The gang. (Photo credit: @zoharfilm)

Editor’s note: The Washington Capitals fan base is a tight bunch. We have both super fans and normal people, but everybody comes together to watch the team blow a late lead. It’s a nice community like that. Recently, a few of those superfans shot a commercial for a local wine shop. We’ll let Nathan from the Brouwer Rangers take it away.

On a chilly, drizzly night in December, unbeknownst to all but a few fortunate souls, magic was happening behind the locked doors of an Arlington storefront. On Tuesday, that magic was revealed to the world in the form of this commercial for Arrowine, a local fine food and adult-beverage store. Give it a look. We’ll wait.

Pretty great, huh? Since our posts are usually good for a click or two from our moms, the fine folks at RMNB asked us to give you a little behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it was like to hang out with some fellow fans to make a ridiculous commercial for a local business. Spoiler alert: it was fun.

The genius behind the ad was none other than Beloved Verizon Center National Anthem Singer™ Bob McDonald. In addition to being a professional musician, stage actor, and epic post-anthem fist-pumper, Bob dabbles in booze hustling wine distribution. So the owner of Arrowine (who makes an appearance as the organist in the commercial) asked him to put together a commercial to air locally during games.

Naturally, Bob called all the greats: Goat, Horn Guy, Cowbell Guy, and his fellow anthem-belter extraordinaire, Caleb Green. He also called us, because, fun fact alert, we go way back. My dad sang with Bob in the Army and one time when I was maybe 10 or 11 we watched Wrestlemania with Bob and a bunch of other guys from the chorus. It was great. True story.

Anywho back in December we all got together at the Arrowine’s Arlington location, which smells like fancy cheese, to film. The concept was simple: feature a bunch of faces (or helmets) you recognize doing things you wouldn’t normally expect, all related to making the shop tick. The execution quickly devolved into ridiculousness, which you can probably tell from the end result.

Along the way, we had got to get to know a few super-fans a little bit better. Be jealous, because they’re all cool and super fun to hang out with. For example:

• They made up a fake cheese for Goat (duh), which I don’t think made the final cut of the video, but did make the final cut of this exclusive behind-the-scenes photo post.
• Caleb showed us pictures of his 24 children. (It might not be quite that many, but once you get above 5 or 6 is probably feels like 24, right?)
• We learned how Bob really feels about people who yell “Red” and “O” during the anthem … but we’ll never tell.
• Ranger Ryan tried desperately to convince Bob to let us be part of a barbershop quartet with him and Caleb to sing the anthem some time; Bob changed the subject. Multiple times. Wisely.
• We learned that Cowbell Guy is studying to become a sommelier (which is apparently crazy hard).
• And then there was that time Sam made us all sniff his horn to prove it smelled like chocolate and caramel thanks to all that food stuffed into it. (It did. And it was weird.)

I can’t say for sure how many expensive bottles of wine we broke via an errant hockey stick or how many pints of fancy ice cream we “borrowed,” but I’m guessing both figures were in the thousands. Doug (the president of Arrowine slash organist) and Shem (the vice president slash McCreary-caliber referee) were great hosts – gracious, welcoming, and willing to let us do really weird/stupid things in the name of their store.

So what did we learn through this experience? Well, nothing, really. If we had to come up with something, though, it’d be that all these “super fans” are normal (mostly), funny, down-to-earth folks from all kinds of walks of life and have all kinds of different interests. I think that represents the broader fan base pretty well, and the great thing about hockey is that it can bring us all together in spite of our differences just to have a little fun. And adult beverages – they can bring us together too.

Goat’s very own premium cheese, funky yet satisfying.

Goat and Horn Guy going over their blocking for the opening scenes.

Browsing the beer selection between takes. This made us giggle. Also, we’ve tried it, and it’s good.

Ranger Ryan demonstrates the fatal flaw in our helmet design: no straw hole for drinking beer the way it was meant to be drunk … drank? Whatever.

The horn went through a lot that night. Well, to be more accurate, a lot went through the horn.

Sam a.k.a. Horn Guy right after making us all sniff the horn. It really did smell like chocolate and caramel and it really was pleasing/unsettling.

Bob filming his lines. He did them all flawlessly in one take and did not in any way pay us to say that.