On Sunday, longtime RMNB reader/commenter Owen Johnson went to Caps practice and defenseman Nate Schmidt did something super cool for Owen’s nephew.

I’ll let Owen take it from here.

My brother, Mike, called me to ask if I wanted to go to Kettler and watch practice with his sons, Luke, age 6, and Frankie, age 4. My nephews are a little spoiled in the sense that their father is 6’5” and tall enough to fish pucks out of the netting from the balcony. So, whenever they go, my brother can always retrieve a puck or two for them. Unfortunately today, there were no pucks in the netting, but four-year-old Frankie was insistent on getting a puck.

I told him I would do what I could, and that our best bet would be to actually get one of the players to toss us one over the glass. I took him up to the glass and told him to “point up” so the players know to give him one. We tried for most of practice. Some players might have seen us out of the corner of their eyes, but they were clearly more focused on their drills.

It wasn’t until the very end, when the players were cleaning up all the pucks, that Nate Schmidt looked directly at us. He smiled the smiliest smile he ever smiled, and went through all the rubber to hand us the cleanest, most pristine puck of the bunch. He tossed it over the glass to me and I handed it to Frankie. The rest, as they say, is history.

Thank you @nateschmidt29 for giving my nephew a puck. He asked all morning for one and you made his day pic.twitter.com/B9qOg3fC6A

— Owen Johnson (@OwenJohnsonsTwr) September 27, 2015

Frankie is SO happy.

Nate is awesome. Hockey is the best.