On Frozen Blog

Neither Mike Knuble nor Brendan Morrison will be attending Capitals’ Development Camp this week, but important slices of the Capitals’ future will be. There’s been a slight tweak to the camp schedule this week, so I thought I’d re-post the full slate of activity:

Monday, July 13
10 a.m.: Group A on ice
2:30 p.m.: Group B on ice

Tuesday, July 14
10 a.m.: Group B on ice
12 p.m.: Group A on ice

Wednesday, July 15
10 a.m.: Group A on ice
11:15 a.m.: Group B on ice
3:30 p.m.: Intrasquad scrimmage

Thursday, July 16
10 a.m.: Group B on ice
11:15 a.m.: Group A on ice
3:30 p.m.: Intrasquad scrimmage

Friday, July 17
10 a.m.: Group A on ice
11:45 a.m.: Group B on ice

Saturday, July 18
10:30 a.m.: Intrasquad scrimmage

OFB plans on having eyeballs at an awful lot of camp, and we’ll be working with the Capitals’ communications team to try and carry off another live-blog from the camp-concluding scrimmage on Saturday. What a terrific idea to have two campers — Braden Holtby and Trevor Bruess — Twittering their camp reactions all week long. We’ll be feeding the OFB Twitter account with eyewitness observations and scuttlebutt we encounter. We’ll also be filing traditionally, snapping pics, shooting video, the works. I’m especially excited to have intern Andrew returned to D.C. from his summer vacation back home in Michigan at week’s end, and he’s going help us out a great deal, as usual.

When I’m asked why I get so excited about a couple of dozen supposedly “no-name” hockey players congregating for drills and some low-stakes scrimmaging in the middle of each summer, I point to past Development Camps and the eyebrow-raising performances they almost always deliver. Not a whole lot of folks in these parts were familiar with Mike Green when he arrived at his first Development Camp out at Piney Orchard in Odenton, Md., a few years back. But the handful of spectators and media in the stands then sure noticed his skating.

Similarly, two years ago undersized Mathieu Perreault put on a puck-handling clinic during camp scrimmages, and now he’s an important member of the Calder Cup champion Hershey Bears. Last summer Oskar Osala was the name on the tips of a lot of media lips, and it was also Simeon Varlamov’s debut on a sheet of ice in D.C. In Varlamov’s case, I wonder how many who went to Development Camp last July imagined that the 20-year-old Russian would be the Capitals’ starting netminder against Sidney Crosby and the Penguins in the second round of the playoffs 10 months later?

I’m also enjoying the media attention this camp now garners. Just a few years back Development Camp was a small and intimate party out near Baltimore for merely the most devoted puckheads. I’d venture out and see Dave Fay of the Washington Times, Mike Vogel, and maybe one or two local televisions sports personalities. This week we’ll consume print and electronic files from at least three local papers, Comcast Sportsnet broadcast and electronic coverage, perhaps a wire service account or two, and certainly blogger reactions.    

Development Camp won’t determine who makes the Capitals’ roster on opening night,but it’s likely to offer us enticing and encouraging glimpses of the team’s near future. It’s also a cool way to beat the July heat for a week.