ARLINGTON, Va. -- Washington Capitals coach Spencer Carbery had a simple message for the media seated before him in the locker room at the team's practice facility.
"This is your day to be a 'Cap,'" he said.
About 50 members of the media who cover the Capitals, including myself, traded in their notebooks and cameras for sticks and pucks during a media fantasy camp at MedStar Capitals Iceplex on Tuesday.
I went into the affair with two objectives: not to embarrass myself in goal and to win the scrimmage at the end of the session. I broke even. I did indeed embarrass myself -- my butterfly is more of a moth -- but managed to surrender only one goal -- a snow angel on my back -- in my red team's 5-3 win against the white squad.
"You weren't a star, but you played well," said Capitals television analyst and former NHL forward Craig Laughlin, who coached the red team. "This game is the greatest game in the world. It doesn't matter if you can skate up and down the ice, shoot like [Alex Ovechkin] or anything, it's being part of this whole group. It doesn't matter if you can skate or not, or in your case, you can't stop a puck. We don't really care. We love you guys."
During the camp, Carbery, other Capitals coaches, and management gave the participating media members an inside look at Washington's day-to-day operations. Assistant general manager Don Fishman discussed how the team handles contracts, including managing the NHL Salary Cap and arbitration process.
"This is our challenge every summer, is just fitting the pieces together," Fishman said. "In general, the cap is 23 players, $83.5 million cap. Obviously, when we were doing the (Tom) Wilson extension (seven years, $45.5 million), we're factoring what next year's cap is going to be, how we're going to fit in Tom in the cap."
Brett Leonhardt, the Capitals' assistant coach, video, broke down his responsibilities, which include scouting opponents, identifying the tendencies of opposing players and goaltenders, and being an extra set of eyes for Carbery and the bench staff for in-game challenges.
"If you've ever watched 'Titanic,' this whole sequence where they're about to drown, that's kind of what it feels like," Leonhardt said of the split-second decision on whether or not to challenge a play. "It's really stressful during the game. We don't wait for a goal to go in. … There have been a ton of times I'll radio to the bench during an end-zone play and say, 'This is offside,' and then we'll wait to see if there's a goal. We try to stay ahead of it so it's not like a goal goes in and then we're panicking to see was there a hand pass, was there a missed high stick, was there goalie interference or was it offside? We determine that before the goal goes in to stay ahead of the game."
The media took to the ice following a quick warmup demonstration by assistant strength and conditioning coach Zack Leddon. Washington defenseman Alexander Alexeyev, forwards Joe Snively and Alex Limoges, and the youth hockey staff then ran us through some on-ice drills before the scrimmage.
Prior to puck drop, Laughlin, who had 341 points (136 goals, 205 assists) in 549 NHL games for the Montreal Canadiens, Capitals, Los Angeles Kings and Toronto Maple Leafs, made it clear that he was coaching to win. He added to me that he was concerned about the paucity of puck marks on my tan retro-style pads, and told Tarik El-Bashir of The Athletic that he'd give him one shift before benching him, recalling that the two were on the losing end of a previous media scrimmage.
"I'm a low pitch count anyway," responded El-Bashir, who restored Laughlin's faith by scoring a goal.
The white squad played a feisty game with one or two players forechecking. Sammi Silber, a Capitals beat writer for The Hockey News and the proud captain of the D.C. Ghost Pirates, scored two goals for them, including one over my beached whale body.
Although the scrimmage was about fun and getting to know a bit more about the inner workings of the Capitals, Laughlin still couldn't resist basking in the glow of defeating radio analyst Ken Sabourin.
"I'm now 1-1 in coaching this," he said.
Sabourin, a former NHL defenseman who played in 74 games for Washington and the Calgary Flames, congratulated Laughlin but couldn't resist a little dig at his rival.
"We were team-oriented, not like 'Locker's' team. They were 'me, me, I, I,'" Sabourin said. "We didn't have any ringers on our team. We followed all the rules, and we kept it under the cap."
All in all, the media left the ice with smiles on their faces, and their joints and pride mostly intact.
"I didn't score because I was mostly stationary," said Ian Oland, who is the co-founder of Russian Machine Never Breaks, a Capitals-oriented blog. "I'd give myself a D-minus. The fact that I didn't fall during the game - well, I did fall once trying to shoot. A D-minus, but maybe I can get to a C next year."
