Category Archives: Mike Gartner

Here are some images — still and moving — from Mike Gartner’s number retirement. Continue reading →

For Mike Gartner’s night of honor the Verizon Center filled early and filled conspicuously red. The Hall of Famer who wore no. 11 for 10 seasons here stood at center ice near 7:00 last night and informed the hometown fans that the team competing before them today was as strong as any Caps’ team “in decades.” Mike Gartner, he who skated during the ‘Save the Caps’ campaign of dark yesteryear, came back home to Washington last night and delivered a very important message: this was a very different organization from the one he grew up in. Continue reading →

On about a dozen occasions the past couple of years I’ve been able to listen in on conference calls arranged by the Caps with prominent members of the hockey community. Generally there are a couple of bloggers participating in the calls, and at least a half dozen members of the traditional media. I enjoy listening to all of the questions asked, and their answers. The press, it seems to me, makes a fairly limited range of inquiries of any given hockey figure, whereas the bloggers seem to bring a special spirit of inquiry to the exercise, one that’s expansive and creative and a bit outside to proverbial box. Continue reading →