Andre Burakovsky during last year’s rookie game. (Photo: Chris Gordon)
Preparation for 2014-15 NHL season begins this week as rookie camps kick off around the league. Capitals’ camp will start today, and will end next Tuesday with a 3PM rookie game that has been held every (non-lockout-shortened) year since the Caps’ re-build.
By 7 years ago
Photo: Greg Fiume
Ah, autumn. The air is cooling. The leaves are changing. The kids are back at school, getting yolo with their baes, lest they feel fomo, or so I’m told.
And the Capitals are gearing up for actual hockey! On Wednesday the Caps shared their schedule for rookie camp. For five days, promising young players will have their mettle tested by saturnine men in red jackets. Andre Burakovsky and Jakub Vrana will be there. Many will enter, few will win.
The best of the best from rookie camp will stick around for training camp, which will begin on Friday, September 19.
All practices are open to the public, so get yourself to Kettler Capitals Iceplex and save Chris Gordon a seat.
Schedule and deets below.
By Peter Hassett 7 years ago
This looks fun. (Photos by Chris Gordon)
As we wrote earlier, Monday’s Washington Capitals-Philadelphia Flyers rookie game was a bit of a mess. There were four fights, some lost teeth (more on that later), and I was almost twice by a referee who insisted on heaving every broken stick into the photo spot between the benches.
So much for the whole “let’s not turn it into a rodeo” thing.
In the end, the Flyers scored a solitary goal and held on for the shutout.
Below, take a look at some photos of what can loosely be described as a hockey game.
By Chris Gordon 8 years ago
“Bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep!” (Photos by Chris Gordon)
On Monday afternoon, the Washington Capitals and the Philadelphia Flyers played a rookie game at Kettler Capitals Iceplex featuring prospects from both teams. It was a rather meaningless game, but still a chance for players on both sides to impress their management — or at least get a deal in the WWE. In the 60 minute game, there were four fights, a myriad of scrums and penalties, along with a occasional slew foot. Naturally, a lot of this involved Tom Wilson. The 2012 first-round pick got in two fights, lost half a tooth, and said some very, very naughty things to players on the other team.
Despite my perch between the benches, I couldn’t really tell how both his fights started, so I’ll let Wilson explain.
“I figured why not?” he said of the first bout. “Two good fights — that’s part of the game.”
Below, here are photos and video of T-Wil’s brawls.
By Chris Gordon 8 years ago
Carrick peeks out from behind Wilson at Kettler Capitals Iceplex in July. (Photo credit: Chris Gordon)
Two thousand twelve first-round draft pick Tom Wilson is fawned over, with good reason. At 6′ 4″, he’s a mammoth dude who scores goals, hits hard, and unleashes a myriad of expletives — the personification of a hockey player. When Caps fans think of the Plymouth Whalers, Wilson is usually the only one who comes to mind. There is, however, another Washington prospect playing in eastern Michigan: fifth-round pick Connor Carrick.
By Chris Gordon 8 years ago
In front of a sparse Monday morning crowd, the Capitals’ rookies took to the ice for their second day of Rookie Camp. The prospects were put through a extended practice that consisted mostly of tedious timing drills. The usual suspects, guys like Cody Eakin and Marcus Johansson, impressed the coaches with their skill while RMNB worship idol, Stanislav Galiev, showed-off his blazing speed. Trevor Bruess also showed improvement throughout the session, darting easily through the timers that were set up to record their speed.
Bruce Boudreau noted that all of the players were in great condition for camp. And it’s true. The boys were moving faster and looking less winded after each and every drill. However, the session ended with the dreaded set of Herbies, which we can only describe as the worst suicides on earth. The sprints included skating back and forth repeatedly across varying widths of the ice, full throttle. By the end, all of the players were doubled over, struggling for air.
By 11 years ago
Here's Nikita as a sophomore when he played for the Norwich Cadets.
Photo by David Albers of naplenews.com
Here at RMNB, we love to write a lot about Alex Ovechkin, Semyon Varlamov, Alex Semin, Dmitri Orlov, Evgeny Kuznetsov, Stanislav Galiev, and Dmitri Kugryshev (did I forget anyone?), but we’ve overlooked the 8th (and the least-known) Russian in the Caps system, Nikita Kashirsky. Now that he has been officially invited to rookie camp to form another awesome trio of Russians, we’ll fix that immediately.
Kashirsky, 24, is a Muscovite (just like me Ovi). As a kid, he started playing hockey at Dynamo and was a left winger. In the past, when Ovechkin was asked about who his favorite line-mates were at the Dynamo school, Kashirsky’s was one of the first names he always mentioned.
“We grew up together,” Kashirsky said of his relationship with The Great 8 in an interview with Corey Masisak last year. “We played in Dynamo since we were 8 years old. We’ve been friends since then, I guess. We became really good friends around the age of 14 or 15. Since then we’ve always been really close. We come to each other’s house, spend the weekends and stuff. We’ve been like brothers since that time.”
By 11 years ago
