hockey basics. But I was still stuck in the logistics of the whole thing.
Near the beginning of the 2016-2017 season, my coworker and dear friend Peter invited me to a Capitals game–in some great center ice seats. I started to understand the beauty of hockey, the athleticism and the emotion. I don’t think there was a single fight.
In January 2017, my sister and I were looking for something to take our minds on the polarization that surrounded us. We went to a couple of 
Caps games, one in the playoffs. We bought jerseys and cowbells. We began to wonder why we’d never gone to a practice skate, since that facility is just two blocks from our home.
This season was full metal Caps: Including playoffs (Tampa Bay game 6, Vegas Golden Knights game 4), we were at 10 or 12 games, and watched almost all the rest on television. I fell in love with every one of our players for their narratives and work ethic even if their output on the ice sometimes faltered. I fell in love with all the home TV and radio announcers and analysts: Craig and Courtney Laughlin, JoeB, Alan May, Rob Carlin, Grant Paulsen, Smokin Al Koken, John Walton, and Ben Raby. Instead of poring over the political columns, I turn first to the sports section and Isabelle Khurshdyan, the Washington Post hockey beat reporter and to my mind, the best WaPo writer these days. There is little in my life that gives me more joy than unleashing the fury in the third period, and I’m a pretty happy woman in general. I can explain forechecking fairly well, and I can tell you who’s on which of those four lines for 45 seconds.
A few Saturdays ago, my sister and I joined 6,000 other people at the practice facility to welcome back the Caps as Eastern Conference champs and to send them off to Vegas for the Stanley Cup finals.
In another of those full circle things, it’s perhaps fitting that my favorite player, whose jersey I wear, is T.J. Oshie, played his college hockey at the University of North Dakota.
The point of all this is to say thank you to the folks like Vic and Peter who introduced me to the Caps and to hockey. I hope that some of the folks who will be at the parade Tuesday but who have only been outside the arena for televised playoff games and who have congregated on the National Portrait Gallery steps with never seeing a game in person have friends like those two who will help them understand just how cool this sport and this team are.
