Laughlin Transcript

7/30/2019 Laughlin Transcript

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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 Montrealbecause 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 thecapital 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 happenedto 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 weresort 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 so-

called 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 '82team.

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 amission 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 timeskating 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 thePR 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 thingI 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 Flyersbecause 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 lockerroom 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 the3rd 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 Capshave 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 WashingtonCapitals 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 WashingtonCapitals, 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 inthe 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.

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