The Ice Sheet: The Playoff Agony of the Long Distance Driver

Normally, I would have spent last Saturday afternoon sitting in the press box at Verizon Center to cover Game 1 of the semifinal series between the Capitals and the Penguins. To say this game has been eagerly awaited by most of the hockey world would be an incredible understatement, and as I outlined on Friday over at The Sporting Blog, I was as excited as anyone else to finally get to see these two teams have at it over the course of a seven-game series.

But alas, on this of all days, a family commitment would require me to travel to Long Island while Game 1 was being played 200+ miles away back in Washington. And from what I gathered from reading emails, Twitter feeds and just old fashioned talking with my friends on the phone (imagine that), I wasn't going to be the only one similarly indisposed on the first weekend in the month of May.

Then again, all I needed to do was hit the road on Friday night, and I'd still be able to watch significant chunks of the game on Saturday before a command performance with the family later on Saturday afternoon. In short, I had it all worked out, or so it seemed at the time.

That was, until I got a call late on Friday afternoon. There's no need to go into the details, but suffice to say the crisis meant delaying my departure until Saturday morning and adjusting my travel plans. Still, as I went to bed on Friday night, I knew that if I got on the road early enough, I'd have more than enough time to make it home well before the puck would drop a little after 1:00 PM.

Again, I had it all worked out. That was until reality hit once again, and for a variety of last minute reasons, my optimistic departure time of 7:00 AM got moved back all the way to 9:45. After doing a little more quick math, I figured I'd arrive on Long Island a little after 2:00 PM. While it wasn't ideal, I was happy I'd be able to watch most of the second and third periods.

Of course, that timeline got ripped to shreds after I actually got on the road. By the time I left, most of metropolitan Washington was gripped by a steady rain, which made travel pretty slow going all the way through the state of Maryland. What was normally just a 45-minute trip to Baltimore turned out to be better than an hour, and it wound up taking me almost two hours to get to Delaware.

It didn't take long to figure out that most of the game was out of reach. By the time the puck dropped at 1:00 PM, I'd be far outside the broadcast area of the Baltimore station that was carrying the game. And having let my satellite radio subscription lapse, I was forced to turn to an iPhone app to follow the action as best I could.

According to the box score, Sidney Crosby opened the scoring at 4:09 of the first period, but I'll always remember it as a stretch of road somewhere in South Jersey on the Turnpike. By the time the first period had ended and Washington had taken a 2-1 lead, I had started to pick up the pace and was racing past the Turnpike exit for Great Adventure.

I was beginning to think I could make it to see a huge chunk of the game by the time Mark Eaton tied it for Pittsburgh in the second period, but I was suddenly disabused of that notion as the traffic on Staten Island started to back up before the approach to the Verrazano Bridge and stayed slow all the way through the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn.

Oh, and that great save by Simeon Varlamov? I'm guessing it took place, with me blissfully unaware, while I was stuck on the Belt just outside of JFK Airport.

When I finally pulled into the driveway of my childhood home, it was still 2-2. But by the time I made it back in front of the television just a minute or so later, Tomas Fleischmann has scored to give the Capitals a 3-2 lead, which meant that I had just gotten back in time to watch the most agonizing part of the game as the Caps spent the rest of the period playing low-risk hockey while protecting a tenuous one-goal lead.

In the end, of course, it all worked out. Washington, despite continuing to take bad penalties, held on for the win, and I managed to meet up with the family right on schedule.

Every Monday morning The Ice Sheet will take a close look at everything that's happened in the NHL since Friday night at 5:00 PM -- or if need be, anything else the author wants to bleat about. To read them all, click here.