Caps Prospect Camp Roster Announced

- The Caps announced the roster for this week's development camp out at Kettler, including a lot of familiar names such as super Swede Niklas Backstrom and newly drafted defenseman Karl Alzner.

All on-ice sessions are open to the public free of charge, just another in a long line of things this organization has done to provide access to its grateful, hockey-starved fans this summer. And while all eyes will likely be on the Caps' top picks from the last two years, Backstrom and Alzner, I will be looking forward to getting my first glimpse of a few others that have been floating around the system.

Want to see how the Caps' blue line corps looks for the future? Check out Patrick McNeill, Sami Lepisto, Viktor Dovgan and the twin towers, Sasha Pokoluk and Joe Finley (6'5", 220 lbs and 6'7", 233 lbs respectively...those are big boys). How about the next generation of flashy wingers? Oskar Osala, Andrew Gordon, and local boy Steve Werner should provide plenty of killer dekes and blazing slapshots for anyone in attendance. Up the middle is looking pretty promising, as well, with new Cap Kyle Wilson leading the way.

And let's not forget the anchor of the team, the man between the pipes - the Caps will have their eyes peeled for the heir apparent to Olie's throne, and this is the first chance for many of us to see highly touted prospects Simeon Varlamov and Michal Neuvirth.

As if that wasn't enough, George McPhee went on SportsTalk 980 this morning and apparently provided a little teaser for fans still on the fence about checking out this year's camp, implying that the tone will be much more competitive than in the past to see how the players perform in gamelike situations - so there will be contact. (h/t to OrderedChaos for paraphrasing...)

Sounds good to me!

- Mark your calendars for September 25th - that's the only confirmed preseason home game I've seen for the Caps as they take on the Carolina Hurricanes, 7:00 pm at Verizon Center. Two other games on the schedule (and there may be others confirmed, this is just what I've pieced together) will be September 16th in Raleigh and September 22nd in Tampa. More as the dates trickle in...

September, eh? A little over 2 months and counting.