Earlier this week, I mentioned my top arenas on the road from my first year around the NHL. It probably goes hand-in-hand with favorite cities to visit. One of the greatest parts of the job is being able to spend significant time in places I might not otherwise have been able to see. There are far more states in the U.S. and provinces in Canada I’ve called games in than not at this point in my career. When you have the downtime to find good eats and see the sights, these to me rank among the very best in the league.

FAVORITE NHL CITIES:

1. Vancouver: It’s the most beautiful city in North America, best that I can tell. We were lucky enough to have three nights in British Columbia back in October, and if you’ve never been, you should make every effort to do so. It has all the feel of a world-class city, is exceptionally clean, and has terrific restaurants and yet is still very easy to walk around. Stanley Park provides plenty of green space, and the mountains are off in the distance to the north. Easy to get around, and a visit to the Gaslight district is a must.

2. New York: One of the true upsides of getting the Rangers in the second round of the playoffs was more time in New York. No matter where you stay in Manhattan, everything you could ever want is probably within 20 blocks of where you lay your head at night. Street food, and a slice of pizza, and it’s all good in the Big Apple. I don’t think there’s a better place to gauge the human experience than by walking through Central Park. I love seeing people from all cultures and backgrounds, all making their way through life in a million different ways. It’s uniquely New York, a city with its own vibe.

3. Toronto: Combine the passion throughout its population for hockey with all the flair of a modern cosmopolitan city, and add some of the best food and pubs in the circuit, and you can’t help but be happy to be in Toronto. There are two Tim Horton’s within three blocks of our hotel, and a short cab ride can get you to whatever you’re in the mood for. If the weather is decent, a run along the lakefront is easy to get to, and gives you a perfect backdrop when you’re on your way back to the city center. Inside the arena and out, Toronto is a great place to be.

4. Nashville: I would imagine I wasn’t the only member of the travelling staff hoping that NHL realignment would bring the Predators to the Eastern Conference. They’re a short flight from Dulles, and if you’re at all a fan of live music, there’s much to be had all along Broadway near the arena. There aren’t many cities that can pull off live music acts at intermission with staggering success, but Nashville qualifies. Regardless of your musical tastes, Nashville has a lot to offer. I’ve yet to find anyone in hockey that says they don’t like Nashville coming up on the schedule.

5. Boston: Certainly spent enough time here down the stretch and into the first round of the playoffs. I even picked up a few extra days with my work for NBC and the Hockey East tournament. Boston to me is among the very best sports towns in the country, and we were fortunate enough to be there this year the same weekend as the Boston Marathon, as well as Opening Day for the Red Sox. Throw in a Celtics postseason run, and Boston has all the bases covered. It provided the perfect backdrop for Joel Ward’s Game 7 goal to kick the Bruins to the curb. Boston fans are passionate, and it’s an easy place to like because of that. Plus, all the different neighborhoods that make up the city give it a feel like no other major U.S. city. Quite possibly the best hotel in the league too, as the Liberty is a converted jailhouse that is in the heart of Beacon Hill and a walk to the Garden.

6. Tampa Bay: Count me as one that’s happy that Tampa Bay will be in division for at least one more year. The arena is right along the channel where cruise ships come and go, the weather is almost always perfect, and there are plenty of good eats within a short walk of the hotel. Hat Tricks, the local watering hole with many a big screen television, is a perfect place to grab a hockey soda and watch a game, and it’s just up the street from the arena as well. There’s nothing wrong with escaping northern temperatures in January, either.

I’d wager there are few people in the DMV that can speak in-depth about the pros and cons of American Hockey League arenas. After 14 years of seeing barns from Salt Lake City to Newfoundland and everywhere in between, I can tell you the best and worst places to view an AHL game from the broadcast booth, and what each has to offer. That discussion and two dollars will also get me a decent cup of coffee, and a disinterested barista at Starbucks. But when it comes to the NHL, I was for the most part starting from square one this season. It will likely come as no surprise to anyone that NHL arenas trump even the best of AHL venues. But some for me stood out from the rest of the pack. While nothing beats a game at Verizon Center in front of the home crowd, below are my favorite road arenas in my first year in the NHL in 2011-12.

FAVORITE ARENAS FIRST TIME THROUGH THE NHL:

1. Bell Centre, Montreal: Going to a game at Bell Centre is like going to church for a hockey fan. It’s a spiritual experience like no other. Even as a visitor who wishes to see the Habs vanquished (and I have yet to see Montreal score even a goal in two visits to Quebec, which is nice), you can’t help but have enormous respect for the history of the Montreal Canadiens. There are two striking features you notice at Bell Centre when watching the game from press row. First, the construction of the ring around the top of the arena that contains the press area is lowered slightly from the top of the upper deck. This makes an already huge arena look even bigger, because you literally cannot see the top of the seats. Habs fans seem to continue up into infinity. If that isn’t daunting enough, the 24 Stanley Cup banners that hang from the rafters remind you that in the history of our game, no one has done it better. The Canadiens have fallen on hard times, but a visit to Bell Centre is a must for any hockey fan. For me, it was at the very top of my list of road arenas to visit.

2. Air Canada Centre, Toronto: If you want to feel what it’s like to be in the center of the universe, be in the press box to call a game on Hockey Night in Canada in Toronto. I was lucky enough to have my first visit to the ACC be on a Saturday night in November, sitting in the Foster Hewitt Press Box to call the Leafs and Caps. The game itself was awful, a lopsided win for Toronto in the final days of the Boudreau administration. But outside of the score, everything about the first trip to Toronto was everything I thought it would be. The sight lines are great, and history is all around you. There’s nothing quite like doing a game in an Original Six city, and Toronto has a little extra cache to it.

3. Rexall Place, Edmonton: This one may surprise some, as the artist formerly known as Northlands Coliseum isn’t exactly a posh spot. In fact, plans are already in the works in Edmonton as of October to build a new downtown arena to replace the aging barn outside the city. But as someone who grew up in the 1980’s during the heyday of the Oilers, the place oozes history. The banners of Gretzky, Kurri, Fuhr, Anderson, Messier and the rest hang at one end, and the press box view of the game is still one of the best in the league. In this season, it was the home of the first loss of the season for Washington after seven straight wins. It wasn’t the ideal outcome, but it was a great place to see a game. Plus, Mike Vogel and I had lunch that day across the street at a diner on Wayne Gretzky Drive. Dining on Gretzky Drive is something every hockey fan should have on their respective bucket lists.

4. Joe Louis Arena, Detroit: The Joe is getting up there in years now, and the visiting radio perch means standing up essentially at a countertop to the left of the red line. But much like other Original Six barns, the whole exceeds the sum of the parts. The history and tradition is all around you from the time you step off the bus, and while it isn’t all bells and whistles, it does remind you of an earlier time when scoreboard animatronics cued your every thought and move at a hockey game. Old school. The Winged Wheel is classy, and so is the franchise. Plus, the Caps got a very big win there down the stretch, which made our visit as close to perfect as possible.

5. Staples Center, Los Angeles: The four broadcast booths in Los Angeles are perfectly placed in the lower portion of the upper deck of the arena, arguably one of the best views of a hockey game anywhere in the NHL. The sight lines are improved even more by the fact that the three levels of suites between lower and upper bowl are essentially built right on top of one another, bringing you even closer to the action. Plus, as we were there in January, you have the nice ancillary benefit of being in southern California when you step outside. We heard a little too much Randy Newman, and “I Love L.A.” after goals scored by the Kings, but otherwise a good introduction to hockey in downtown L.A.

6. MTS Centre: Winnipeg: In my first tour around the league, I did a lot of asking questions of others when navigating new arenas and cities. Not so in Winnipeg. The former home of the AHL’s Manitoba Moose, I’d been going to downtown Winnipeg for years prior to the Jets returning to the NHL. I even called the only professional championship MTS Centre has ever witnessed, as the Hershey Bears won the 2009 Calder Cup there. In addition to a good view from the radio booth, the fans create a crazy atmosphere every night. Winnipeg is a great hockey town, and I’m happy for the folks I’ve gotten to know over the years in the media there that the NHL has returned for them. No place in North America was more deserving.

Honorable Mention: Nationwide Arena, Columbus: The home of the Blue Jackets is a beautiful downtown arena, and among the best in the NHL by anyone’s standard (although I could live without the cannon going off in the lower bowl after CBJ goals). But that’s not what gives it honorable mention for me. Having lived in Ohio for years, and having my mom and dad as well as my brother and sister-in-law living in the Columbus suburbs, it’s a family visit at Nationwide as well as a good place to call a game from.

Did not visit in 2011-12: Anaheim, Calgary, Phoenix, Minnesota, St. Louis, Dallas

For players, coaches and staff that travel all season long, the downshift into the offseason is always a bit of a process. At a pace of six and usually seven days a week for nearly nine months, it’s more than a little jarring to suddenly hit the brakes. Sadly, that’s exactly what we did last Saturday night in New York. I spent most of Sunday at home, waiting for the reality to sink in. I went for a run. I went for dinner out. It wasn’t until watching player exit meetings (and the departure of our head coach) on Monday to realize my first season in the NHL had truly come to an end. On the plus side, you do rediscover life away from the rink, which isn’t a bad thing. There’s lots of things I love outside of the game, and I look forward to revisiting them all this offseason. But after a week of reflecting and getting into summer mode, I’ve had plenty of time (usually in traffic on the Beltway) to reflect on the season that was from my perspective. After 14 years in the minors, everything perhaps seems a little bit more memorable at the NHL level. Even normal, mundane things take on a more special meaning. During the first round of the playoffs against Boston, I started making a list of some of the most memorable moments of my first season with the Capitals. Over the next few weeks, and in no particular order, I’ll go into some detail about them here.

OPENING NIGHT: OCTOBER 8 VS CAROLINA:

It probably goes without saying, but perhaps my favorite moment of my first season with the Capitals was my first one. By the time October 8 rolled around, I’d already been through seven preseason games, and had been on the road in Baltimore, Nashville, Columbus and Chicago. I’d even been on the team plane three times.  But all of that was just an appetizer for the real thing. Being at Verizon Center, with a sellout crowd providing the backdrop, and in front of the microphone for the first time in a game that counted for something was a huge thrill.

Just the drive downtown that day was special. We wrapped up the morning skate that day in Arlington, and the last thing I did before I left my desk at Kettler was call my dad in Columbus. He’s the one that took me to my first hockey game when I was seven years old. I can still remember sitting in the bleachers at Williams Arena on the campus of the University of Minnesota as the Gophers took on Princeton. Minnesota, then and now, is a tough ticket to get. But when the students were gone on holiday break, we were able to wedge our way in. From that day on, being at a hockey rink was where I preferred to be. Nearly 31 years after that game, I was talking to him on the phone as I prepared to do my first NHL broadcast. “Dad, did you ever think when you took me to that game that day, that I’d ever be doing something like this,” I asked him. He said no, but that he was proud of me and would be listening online that night with my mother. I can truly say that I’ve never been more excited to do a hockey broadcast than I was that night. It’s funny, because except for the game being quicker and the players more skilled, it wasn’t all that different from the hundreds of games I’d done prior to that day. Except that now I was where I wanted to be. I’d made it to the National Hockey League.

Players that I’ve talked to over the years remember players they played against in their first NHL game. For a lot of them, a player they watched growing up that was now on the same ice, playing in the same game they were provided a huge thrill. I think I know exactly what they mean. While I got to meet many of the best broadcasters in our sport throughout this season, it was a real thrill to do my first NHL game with Chuck Kaiton in the visiting radio booth. Chuck is a Hall-of-Famer, and a legend not only in Raleigh with the Hurricanes, but also in Hartford where he was the voice of the Whalers. Having that caliber of play-by-play man in the next booth over really brought home the fact of where I was. When you see Chuck Kaiton calling the same game you are, you know you’ve made it to “The Show.”

He was my first interview for our pregame show that night, and was wonderful to talk to. For Chuck, it was just another night at the office. For me, he’ll always be the first guy I interviewed for an NHL broadcast. As I write more about the people I’ve met along the way this season who broadcast NHL games for a living, you’ll detect a common theme that they are truly some of the nicest, most professional people you’d ever want to be around. But for a first game at the microphone, it was an honor and a thrill to do it next door to Chuck Kaiton.

Once the game starts, those in the broadcast booth don’t have any control over the events in front of us. We just try to tell the story the best we can for you. But it certainly helped to add to the memory of my first game that Mike Green won it in overtime by a 4-3 final. Mike was one of many guys on the roster I knew before I got here, having seen him play for Hershey from 2005-07. I thought it was the perfect ending to have him score the game-winner in sudden death to put win number one on the board. There would be six more wins after that night before Washington suffered loss number one in 2011-12, the longest win streak to start a season in team history. Not a bad way to break in. It had absolutely nothing to do with anything I had to do with. But it was a hell of a lot of fun while it lasted.