Best of the Blogs from Development Camp

Washington’s hockey bloggers, new and established, delivered some fantastic coverage of the just completed Capitals’ Development Camp. Here are some of our favorite files, with a last word from our new favorite blogger, Big Joe Finley.

Rock The Red was able to generate interviews with campers Andy Miele, Braden Holtby, Joe Finley, Samuel Carrier, and Brett Flemming. Punch In The Face Blog compiled a helpful guide to identifying many camp participants, especially those added late.

Russian Machine Never Breaks captured, in words and pictures, a novel off-ice moment last week when two of the Caps’ Russian prospects, newly drafted Evgeny Kuznetsov and Stanislav Galiev, assisted a group of students from the University of Maryland studying Russian.

We were especially impressed by the volume and quantity of photographs captured at camp throughout the week. We take pictures when we can and feel we are getting a bit better with them, but there are other bloggers on the beat that simply excel at it. Some publish pics on their blogs while others share their shots via Twitter or Flickr. Take a look at these and keep in mind that as far as we know, only one is a “professional” photographer.

• @CapsInPictures attended camp every day and posted her pics on her blog appropriately titled Caps in Pictures.
• Heather Mabb is a teacher in D.C., and when her schedule allows, a photographer. She posts her shots on Flickr. Her shots from the midweek scrimmage are here.
• Kelly Stoner keeps the women’s point of view going strong posting her stuff on Flickr.
• Neil Greenberg is one of the guys behind Russian Machine Never Breaks, but this week he was also helping out Michael Hoffman of the Washington Examiner.
• With Neil moonlighting, Addison Huber focused his lens for RMNB as well as posting on Flickr.
• Mike Rannells is behind the relatively new blog Fight For Old DC and captured some wonderful shots, particularly of camp’s first round of fisticuffs. Those that did not show up on the blog were placed in his Flickr account.

Final Day: I woke up with all my bags packed from the night before and lugged them down to the banquet room for breakfast at the hotel. After attacking all the major food groups I started the march to Kettler with bags in hand. All the guys who were flying out before 4 p.m. we required to bring their bags to the rink to catch the bus ASAP after the game. I stopped in the Kettler pro shop to pick up a few things for friends and family members who made requests from back home, and I also got a nice Brooks Laich jersey that he signed so I could donate it to my buddy TJ’s golf tournament at the end of the month. It was awesome to see the support we received from the fans at our final scrimmage. Both teams played great and provided the hockey-deprived fans some high quality mid-summer fun. The game was highlighted with Bruiser and Delly’s scrap, an overtime session, and concluded with a shootout. Again! There must have been something in the water in room 825 this week, ha. After the game I hustled out of Kettler and made my way to the airport to flew back to Minnesota. I know looking back on the week I played hard, had a lot of fun with the guys, and am focused and ready to make another big step forward in the seven weeks leading up to training camp. I want to thank everyone who has been following what I’ve been able to share with you and ask that if you have any additional questions about anything over the past week you can get those to John and I’d be more than willing to answer them the best I can. Thanks again and enjoy the rest of your summer. – Fins

On Frozen Blog Reader http://www.onfrozenblog.com Washington, DC 20004 USA