Capitals Practice

I went to practice today at Ashburn Ice House, which is two miles from Casa Benjamin and had a blast. It went on from 11:30 to 12:45 today. I stood behind the goal and got a lot of pictures of long time Capitals goalie Olie Kolzig. He has been in the organization since 1989 and is the last remaining player from the team that went to the Stanley Cup Finals in 1998. Since I was behind the goal, my ears are still ringing from the pucks banging against the glass. They worked on a number of drills and even used foam rubber pucks for a portion of the practice to work on stick handling and shot blocking. Before the foam rubber puck drills, after they finished working on the power play, Ben Clymer had a slapshot and it hit Olie's wrist that was not padded so well. Olie banged his stick over the post in frustration and started cussing and screaming at Clymer. The reason was after the power play drill the players were lobbing wrist shots and Clymer decided to uncork a slapper. One of the assistant coaches skated over to Clymer and told him to chill.

It was a lot of fun seeing these guys up close. The Caps season starts October 5th.