Craig Laughlin Transcript Well that was interesting, cause the last game of the season with the

Montreal Canadiens I happened to play in Washington, played the Capitals and we ended up losing. I remember the Capitals Center and we were walking out of the locker room and I remember all the fans on the ice. That would never happen in Montreal because the fans were on the ice, it was fan appreciation day, they had red carpets and all the players were shaking the fans' hands and we walked out to our bus thinking, "Wow. That's Interesting." We had never seen any type of interaction like that in the NHL before where fans were on the ice. And I also remember thinking, "Wow. Is this building ever dark for some reason?" And we happen to look up during the game and you see the tele screen. Which was not part of the NHL, very few rinks had that. That was sort of exciting to be able to see the play up there, just sitting on the bench. We didn't have that in Montreal and it was our last road trip. And the third thing that I remember, it was hot. It was the end of April and we're still in Montreal, and there's hot weather here in Washington. Those are my three memories of being traded and coming to the Caps. Well, I guess it started in Montreal and we became great friends there and it made the trade a lot easier when you're moving with friends. You know I moved with Langway, Doug Jarvis, Brian Engblom, people that when you're a part of a team, they become part of family. I think that it made my transition that easier. Remember, I always tell everybody it was me and those three ones that got here to Washington in the trade. Really, it was those three and I was the throw in because one of the scouts I think, the late Jack Button, said, "Hey I saw this young kid in Nova Scotia, we should try to get him in the package." And when we got traded it was sort of a new beginning for me and at the time it was a little weird because I had always grown up in Canada, I had never been to the States much growing up, and so to move to the capital city, it was eye-opening. It was fantastic. It was a great feeling. Well, it was interesting because in Montreal we always had training camp at the Montreal Forum. Well I get here and they say, "Yeah, show up to Hershey and we're going to play in the Hershey Park arena. The old arena and that's where we're going to have training camp. To get the guys together." And the first recollection I have of that day is, number one, all the players. I mean, David Poyle, Brian Murray had brought in a lot of new players to fill in different roles. So it was a big camp, which is unusual in the NHL. Usually you just bring in the guys that make the team, but they had a big camp. And the first person we saw, Langway and I when we got off the bus, and then we drove there, we saw this young kid with curly hair. His nam happened to be Scott Stevens. And at the time he was shirtless and ripped. We were looking at him like, isn't training camp for us to get into shape? And he's just this donness/dawness? of a guy and we're thinking we had some great character guys that came in at the same time that they had brought in. So the Hershey Park experience to me, was the start of building a team, was used as a team building type training camp. I think that's why we became so tight knit and to be honest with you that's why in '82 we made the playoffs. It was because of the Hershey experience

that we ended up so tight and that's why we made the playoffs. The thing that I remember about that game, it was 1982 and the thing that I remember most is back then, it was real cool because the opposition we could see across the way at the Caps Center. So they were waiting at the front door because they knew our fans wanted to boo them, but they wanted to cheer us. So we were sort of like this: should we go, should we stay, because we were caught in between. Should we boo? because both teams were trying to go on the ice. It ended up that they had to go on first, so we waited, we then came on and I think it was the first time I had ever experienced 18,130 which is what packed in at that place and I think it was more than that at that game. My mom and dad came down from Toronto, with my sister and brother, and I just looked up and it was a sea of white. It was a socalled whiteout. And they had pon poms. They stood, they stood and just cheered. There was this ferocious cheer for us. I think it was goose bumps, you had us skating around during warm ups, the white of our jerseys with all the stars on it, the white of the fans in the audience just made it an experience that to this day no matter what ever happened, that was the experience that I'll always take away from that '82 team. There's a lot of stories that I can't share with you. I just think that, you know, Rod Langway was named captain and even though he was my roommate, I can tell you he very much wanted to win every game, he very much monitored how everybody played, he wasn't a leader that would yell and scream and do things like that. I do remember, you know the one thing I remember, is more of him being a roommate and a friend was some of the lunches we had together, some of the discussions, talking about everything: world politics to whatever. To him being a former football player just the discussions, we were good friends and sort of hockey was another side to the friendship. But when we got on the ice, I tell you what, he was a man on a mission and I remember the one time, and I will always remember this, my first or second game with the Caps, Langway comes around the net and feathers me a puck, a hard one now, and I miss it. And he just gives me this (imitates dirty look), and I knew right away I didn't have to say a word, it went to the point, they got a slap shot, and he says, I knew what he meant, he said, in silence, he said, " You gotta get the puck out, you gotta be better on the boards, you can't let your point man shoot." I knew it and that was the message I got direct from number 5, the captain, and from then on, I was much better on the boards. Well, there's lots of pranks: spilling water over the door, the cold coffee, the best one was always, we'd always call Warren Stradle, our goalie coach who had a tough time skating because he was a little older and right when he got on the ice for practice, we'd call him from the locker room and say, "Hey Warren, come off, you gotta come off. David Poyle's on the phone." He'd have to labor over to the locker room, get to the phone, and of course there was no one on the phone. And then we had obviously all the showers at Ft. DuPont down in Virginia we'd always have to be careful because we had David Chan, Dave Christian--at the time they were the pranksters on our team--and the days where we had to coif our hair and do all that and of

course, they put baby powder in all the hair dryers. So you had to be careful because you'd be wearing your suit and there goes the baby powder all over your suits. (Laughs) (On the 10 game winning streak) And that was all because, number one we wanted to do something special as a team, I think Brian Murray wanted to take the foot off the gas in those games. That was a coming together of our team in '84 and we really stuck to our game plan and we worked hard and we were known as a hard working team. We had some stars up front, and Mike Gartner, Scotty on the back line, Larry Murphy and guys like that, but we were a hard team to play against and I think that 10 game streak, if I remember rightly, is that we had something going on before and a lot of people didn't know. Prior to the game, Dave Christian was the only one allowed to turn on the music. And Dave Christian was the only one who was allowed to turn it up exactly four and a half minutes prior to us going on to the ice and it was the Doors. It had to be the Doors and it was this one song, I can't remember the name of the song, but it was one of their big hits and we went on the ice and I remember at that 10 game win streak, we all had it in our stalls, David Poyle and the PR department had made up, at the time fans, cassette tapes with that song in it. And that was our song for the season and that really was part of our 10 game win streak. I just think it was the hated Flyers and they were coming down I-95 and we were ready to roll and I thnk at the time, everyone, I think that was the series, if I remember right, where, and this is another cool story, and the Caps center was so hot, that was one series that the Flyers, number one, were wearing those long black pants. They weren't wearing regular hockey pants at the time from what I remember. And it was so hot, I remember the oxygen tanks on their bench. And I'm thinking, oxygen tanks? You know, and they had oxygen there for players coming off. it was the first time I had ever seen that as a young player. And the second thing I remember, is at the boards at the Caps center, there were a lot of steel bars. So your skates sometimes as you're stepping over, you catch it, and you get a knick in your skate and you'd wipe out, you fell on the ice as you started to skate. So prior to the playoff series, I remember we asked the maintenance crew to put in lifters. And that was interesting because now the big bad Flyers, we were standing up looking over them and they thought, wow, these Caps may be a lot bigger than we are. And we actually had the risers so it was easier to jump over the ledge during that playoff series. That's what I remember! Those are the silly things you remember. Was it a hard fought series? Yeah. All series are hard fought. You remember beating the Flyers because they're rivals. It was the Patrick division. We had to get that win. It was something that we had built the season around-- it was to win playoff series. We knew the ones we had to beat and we knew we had some good teams if we were going to be successful. I think it's some of the, probably the accolades and the teammates. I think that during our time here we had some great individual honors and those honors did not

go unknown to our team. Like Rod Langway being name Noors Trophy twice, I think it was an accomplishment by Rod, but I think it also spoke volumes to how our team was forming. The Selke by Dougie Jarvis--and that was a neat award because it's all about defense and perseverance and when the little things, the details of the game. Some of the biggest moments are probably, you look back and to me all my moments are mostly in the locker room and the shenanigans that go on in the locker room and the comradery and us maybe going out a little too much, maybe going out a little too late. All those things, I think you know, all things that you remember, more than any specific game, if I had one in my mind personally, it would probably be: I was sitting at 28 goals in '85 and I think we had one game left. And it was so weird because in the game of hockey, the difference you know, you hit the 20 goal platform, right? Well you might as well just score 21. Because it's still 20. If you're at 28 you're still a 20 goal scorer. Well you wanted to be a 30 goal scorer. Well, that was something I said I had such a good run, I had 28 and all of a sudden, I go into a cold spell and I'm sitting and I said, "28's just like 20" and we ended up going up to Philadelphia during that season and I got one early. And made it 29 so the boys on the bench are like "c'mon c'mon you gotta get 30! you gotta get 30!" and so in the 3rd period, and this was for first place. This was the biggest game of the year 'cause it was the Patrick Division championship. And so I ended up getting my 29th and 30th and I remember my 30th. Everybody on the bench going crazy, high-fiving me, all that. But the disappointing side of that, was we ended up losing the game. And we lost to Pelly Linburg and the Flyers of Philadelphia and that was the real disappointing part of my career that we couldn't win the Patrick Division that season. Well yeah, you look back at all the history, all the times here in Washington, it's hard to play a favorite game because, is that a favorite? Absolutely, but there are a lot of more favorites. But that win was big, you look at a lot of different wins that the Caps have had over the years and any time you win, it's a special night because it's hard to win in the National Hockey League so as a broadcaster, the more the Caps win, the easier it is for me to broadcast the games. I remember a lot of the wins and that game in the conference final was probably one of the biggest wins we've had. I think it's been the revival of the Washington Capitals, from day 1. The day of the new ownership change to "Rocking the Red" to Alex Ovechkin to the star players that now are surrounding this team and are a part of this team. It's really interesting to see how a team goes from a team that was barely making the playoffs, they went through an era where they had to really now using draft picks and young players build the team. And to me, is there's nothing better than watching a Washington Capitals game because you don't know what the superstars are going to do on a nightly basis. And a lot of teams do not have the luxury that Washington has. We have Mike Greene, we have Alex Ovechkin, whether we have Nick Backstrom making a pass that you're like "how did he do that?" and to me that's what makes broadcasting so great. I'm there each and every day, each and every game and see something special. Not only ordinary, but extraordinary from these superstars. I get ready for every game and I'm so pumped up because I'm hoping that I'm going to be

able to see something special on the ice. We've seen a lot of special events. It was huge. At the time, I was thinking, downtown city, because at the time as you remember, I was in an era where you drove down here only because you were probably lost. It was not an area that you necessarily necessarily wanted to come and be at. We were in Landover, so we never went to DC--we were the Washington Capitals, but we were in Landover, Maryland. There was this parking lot. So there was this huge change once I drove down here and saw this building in the middle of Chinatown in the middle of DC, all of a sudden you start thinking of the big similarities to Canada. Hey, this looks like the Toronto area, this looks like the Montreal Forum, this looks like this, that and the other. All of a suede we went from a parking lot rink to a downtown rink with stores, with people walking by, with restaurants, with everything. There was a change in culture and it's been exciting to be a part of that. I always said, "Well where am I gonna broadcast from?" that was my first question. So of course, I found somewhere up in the roof. Which was fine. The first thing that comes to mind is rabid I think we've got the most rabid fans in the National Hockey League. I think that the second thing that our fans possess is passion. I think they're very fair to the team. I think this is a fair crowd, a fair hockey group that we have here in Washington that follows the team. I think it's always interesting when, you know, I played there'd be one person covering the team, two people covering the team. Now we've got 20, 30, 40, 50 bloggers, people that write articles, TV people, Internet people. I think it totally changed globally, but I think when you look at the fans of Washington, Winnipeg always says they've got the loudest fans, when the fans are ready to rock the red here in Washington, there's nothing like it. I've been in every building in the NHL, when this fan base is passionate about getting behind their team, whether they're down a goal, whether they love the fact that they just killed a penalty, there's nothing better than 18,000 + standing up here at the Verizon Center cheering for the home team.