Congrats to the Washington Capitals for taking home the Stanley Cup two weeks ago. It was the team’s first Stanley Cup title in the history of the franchise and Washington, D.C., absolutely erupted with joy. (I have never seen my boyfriend, a Caps season ticket holder for the last 15 years, that happy. It was borderline manic.)
I’m a non-fan, primarily because watching hockey is new to me and I can’t follow that tiny little puck to save my life. I also can’t pretend to know anything about the Caps except that Ovechkin is a very good player (and somehow pulls off a toothless grin) and its fans have a type of deep-seated loyalty that makes me go, “Awww…”
What I took away from it all is that the Washington Capitals have an incredibly genuine way of doing PR that we could all learn from. Here are some of my favorite moments.
TJ Oshie and Matt Niskanen rode Metro to Game 3
And fans loved it. Do they always ride Metro before their games? I honestly have no idea, but to make a point to do it during the Stanley Cup Playoffs — which fans have been waiting for 44 years — was pretty cool. It’d be like if I ran into Meb Keflezighi on the Staten Island Ferry on the way to the start line of the New York City Marathon. Like, what?! Metro is stressful and Oshie and Niskanen undoubtedly had easier, more comfortable means of transportation to get to the arena before an important game, but I think they did it for the fans.
Ovechkin & Co. partied with the public
There were keg stands to chug beer out of the Stanley Cup. A nine-inning beer bender at the Nats game. They swam in a fountain with fans. A few exceptionally lucky ones were invited onto the party bus. They took a cab, got tattoos, and paraded around Cafe Milano. They went clubbing. They could have done anything after winning the Cup, but they were out and about in their city with fans. I think if you were in town and didn’t run into the Caps, you were probably trying not to. You can see all the (drunken) shenanigans as covered by The Washington Post here.
They congratulated the Las Vegas Knights in a sincere way.
No matter the outcome, you gotta have some respect for the Knights. ::slow clap:: The Caps have been fighting for a Stanley Cup win for over 40 years and the Knights almost got it in year one. I mean… even a non-fan can appreciate the badassery of that. So the Capitals purchased a full-page ad in the Las Vegas Review-Journal to tip their hat to a true competitor.
Most said they’d accept an invite from the White House
This administration has kind of made it uncool to accept an invitation to the White House, but The Washington Post reported that “most” players stated they’d go, if invited. My take is that, as weird as it is, the White House’s hometown hockey team is the Caps. There are probably quite a few fans among all those staffers, so why not keep the fan-focused celebration going? And I kind of love that.
Caps fans will probably tell me, “No, Ashley. None of this was a PR stunt. It was all real. It all happened naturally and it was beautiful.” OK, maybe there’s a lot of truth to that because this team does seem like a group of genuinely great guys who make good decisions, but there’s no way the Caps PR team didn’t have a hand in any of this. But to you, Washington Capitals communications team, I applaud you for doing whatever you did in a way that made it all seem natural. You made the Playoffs and the celebration that followed a warm-hearted, fun, genuinely caring experience that the fans that have stood beside the team for so many years deserved.
