Quoting Jonesy: The Interview, Part I

I hope everyone has enjoyed the excerpts I've been passing along from Jonesy: Keep Your Head Down & Skate as much as I've had. I always liked his style of play since he broke into the league here in Washington, and I was happy to see him enjoy some success elsewhere before being forced to retire after ten years in the league.

In short, Jones was the kind of player I wanted to root for, which is why it was such a treat to be able to talk to him earlier today about his book, his career in the NHL and the way the league is looking right now.

I caught Jones on the way to the airport to catch a flight from Calgary to Edmonton. After doing the Versus studio show on opening night on Wednesday, Jones headed to Calgary for the Flyers season opener against the Flames. After a Saturday night game in Edmonton, the Flyers head to Vancouver to play the Canucks on Wednesday before returning to Philly for their season opener next Saturday.

As it turns out, writing a book about his career wasn't exactly his idea. The whole project grew out of the fact that an editor at Middle Atlantic Press, the publisher of the book, was a big fan of John Buccigross and his online column at ESPN.com.

In turn, the company contacted Buccigross, who asked him what NHL players he might want to write a book about. Jones was one of the players on the list Buccigross submitted to the publisher, based in New Jersey in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Because Middle Atlantic specializes in regional topics, it turned out that Jones was "a nice fit" he told me.

What came next was 40 hours of taped interviews with Buccigross, though he freely admits he didn't tell everything he knew. "I didn't want any hassles," he says, something that his former teammate, Joe Reekie, hinted at to me earlier in the week at Caps Media Day when he told me that Jones, "left out all the good parts."

Since the book was released last week, Jones says he's gotten, " a lot of nice reactions and emotional responses," especially to an afterword concerning his relationship with a hockey fan he got to know early in his career with the Capitals and the Baltimore Skipjacks: John Poor.

Poor, who was about the same age as Jones, was afflicted with Cystic Fibrosis, a disease that would eventually take his life. Poor was buried wearing a Keith Jones game worn jersey. And when heavy traffic delayed Jones and then-Caps teammate Kevin Kaminski's arrival at the funeral, the family delayed the start so the two players could get there.

"He was such a nice kid, and he never imposed on anybody. All he wanted to do was go to hockey games and then head home with his Dad when it was over."

When I asked Jones what was missing come playoff time with the Capitals all the years he was in Washington, his answer was simple: Goaltending. In particular, it was the fact that as the team went through goaltenders like Don Beaupre, Jim Hrivnak, Byron Dafoe and Jim Carey, while Olie Kolzig, "wasn't at the level he was," when he took the Caps to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1998.

As for Carey, Jones made sure to pass along something he heard Dale Hunter say one time: "I never blocked so many shots in my life as I did to get Jim Carey the Vezina."

As for the circumstances surrounding his departure, Jones conceded that might have had something to do with his problematic relationship with then-Caps head coach Jim Schoenfeld. "That I wasn't a lot better player when I was there drove him nuts," Jones said, something that made for a number of interesting confrontations during team meetings.

"99.9% of the time the problem was me," he said, adding that Schoenfeld contributed a lot toward his development as a player.

Even though he might live in the Philly area now, Jones says it's hard not to think of the Capitals, the team that drafted him and with whom he made his NHL debut, as family. To this day he says the players he stays in closest touch with are from his days with the Capitals: Hunter, Kaminski and Craig Berube.

And it was with the Capitals that he experienced the most memorable night in his career, when he made his NHL debut against Calgary with the Flames, something he couldn't help but be reminded of again having just been inside the visitors locker room in Calgary just the night before.

"Just looking in the mirror and seeing that old Capitals jersey -- which I'm glad they've gone back to," and knowing that he had actually made it to the NHL will always stick with him, he told me.

As for this year's edition of the Capitals, even though the teams in the Southeast Division are tightly packed, he's picking them to come out on top. In particular, he really likes the addition of Michael Nylander, who he thinks the New York Rangers and Jaromir Jagr will miss more than the team understands at this point.

That's it when it comes to the Caps, but Keith had plenty more to say when it came to life with Versus and the state of the NHL today. But that will have to wait for another post.

Eric 12:17 PM

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